The Wearside-based club suffered the heaviest defeat of their season against Portsmouth earlier this month, with Pompey registering a 4-0 win over them.
Sunderland saw their eight-game unbeaten run across all competitions come to an end at Fratton Park as they struggled to cope with the harsh weather.
Looking back at his side’s heavy defeat to Portsmouth, Sunderland goalkeeper Hoffmann, who is currently at the club on loan from Bayern Munich, likened the match to a game of water polo.
Hoffmann, who realised how common rain is in England on that evening, insisted that the match would not have been allowed to go on in the Bundesliga and pointed out how Sunderland managed to bounce back from the defeat immediately.
“The fact that, according to the cliche, the sun doesn’t always shine on ‘my’ new island, and that rain is definitely a normal condition, became apparent a little later“, Hoffmann wrote in his column for German magazine Kicker.
“Our game against Portsmouth was literally the purest water polo – it probably wouldn’t have kicked off in the Bundesliga – and was lost.
“But that’s also true – after a defeat, no matter how strange it came about, the motto is: dust yourself down and go on.
“We were able to win the following two games again.“
Having struggled to cope with the harsh weather against Portsmouth, Hoffmann will be hopeful that Sunderland are better equipped to deal with such conditions in the future.
