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Six years ago, Aston Villa’s April included a trip to Rotherham. Now they will visit Paris next month. Their horizons have broadened, their life got more glamorous. A Championship club in 2019 are Champions League quarter-finalists in 2025.
They will face Paris Saint-Germain in the last eight after a brace from a PSG player, with the benefit that Marco Asensio will be eligible to play his parent club in the Parc des Princes. It is another indication of how far and how fast Villa have come that a triple Champions League winner was on the scoresheet for them again. So, too, was Ian Maatsen, a Champions League finalist with Borussia Dortmund last season. Club Brugge, who scarcely boast the resources to attract such players, were eliminated.
Theirs, perhaps, was more of a fairytale rise but the Villa story has its remarkable elements. They were 14th in the Premier League when Unai Emery was appointed. They are now in the last eight of the premier European competition, surrounded by clubs with far more recent pedigree on this stage. They will be underdogs against one of Emery’s old employers but they are compiling a formidable record on this stage.
And not merely because their European Cup campaigns have all included a quarter-final appearance, even if the second and third were separated by four decades. A 3-0 victory over Brugge was shaped by a 16th-minute sending off but was still emphatic.
Asensio only figured for the second half but he was sublime. There are many in the West Midlands who already felt Emery had a Midas touch; that two of his substitutes combined for a goal within five minutes of their introduction underlined it. Looking to rouse Villa from the torpor of the first half, the Spaniard summoned Leon Bailey and Asensio. The Spaniard soon hooked in a shot from the Jamaican’s flicked pass.
Asensio was ultimately inches from a hat-trick, striking the inside of the post after springing the Brugge offside trap and then scoring the seventh goal of his brief loan spell from close range after a cutback from Marcus Rashford.
It was a second explosive intervention from Villa’s other high-calibre attacking arrival; or one of the others, given that Rashford and Asensio meant Donyell Malen was not even named in their Champions League squad. Emery was rewarded for bringing Rashford in, both in the winter window and to his team for this game.
The Mancunian’s Villa career is yet to bring a goal – though he shot into the side-netting – but he ended the night with a fourth assist and a still more catalytic contribution. Brugge had been the more positive in the opening quarter of an hour, Villa looking passive and flat, and then a burst of Rashford’s pace sealed their progress. They had displayed no threat until Emi Martinez’s long kick sailed over the visitors’ defence, Rashford sprinted past Kyriani Sabbe and was tugged down. The red card for the right-back was inevitable but a shame for the contest.
Brugge nevertheless reached half-time with few alarms before Emery injected urgency, taking off the defensive midfielder Boubacar Kamara, sending on two flair players and replacing forgettable fare with some belated entertainment. Simon Mignolet made a superb save from his Belgium teammate Youri Tielemans. Before then, Maatsen’s first Villa goal came from close range, set up by Morgan Rogers; Villa may note that he scored in the Champions League quarter-finals last season, for Borussia Dortmund, against Atletico Madrid.
Maatsen was also part of a defence who kept a clean sheet, albeit against a side reduced to 10 men. Yet it is a theme. Villa have too few shutouts in the Premier League. In Europe, however, Bayern Munich, Bologna, Juventus and now Brugge have come to Villa Park and departed without a goal. That, too, may be a good omen ahead of PSG’s arrival.
So far, Bayern ranks as the great European night of Villa’s campaign. Some of the drama from this game was stripped by the result last week, by Villa’s two late goals in Belgium. Brugge, who knew they needed to score first, might have done when the captain Hans Vanaken flashed a header wide, but theirs was always an uphill task. They had already felt the interlopers in the last 16, the club whose budget suggested they should have exited much earlier.
But Brugge have been among the tournament’s endearing overachievers. They have beaten Villa and Sporting CP in the group, held Juventus, led at Manchester City and knocked out Atalanta. There is an enterprising element to this side, even when down to 10 men. Their supporters were buoyant, too, supplying many of their chants in English so the locals could understand the jibes.
But then Villa have long sung about 1982, the year they won the European Cup. And in 2025, after a long wait, they are back in the last eight.