Unai Emery began his night camouflaged from the Birmingham rain, hood pulled down over his eyes. He ended it lying on the sodden grass, presumably soaked by his disappointment.
He had sunk to his knees and then collapsed to the turf when Ian Maatsen’s injury-time volley was blocked by Willian Pacho. It may have been going wide anyway but Emery, forever an animated presence in the technical area, was living every moment.
Aston Villa can relive them now. Perhaps for years, if their return to the Champions League proves a one-season affair or if they simply want to revisit vivid memories. And yet the immediate reaction was to use them as motivation, to get a further taste. They are not used to fighting on three fronts in April.
Even after exiting the Champions League in a fashion that bordered on the heroic against the Paris Saint-Germain, they have an FA Cup semi-final. And, more immediately, a bid to return to the Champions League. It could all in effect be over in 10 days, the Wembley meeting with Crystal Palace following six-pointers with Newcastle and Manchester City.
Or an inspired side could take the confidence from beating and, at times, battering PSG to propel them back into the European elite. They have not been in the Premier League’s top five for more than five months but the side seventh in England finished in the top eight of the Champions League’s group, reached the quarter-finals and threatened, during a superb comeback, to blitz their way into the semi-finals. Paris Saint-Germain were given a scare by Emery’s upstarts, by a rejuvenated Marcus Rashford and a relentless John McGinn.
A Champions League run brought glorious sights, whether Jhon Duran’s stunning goal to beat Bayern Munich or Morgan Rogers’ hat-trick against Celtic or the table that, briefly but weirdly and wonderfully, showed Villa on top after they beat Bologna. The element of the surreal stretched beyond the penalty Tyrone Mings conceded in Bruges.
Villa, lest it be forgotten, won a mere three league games in the whole of the 2015-16 season. They have won eight in the Champions League alone this year. Seven years ago, McGinn’s debut came against Wigan. Now a scorer against PSG, he called the French champions the best team he had faced.
Villa were further evidence the Champions League is enhanced by not being a closed shop; if others can be jaundiced by annual participation, they turned every game into an event and Villa Park, where they won five and drew one, into a fortress.
They provided a lesson to their supposed superiors. They overachieved to finish in the top eight of the group stage, ahead of Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, AC Milan and Juventus.
They can wonder if, unlike nearly of all of them, they could be in the semi-finals. They can reflect on two substitutions, both a sign of the constant change in Emery revolution, which could have altered the equation in the quarter-final. At Villa Park, should Emery have replaced Rashford, who was tearing into PSG? In the French capital, when he took the booked Matty Cash off, he had to summon Axel Disasi and a makeshift right-back was promptly tormented by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Villa made five January signings, could only register three in Europe and the specialist right-back Andres Garcia missed out.
There will be further turnover in the summer, even if the shape of it may be dictated by whether they qualify for the Champions League. Villa’s high wage bill and losses are the less romantic part of their rise; they may be in breach of Uefa’s squad cost ratio.
They borrowed to strengthen in January. Buying Rashford at his £40m option will not be easy; return him and Marco Asensio to their parent clubs and the squad has less stardust. Yet the fact that the previously talismanic Ollie Watkins began on the bench in both legs against PSG shows the speed of change at Emery’s Villa; Duran, the scorer against Bayern, and Jaden Philogene, excellent that seminal night, are both gone. But Rashford, like McGinn and Rogers and Youri Tielemans, is starting to look proof of Emery’s ability to transform players. As he did at Sevilla and Villarreal, he has shown he can take clubs further than had looked logical.
If the ambition is to re-establish Villa as a force on the European stage, this Champions League campaign represented swift progress. Yet the path, both financial and footballing, is narrow. Villa have the momentum of nine victories in their last 10 games in all competitions but need to climb at least two places in the Premier League table.
They have revived the concept of great European nights at Villa Park and given the hope there will be more, perhaps on an annual basis. But they can wonder if and when they will see Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich again.
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