Away trips tend to mobilise unity within a fanbase.
Your supporters are outnumbered and can feel a long way from home. Travel can be expensive and the sacrifices made are all for the same common cause. Matches abroad inspire this sense of union more than anything else. Especially for a club such as Aston Villa, involved this season in their first Champions League campaign and only second crack at European competition of any sort under manager Unai Emery.
Villa are the new boys, and every game in Europe still feels novel and exciting, be it the places they get to go, or the opponents they face. Tuesday’s match away to Monaco, for instance, will be the first time the teams have met.
Experience any of these excursions and it will not take long to spot one Villa supporter, one often not knowing the other previously, striking up a conversation with another. They can seemingly be heard on every continent-bound Eurostar train in the days leading up to a game — the Midlands accent is detected easily — and on every plane. One told a story of how they travel from Ireland to Birmingham for every home match.
Villa fans gather in the main squares of those destination cities. Before Lille away in the Conference League quarter-finals last season, they took over the beer tents on the cobbled streets in northern France and draped every barrier or wall with flags. They arranged kick-arounds next to roads, with locals joining in.
Some without a ticket had watching briefs in the nearby bars before Villa’s match with Olympiacos in Athens and encompassed the Acropolis. Even within Berlin’s crowded and complicated multi-platform rail station, en route to the RB Leipzig game this season, a Villa fan could be seen or heard.
A lot of them travel in their football shirts, even if the trip out is happening days before the game. While there remain issues off the pitch and tension endures, Villa’s footballing operations — a separate strand to the club — has provided even the most sceptical fan with the belief that Emery’s squad can win any match, compete in any tournament you care to place them in. Journeys to away matches, in England or across seas, are especially anticipated.
For all the delight over new adventures, Villa never intended to make it to the Champions League and simply take part, nor make up the numbers. From the outset, Emery made it clear to his squad that he did not consider this season to be a one-off, but a broader step in establishing Villa as Champions League regulars.
Villa’s fans have travelled in huge numbers in Europe in the past two seasons (Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
The Premier League will always be the priority, yet Emery views this competition as his managerial hinterland. “We tried to get Champions League last year and now it’s been a dream,” the Spaniard said in December. Among the managers with 10 or more wins in the Champions League in the competition’s history (he’s on 26), Emery has the highest average margin of victory at 2.9 goals.
Tactical strategies for Villa’s European opponents have been sharp and invariably carried slight deviations from domestic setups. He analysed ways to break Bologna’s man-for-man press, for example, to play through, and isolate Bayern Munich’s central defenders and to pull RB Leipzig’s narrow system apart by changing Villa to a wing-back shape.
Premier League form is showing gradual improvement but, though well-positioned, they have not matched there they’ve reached in Europe. The 1-0 home win against Bayern in October rubber-stamped Emery’s tenure and illustrated how far Villa had come in such a short period since his appointment two years earlier.
“Consistency” is Emery’s watchword. This is not necessarily related to performance, but emotion instead — he insists on players never reaching euphoric levels after wins or plunging to depths of despair following losses.
It was critical that beating Bayern was not Villa’s standalone moment in the Champions League. In his mind, and those of his coaches, it was just three points — the same value as a win against Bologna or Celtic would provide.
Pleasingly, they have built on that night. Barring November’s aberration in Bruges — where Emery immediately made his anger known to players — Villa followed the theme of consistency which has led them to this point and, conceivably, the biggest night of their season.
GO DEEPER
Champions League matchday seven: Who can qualify for the knockout phase? Who could be eliminated?
Victory in Monaco tonight in their penultimate league-phase fixture may not mathematically confirm Villa’s automatic qualification for the round of 16 in March, but would be significant. For a team just arriving on the grander scene, finishing in the top eight — and, in turn, bypassing next month’s 16-team play-off stage — would represent extraordinary progress.
Jhon Duran and Lucas Digne celebrate after Villa beat Bayern (David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)
Villa are fifth in the standings with 13 points, which is more than several European giants — Bayern, Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester City, Inter and Paris Saint-Germain.
Emery and his analysts have revelled in researching European opponents and detecting the often subtle stylistic distinctions from those in the Premier League. Some, such as Bologna and now Monaco, do offer divergence from the increasingly identikit football systems.
Monaco are fourth in France’s Ligue 1 and more than competent. While replicating the talent bank of years gone by — Kylian Mbappe, Thomas Lemar, Fabinho, Joao Moutinho and Youri Tielemans, pertinently, were all part of the same title-winning squad in 2016-17 — is a thankless task, they have a good blend and balance.
Adi Hutter’s team can be separated into three categories: the players once perpetually linked with the Premier League and who became familiar through international tournaments (Breel Embolo and Aleksandr Golovin), those who did move to England but have since levelled out back on the continent (Mohammed Salisu, Takumi Minamino and Denis Zakaria) and, crucially, the youngsters who will allow Monaco to make an eventual profit on them.
Eliesse Ben Seghir and Maghnes Akliouche occupy the flanks, with six of the XI who started Monaco’s most recent match, against Montpellier on Friday, under the age of 23.
Three of that side’s front four were 21 or under, and with the third youngest squad in Ligue 1, they have registered the second-highest expected goals (xG) rate behind serial champions PSG. They are well-equipped and youthful, with a 21-year-old midfield pairing of Lamine Camara and Soungoutou Magassa who are indicative of the intensity Hutter sets.
Monaco’s out-of-possession traits are highly effective, making the most tackles, ball recoveries and second-most interceptions of any team in the French top flight. They are 16th in the Champions League, so also on track to reach the knockout rounds with their league-phase finale next week being away to Inter at San Siro.
All of this is to say they will not be easy. And, in truth, Emery would not want it any other way.
The Monaco-Monte Carlo train station will change colour this morning, with a swarm of claret and blue shirts travelling along the Mediterranean coast from Nice before strolling around the city in the afternoon. They will gather in Casino Square and sing Emery’s name.
Thanks to Emery and his players, Villa have the opportunity for this not to be those fans’ last Champions League trip this season.
(Top photo: Emery before the home date with Juventus in November. Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
