Aston Villa

Aston Villa are one of only five English clubs to have won the European Cup, and if that fact surprises you, it is because the football world has spent four decades criminally underestimating a club that was founding the Football League in 1888 while most of the so-called elite were still figuring out the offside rule. Seven league titles, seven FA Cups, and that glorious night in Rotterdam in 1982 — Villa are not merely historic, they are fundamental to the story of English football itself. The claret and blue is not a colour scheme. It is a statement of intent.

Unai Emery’s appointment in October 2022 was the single best managerial hire in the Premier League that season, and it is not close. The Spaniard has engineered a transformation so comprehensive that Villa returned to the Champions League in 2024-25 for the first time since 1983. Emery’s tactical sophistication, his obsessive attention to detail, and his ability to extract elite performances from players who previously looked ordinary have made Villa Park — 42,657 capacity and undergoing significant redevelopment — one of the most exhilarating grounds in the country.

Australian fans who have been sleeping on Aston Villa need to wake up. This is a club playing Champions League football with a manager who has won four Europa League titles. The entertainment is guaranteed. The ambition is limitless. The only question is how high they can climb.

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Villa’s 2025-26 season is the continuation of a project that has already exceeded every rational expectation. Emery has the club competing among the Premier League’s elite, and the ongoing Villa Park redevelopment — which will significantly increase capacity and drag the ground into the modern era — reflects an ambition that is no longer aspirational but operational. Champions League football, a squad packed with international talent, and a manager whose CV would be the envy of any club in Europe. Villa are not making up the numbers anymore. They are setting the agenda, and the rest of the league had better get used to it.

VS — Chief sports columnist, australiafootball.com