Dave Woodhall watches Villa lose to Paris St Germain and remains optimistic.
There can be no greater tribute to the miracle performed by Unai Emery than to look at the final score, reflect on how Villa were outplayed for much of the match, and think we’ve still got a chance of turning it round in the second leg. Villa are rank outsiders, true, but with Unai in charge and with the players at his disposal, you never know.
Almost as great a tribute was the occasion itself. The Champions League quarter-finals, against one of the modern giants of European football. At kick-off we were even shorter odds to win the tournament than Real Madrid, and that doesn’t happen very often. The boss had decided to bring Pau Torres in to partner Ezri Konsa, with Marcus Rashford up front as expected, but looking at the opposition line-up, you knew that whatever team he’d picked would be up against it.
And so they were, with PSG having most of the play early on, Villa defending valiantly and Emiliano Martinez annoying yet another load of French football supporters with a couple of gravity-defying saves. Then ten minutes before half-time John McGinn won the ball inside his own half, Marcus Rashford helped it on to Youri Tielemans, and he left Morgan Rogers with a tap-in to put Villa into the lead. The impossible journey had taken another step forward. If we could have held on a bit longer the game might have been entirely different; Martinez produced another wonder save but three of him couldn’t have stopped the equaliser.
Axel Disasi came on at half-time for Matty Cash, who had been booked early on, and maybe if he’d had more time to get attuned to the game he might have been able to cut out the play that led to PSG’s second, but probably not. Forty minutes to go and it looked like damage limitation was Villa’s only hope. The home side had a goal disallowed for offside while substitute Marco Asensio’s shot might have had a more interesting destination had it not been deflected for a corner.
But Villa hung on, with the sort of stats that make grim reading if you take any notice of that sort of thing and with just four minutes of stoppages signalled, the end was almost in sight of a torrid night where we’d taken everything thrown at us and been left with the sort of scoreline that you might have settled for at the start. Then another through ball, another bit of magic and the mountain suddenly became infinitesimally steeper.
It was a disappointment to have got so close but sometimes you have to accept that you were beaten by a much, much better team, assembled at much greater expense and who have just as importantly got a lot more experience at this level than we have. And, whatever we might be thinking, there’s still a chance. We’ve got the players, the manager and most of all, we’ve got Villa Park under the lights. A goal in each half and the best keeper in the world in a penalty shoot-out; the story writes itself.
