Matt Maher: Pain, pride and hunger - why PSG epic means things will never be the same for Aston Villa
No matter who was talking in the minutes and hours after Villa’s heroic yet heartbreaking Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain, the message was the same: “We’ve got to be back here next year.”
For all the club’s remarkable transformation under Unai Emery in the space of two-and-a-half years, nothing shifted expectations so seismically as 90 minutes on Tuesday night, when his team came close to pulling off one of European football’s greatest-ever comebacks against a Paris Saint-Germain side who may very well end the season lifting the trophy in Munich.
Even in falling short, this was still one of Villa Park’s greatest nights. Truly, a game for the ages and a watershed moment in which Villa showed not only are they back at the top table of European football but they belong.
More than that, it is now plausible for supporters to envision a scenario where their team actually wins the Champions League in the next few years. Just nine years on from the most humiliating of relegations and only 30 months since Emery inherited a team which seemed at real risk of returning to the Championship, such a notion feels almost unfathomable but is also undeniably true. The Europa League, much as it might have seemed an acceptable alternative prior to Tuesday night, will no longer do. It is the Champions League where Villa must be, for reasons both emotional and practical.
The biggest difficulty lies in the returning. It will be by no means straightforward. The next six days, starting with Saturday’s visit of Newcastle United and followed by Tuesday’s trip to Manchester City, will likely go a long way to deciding Villa’s fate in a race for a top-five Premier League finish which now even usurps FA Cup glory in terms of importance.
