Aston Villa's Journey to the Europa League Final
John McGinn walked off the Villa Park pitch with the ball under his arm and a city at his back. Two goals to his name, a 4-0 win on the night, a 4-1 aggregate triumph over Nottingham Forest – and, at last, a road cleared towards Istanbul.
For a club that has spent three decades staring at its own history, this felt like a night when the past finally loosened its grip.
From ‘nearly men’ to a shot at immortality
Aston Villa have waited 30 years for a major trophy. Their last, the 1996 League Cup, belongs to another era. The European Cup win in 1982 sits even further away, in grainy footage and reunion dinners.
Now, on 20 May, they will walk out in Istanbul to face Freiburg in the Europa League final. Their first major European final since that night in Rotterdam 44 years ago.
McGinn knows exactly what is at stake.
“The margins are so slim – if we lose tonight, then we are the nearly men,” he told TNT Sports, blunt and clear. “When we go to Istanbul in 10 days, we need to make sure that we are not the nearly men. It’s about embracing it and trying to become legends.”
He name-checked the heroes of ’82 and the cup winners of the 90s, not out of nostalgia, but as a challenge. This, he insisted, is a “historic club” that has “been a long time without success” and “deserves” more. The message was simple: enough of the almost. Time to join the roll of honour.
Villa Park turns up the volume
If the build-up carried tension, the performance blew it away.
Villa arrived under scrutiny after three straight defeats to Fulham, Forest and Tottenham. Questions swirled around Unai Emery and his players. Form had dipped at the worst possible moment. The first leg at the City Ground had been messy, Forest leaving with a lead and Villa with regrets.
On Thursday night, none of that fragility was visible.
Villa started with a snarl. They pressed high, snapped into tackles, and drove Forest back. Ollie Watkins struck first to erase the deficit, Emi Buendia followed, and the tie flipped on its head. The visitors suffered injuries at cruel moments; Villa showed no mercy. McGinn, sensing the occasion, took over the scoreboard with two goals of his own and turned a tight semi-final into a statement.
“Tonight was up there with one of the best performances I have seen from a Villa team in a long time,” the captain said. “We started with intent. We were pretty fortunate with Forest’s injuries, and we needed to capitalise.”
Villa Park responded in kind. The old stadium crackled, the noise rising with every challenge and every break. This is what McGinn meant when he called it “electric”.
“It’s a demanding club to play for, but when it’s like this, Villa Park is electric,” he said. “There’s no better place to play your football every second week or European football.”
Pressure, nerves and a turning point
McGinn admitted he felt the weight of the night more than usual.
“I am normally quite calm before games, but the pressure today was intense,” he said. “You can kid on that it doesn’t affect you, but today I was nervous.”
Not nervous about his teammates shrinking, though. This is a group that has come through high-stakes days before: promotion, a final-day push to secure European football against Brighton, a fight for survival in the Premier League.
“I wasn’t nervous in terms of the team turning up,” he explained. “It was more in case we had a man sent off or something like that, also because we didn’t handle that first leg too well. I didn’t want to leave these two games with any regrets, and tonight we have done ourselves massive justice.”
The context matters. Villa have lived through “massive lows”, as McGinn put it, including relegation and the long climb back. Nights like this do not arrive by accident. They are built through scars and slow recovery.
Now, instead of another semi-final disappointment, this group finally has its final.
Emery’s touch and Watkins’ demand
If McGinn supplied the voice and the goals, Watkins provided the cutting edge and a clear demand for what comes next.
“There is no better manager to get us prepared for this game and obviously take us into the final as well. His track record speaks for itself,” the striker said of Emery. Few coaches in Europe know this competition as intimately as the Spaniard, and his fingerprints were all over Villa’s controlled aggression.
Watkins, though, refused to treat the final as a reward. It is a target.
“We are in a great position, but we need to go there and win now,” he insisted.
He also pointed to a collective response after the disappointment against Tottenham in the Premier League.
“After the performance against Tottenham, everyone’s mind was on this game,” he said. “Everyone worked so hard. It is hard to pick a man of the match – we were all amazing.”
That line summed up the night. This was not a one-man show, despite McGinn’s brace. It was a full-throttle, 11-man surge to a destination Villa have not reached in a generation.
A club on the brink of something bigger
From relegation battles to a Europa League final in Istanbul, the arc of Villa’s recent history has bent sharply upwards. McGinn talked of a “proud football club” that has “built itself back up” and now stands on the edge of a new chapter.
The legends of 1982 still walk the corridors and take the applause. The cup winners of the 90s still draw nods of recognition. On 20 May, a new group will step into the spotlight with a chance to join them.
No more talk of nearly men. In Istanbul, this team either writes itself into Aston Villa folklore or lives with the knowledge that it fell one step short.
They know exactly which side of that line they want to be on.
