Aston Villa have waited over four decades for this day.
For everyone involved, particularly the lucky few thousand who made it out to Switzerland to see their team compete in Europe’s premier club competition once more, it was a day as wild and as triumphant as they could have hoped it would be.
Yes, there were goals in Villa’s comfortable 3-0 win over Young Boys — some slapstick, others sensational, and two were disallowed — and yes, there were nerves, excitement, confusion, and all the other things you feel at a football match. Still, it also felt as if something was in the air, a strange atmosphere that seemed to lend itself to the lunacy that would unfold.
The quirks of Bern, the oddities of the venue, and the sense of occasion attached to the game itself all combined to make this a dizzyingly memorable trip.
Bern is a picturesque city. It is home to a glistening, deep-blue loop of the river Aare that snakes around the cobbled old town, which was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1980s, alongside Macchu Picchu and the Taj Mehal.
There is a jumble of culture across four languages — German, French, Italian and English — and you might spot three brown bears, roaming around an enclosure at the river bend.
Yet the closer you get to the Stadion Wankdorf in the north of the city, the less romantic this long-awaited Champions League trip starts to feel.
The home of 17-time Swiss champions Young Boys is square and commercial, with a shopping centre built into its main stand and a gym on the opposite side. Occasionally a local, straight from the treadmill, would emerge and shuffle through the football crowds.
The modern and nondescript stadium has an exterior which neither fits with the hotchpotch of the city centre, nor the passion of the diehard fans whose yellow and black graffiti leads the way to its gates.
Ramsey celebrates his goal (Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
Inside, the disconnect continues.
A vociferous section of supporters behind the goal gathered hours before kick-off in an empty arena and waited for the rest to amble in. They sang relentlessly, bouncing to a bizarre repertoire of tunes, including Kanye West’s 2008 Heartless midway through the first half. They lit flares and doused the opening ceremony in thick yellow smoke, whistling violently when the visitors dared to change ends after winning the coin toss. The other 20,000 merely shrugged.
Young Boys are a contradiction this season, currently bottom of a league they have won in six of the last seven seasons. Facing a side making their Champions League debut, led by Unai Emery — in charge of his 186th European game — there were just too many contrasts for this contest to ever really make sense.
The atmosphere inside the Stadion Wankdorf (Thom Harris/The Athletic)
Another twist; the plastic pitch.
Throughout a cagey opening 20 minutes, it was clear that Emery’s side struggled with the pace of the ball and passes holding up on the artificial surface. During a break in play, Morgan Rogers gestured to his manager that passes were tough to control.
“We were adapting at the beginning,” admitted Emery after the game, a sentiment made perfectly clear as Ollie Watkins streaked through on goal barely 15 minutes after Rogers raised the concern, only to leave the ball behind.
The encouraging thing is that Villa quickly improved as a feel for the strange surface grew, their confidence boosted by a well-crafted set-piece opener that found Youri Tielemans at the back post.
From then on, technicality shone through, with Rogers and Jacob Ramsey in particular providing real quality around the penalty area as they received some ferocious passes — hit hard to counteract the turf.
In the end, 47.4 per cent of Villa’s attacking touches came down the left flank, the third-highest proportion of Emery’s reign. As the pass network below illustrates, that cluster of tight-space creators on that side, along with the overlapping runs of Lucas Digne, consistently provided the incision.
But these were combinations made in spite of the conditions, the surface just another bizarre development as Villa returned to football’s most prestigious club tournament.
The game continued to swing from the sublime to the ridiculous as Villa found their feet, doubling their lead after a comical sequence of play.
Neither the treacherous back-pass from Mohamed Camara nor the wild challenge of goalkeeper David von Balmoos were really befitting of a Champions League game. Ramsey’s finish, nicking the ball from under the shins of his teammate writhing in pain on the floor, was another bemusing sight to behold.
The decision to rule out a third goal for a handball by Watkins — despite VAR taking a lengthy look — was another baffling turn of events. The game’s second disallowed goal in the second half sparked a mass brawl, with Jhon Duran jumping on the advertising hoardings in front of the hardcore home support.
For his part in inciting the violence, the Colombian received a yellow card for celebrating a goal that ultimately didn’t count.
There was still time for a stunning strike, Amadou Onana lasering a low drive into the bottom corner from 31 yards to seal a historic win, but this was a surreal day only compounded by a match that passed by in a drunken, dream-like blur.
Champions League games don’t often come as madcap as that; the visit of Bayern Munich in two weeks time, particularly after their own 9-2 win over Dinamo Zagreb, might even feel like the game when reality finally sets in.
Nonetheless, Tuesday’s unconventional, yet professional return to the European stage will only whet the appetite for what’s to come.
(Top photos: Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
