Unai Emery oversees his club’s first ever UEFA Champions League match. We look ahead to the game with our Young Boys vs Aston Villa prediction and preview.
Young Boys vs Aston Villa Stats: The Quick Hits
- Aston Villa are considered favourites for this game by the Opta supercomputer, winning 48.6% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations.
- The Villans will become the 11th English club to appear in the UEFA Champions League.
- Aston Villa will be the sixth team Unai Emery has managed in the Champions League; only Carlo Ancelotti has taken charge of more in the competition.
Match Preview
Aston Villa make their Champions League bow on Tuesday as they go to Switzerland’s Young Boys on Matchday 1 of the 2024-25 edition of the competition, which sees a new format introduced.
As opposed to the old system of eight groups of four teams, the Champions League this season has been expanded to 36 teams, all of whom are in a single league table. Every club will play eight different teams, four at home and four away, with the top eight at the end of the group stage going through to the last 16 and those in positions ninth to 24th going into a play-off round.
Villa are in the Champions League after commendably finishing fourth in the 2023-24 Premier League season, and they’ll be quietly confident of making a positive start in Bern.
The Villans will also be the first English newcomers to the competition since Leicester City in 2016-17, and they are becoming the 11th different English club overall to compete in the UEFA Champions League since it began in 1992.
Although they’ve never competed in the Champions League before, Villa are former winners of the European Cup (1981-82). Their last appearance at European football’s top table came the season after, reaching the quarter-finals before being eliminated by Juventus.
They may not exactly be regulars at this level then, though their manager certainly isn’t a newcomer. Villa will be the sixth different team Unai Emery has managed in the Champions League after spells with Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain and Villarreal.
In fact, the only coach who’s managed more different clubs in the competition is the great Carlo Ancelotti (eight).
Emery last took charge of a Champions League game in May 2022 when still in charge Villarreal; he took them all the way to the semi-finals in 2021-22, eventually losing out to Liverpool 5-2 on aggregate. Nevertheless, it was still the deepest he’d taken a team into the competition.
Villa haven’t been entirely absent from European football lately, though. They made it to the semi-finals of the Europa Conference League last season before suffering a shock 6-2 aggregate defeat to eventual champions Olympiakos.
Ollie Watkins scored five goals along the way, equalling the record for the most by a Villa player in a major European campaign (level with Gary Shaw in 1982-83 European Cup and John Deehan in 1977-78 UEFA Cup).
Villa’s hosts on Tuesday don’t have a particularly impressive record in the Champions League. While they did win their last home game in the competition, against Crvena Zvezda last season, they’ve not won successive UCL matches at the Wankdorf Stadium for several years; nevertheless, those wins – in 2018 and 2021 – were against Juventus and Manchester United.
Emery will continue to be without long-term absentees Tyrone Mings and Boubacar Kamara, while Leon Bailey and Matty Cash aren’t due to return for a little while yet either.
Nevertheless, no new injury concerns were reported after Saturday’s comeback win over Everton; Villa found themselves 2-0 down to the Toffees in the first half but battled back thanks to Watkins’ first two goals of the season and secured the 3-2 win late on courtesy of Jhon Durán’s stunning long-range effort.
That ensured Villa ended the weekend fifth in the Premier League table on nine points, a haul bettered only by Manchester City, Arsenal and Newcastle.
Young Boys, meanwhile, have endured a miserable start to their domestic season. After six matches, they are still winless, though they did beat third-tier side Vevey-Sports in the Swiss Cup at the weekend.
Young Boys vs Aston Villa Head-to-Head
This will be the first ever competitive meeting between Young Boys and Aston Villa.
Swiss sides have only won seven of the previous 24 meetings with English clubs in the Champions League (D6 L11), while six of those seven victories were achieved by Basel (one by Young Boys).
Young Boys’ one victory (from six previous games) against English opponents in the Champions League (D1 L4) came in September 2021, winning 2-1 at home to Man Utd. They lost home and away to Man City in the competition last season.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Young Boys vs Aston Villa Prediction
The Opta supercomputer makes Aston Villa favourites on their Champions League debut, with Emery’s men winning 48.6% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Don’t completely rule out a shock Young Boys win, though. The hosts take all three points in 27.4% of simulations, while the draw occurred in 24%.
Either way, neither of these two sides are expected to go that deep into the competition.
The projection model gives Villa only a 9.1% likelihood of reaching the quarter-finals, with 22 clubs deemed to have a better chance of going as far. Young Boys reached the last 16 in just 4.3% of the season simulations; only Slovan Bratislava (1.2%) and Shakhtar Donetsk (3.9%) did so less often.
Young Boys vs Aston Villa UCL Squads
Young Boys: David von Ballmoos, Marvin Keller, Dario Marzino, Jaouen Hadjam, Banhie Zoukrou, Patric Pfeiffer, Mohamed Ali Camara, Saidy Janko, Abdu Conté, Loris Benito, Zachary Athekame, Lewin Blum, Filip Ugrinic, Lukasz Lakomy, Kastriot Imeri, Miguel Chaiwa, Cheikh Niasse, Sandro Lauper, Darian Males, Cédric Itten, Ebrima Colley, Meschack Elia, Alan Virginius, Silvère Ganvoula.
Head Coach: Patrick Rahmen
Aston Villa: Emiliano Martínez, Robin Olsen, Joe Gauci, Matty Cash, Kosta Nedeljkovic, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres, Diego Carlos, Tyrone Mings, Ian Maatsen, Lucas Digne, Boubacar Kamara, Ross Barkley, John McGinn, Youri Tielemans, Emiliano Buendía, Jaden Philogene, Amadou Onana, Jacob Ramsey, Morgan Rogers, Leon Bailey, Jhon Durán, Ollie Watkins.
Head Coach: Unai Emery
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