Aston Villa could not escape the colours red and yellow.
They were everywhere. Go Ahead Eagles flags on shops, pubs, restaurants, walls and houses across the city. Red and yellow luminous lights brightened subways and tunnels, while flares of the same shades were thrown into the streets of the city centre.
Everywhere you looked, there was red and yellow. That remained the same at full-time.
Go Ahead are situated in Deventer, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. It is a quaint, quirky place, endearing to new visitors because of its oddities.
The stadium is humble and holds just over 10,000 spectators. In the club’s trophy cabinet is a six-course menu they picked up from the away trip to Panathinaikos this month, complementing the sponsored microwave and goalkeeper’s water bottle placed nearby, also in the cupboard.
A six-course menu displayed in the club’s trophy cabinet (Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
EuroPop music rumbled from the speakers before kick off, only to be broken up by the sound of Scottish band, The Proclaimers and then, a little while later, bagpipes. Home supporters were packed in and singing in unison, repeatedly calling themselves ‘The Tartan Army’.
This was a rustic place that ended up infecting Villa. It was the Europa League after all — travelling to different places provides challenges that are alien to Villa.
They were playing against a team and a fanbase who understandably treated the fixture as a one-off cup final within a European league phase format.
And, bluntly, Villa found a way to lose. This was a self-inflicted defeat.
It was a tale as old as time — the higher calibre team fails to take their chances only to end up succumbing. Villa’s almost entirely dominant first half was eroded by conceding two goals in the only way they could. “This is football,” Unai Emery succinctly put it.
Go Ahead are competing in Europe because of their Dutch Cup triumph last season, which was, according to full back and eventual match-winner, Mats Deijl, the biggest result in the club’s history. Following their 2-1 win over Villa on Thursday, Deijl admitted that had changed.
Fireworks were set off outside the stadium prematurely during the final throes of the match. The bursting excitement was hard to contain and, in some ways, underlined the budget brilliance and calamity of the night. Naturally, those fireworks were red and yellow.
Emery’s assistant coach Pako Ayestaran had watched Go Ahead intently during the warm-ups. Emery is known to use ordinary football phone apps pre-match to predict an opponent’s lineup or question whether the formation they had planned for is different.
Go Ahead were what he and Ayestaran expected.
Within football, there is a broad school of thought that the start of games tends to reveal the most about a team’s tactical setup. This is because players are at their freshest, most prepared and have not yet been swept away by the atmosphere or tension of a match, which can lead to poor decision-making.
There was more than a kernel of truth in that here. Villa were on pattern and in rhythm for most of the first half. Evann Guessand scored within three minutes as the visitors made the gulf in quality evident.
It was not disproportionate to argue that Villa could have been four goals up before Go Ahead had begun to instigate their approach, which mainly was to win fouls in the attacking half — with the referee only too willing to oblige — in turn dining off set pieces and hoiking long, straight balls in open play.
Villa knew what the threat, seemingly minimal at best, was, yet contrived to concede from it. Exacerbated by the absence of set-piece coach Austin McPhee, who has been away for the previous two matches after being pictured with his leg in a brace, Villa have proven susceptible to rudimentary dead-ball routines.
Go Ahead profited from a floated, slow free-kick — aided by a deflection off Pau Torres — to equalise.
“Let’s go f**king mental,” sang the home support.
These were the type of unique obstacles playing away in Europe presents. A clash in styles, cultures and the mood of a stadium.
The wind began to howl, and the rain swirled. The elements were helping Go Ahead in making what should have been a straightforward assignment for Villa into a slugfest.
Go Ahead Eagles players and fans celebrate their win (Vincent Jannink/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Their manager, Melvin Boel, sought an umbrella on the touchline. He seemed at ease with how the dynamic of the match had changed. No longer were his players vulnerable down the flanks or between the lines; they were compact and carried a greater threat playing behind Villa’s high defensive line.
Villa gave a team that had difficulty passing through the pitch a chance to play over the top. Another simple, lofted pass went over the head of Pau Torres for Deijl to score.
The atmosphere turned ever more febrile. Supporters would try to sit for a brief moment, only to then spring up at the slightest hint of an attacking move. They recognised they had rattled the Premier League side.
Tyrone Mings and Emiliano Martinez quarrelled before Emiliano Buendia tried to stop the wind from blowing the ball away from the penalty spot as he lined up his kick.
He blazed his effort from 12 yards over. Bizarrely, Villa’s penalty success rate under Emery now stands at 62 per cent, with Buendia’s effort summing up a remarkable night.
“Today showed us how difficult it is to play in Europe, to play away,” said Emery. “This is the reason I love football, because football has a lot of different ways to win. You can dominate, like we did, you have chances to score, but if we are conceding a few chances, maybe you can lose. And we did.”
The microwave in the trophy cabinet (Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
Red and yellow colours shining through a famous night. Players’ friends and family rushed pitchside to offer hugs and congratulations. Go Ahead won in the only way they knew how, with guts, a testing, eccentric atmosphere of the type that Villa still find tricky, despite now being accustomed to European competitions, and a degree of fortune.
Boel and Deijl spoke in their post-match press conference for more than 40 minutes as the fireworks continued. Go Ahead will surely put some form of memorabilia taken from Thursday night into their growing, if somewhat curious, trophy cabinet.
