If there is one thing that Unai Emery takes to well, it is European football. The Spanish manager has enjoyed success with both Sevilla and Villarreal in the Europa League, and took Arsenal to the final during his single season there. The early going at Villa suggests that this will be the case again.
After qualifying Villa in the top four, Emery came into the Champions League with a bang, beating Bayern Munich at Villa Park via a brilliant Jhon Duran goal. They sit 8th in the 36-team table currently, and are just on course for a bye through to the quarter-finals. That said, Juventus are just two points behind them in 11th.
The concern for Villa will be that their form has stumbled of late. Emery’s side are on a four-game losing streak, and struggling to find their form. Their opponents won the Turin derby before the international break, but that was just their second victory in six, and the fact they face AC Milan over the weekend prior to the game will not play in their favour. Up against Emery is one of his former players, Thiago Motta.
Despite signing Douglas Luiz from Villa in the summer, Motta has been using a 4-2-3-1 formation with wide wingers, and Teun Koopmeiners in behind Dusan Vlahovic. His dedication to free-flowing, ball-based systems contrasts deeply with a master of the counter-attack in Emery. If the Basque coach can inspire a reaction emotionally, they may even have the better of the match-up in terms of style, against a Juve team that is relatively inexperienced in Europe too.
If you are keen to attend what will be an historic night in Birmingham then you have several options available to you. After decades of absence from Europe’s premier competition, it could be a special atmosphere to welcome the Bianconeri to Villa Park, as was proven against Bayern of course.
There are still some hospitality tickets left for the clash on the Aston Villa website, and a handful of general entry tickets too. They will set you back €278, although it is cheaper (€232) for under-14s. The cheapest way to attend the game is to be a Juventus fan, as they were selling tickets for just €60, but that no longer appears to be the case.
Beyond those options, fans can head to third-party websites to look for tickets there. Ticombo have some tickets for €140, and Stubhub start their prices at €146. They have around 200 tickets left at the time of writing. The most abundant in terms of tickets, 327 at the time of writing, are LiveFootballTickets.com.
If you head to LiveFootballTickets.com, you stand the best chance of getting a seat next to whomever you go with, and the cost is little more at €157. With international games, and particularly if you are coming from far away, the service can be that much more important though. LiveFootballTickets.com will provide a dedicated customer service channel, and boast a rating of 4.8 out of 5 from over 12,000 Trustpilot reviews.