Key events
GOAL! Club Brugge 0-1 Aston Villa (McGinn 11)
John McGinn gives Villa the lead!
9 min Maatsen punches the air in frustration when a throw-in is awarded to Brugge. He’s booked. Moments later, Virgili flips a curler from the left side of the area that is pushed away to his left by Suzuki.
The save itself was comfortable but Suzuki did well to push it away from the onrushing Brugge forwards.
8 min Virgili twists Wan-Bissaka’s blood and clips a cross that is booted away at the far post by Hemmings. The game is being played at a cracking pace.
7 min Club Brugge’s first good attack. Virgili plays a return ball to the underlapping left-back Seys, whose dangerous cross is headed behind for a corner. Of which nothing comes.
5 min “I don’t get why Rodri isn’t the odds-on favorite to win the Ballon d’Or,” writes Kári Tulinius. “He’s won it before, so we know the voters rate him, and he led his country to a World Cup title. It still would feel a bit weird to have Rodri join the ranks of multiple Ballon d’Or winners, not because I don’t think he’s great, but because I can’t think of many moments when he made me feel glad to be alive, like the others on that elite list.”
His G+A is pathetic. (I agree it should be him.)
4 min Villa have made a fast start and are snapping the ball around confidently.
2 min: Buendia goes close Wan-Bissaka feeds the ball into McGinn in the area. He uses his abundant derriere to hold off a defender and lays the ball off to Buendia, who whips a curler just wide from 18 yards. Nice effort.
1 min Peep peep! Nicolas Jackson kicks off for Villa, who are attacking from right to left as we watch.
The players are in the tunnel. It’s almost time for the 2026-27 Champions League league stage to begin.
Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice have been nominated for this year’s men’s Ballon d’Or while Alessia Russo and Alex Greenwood have been nominated for the women’s award.
The 30 men’s and 30 women’s nominees were revealed by France Football magazine on Tuesday, with the winners to be announced at a ceremony in London on 26 October. Ousmane Dembélé, who won the men’s award last year, has been nominated again, as has his France teammate Kylian Mbappé, who made history when he overtook Lionel Messi for all-time World Cup goals (22) at this summer’s tournament.
“Rob, I’m fuming,” says Charles Antaki, casually chinning a passing septuagenarian to reinforce the point. “Absolutely fuming. Nothing to do with Club Brugge or dear old Aston Villa – good luck to them both by the way and may the better team win – no, what’s got my goat is that I seem to have been left off the memo about Gianni Infantino. Only 100,000 signatories? Pshaw. Whoever was in charge of the mail-out has dropped an utter clanger there.”
Can’t we all just chill, relax?
Unai Emery’s pre-match thoughts
Matty Cash is not available because he had more pain yesterday. We signed Wan-Bissaka [for situations like this] and he is ready to play. The other changes are rotation.
[Club Brugge] are playing very well at home. They play lots of passes, including the goalkeeper. The Champions League is very difficult but we are ready for it.
Villa’s last Champions League campaign two years ago included a couple of trips to Bruges. They lost 1-0 in the league stage – remember Tyrone Mings’ strange handball – and won 3-1 in the round of 16.
Andrew Beasley
A delve into the history of the Champions League shows that managers can and do win in their first season at a club, but also that experience matters. Which makes it interesting, given that tenures for the 2026‑27 crop range from newly appointed coaches to one with almost 15 years in charge. Some have managed more than 100 matches in the competition, others none.
It gets under way on Tuesday with 14 of the 36 clubs led by managers who have been in the role for less than a year. It cannot match the turnover of the Premier League, in which 11 of 20 managers were appointed in 2026, but the tenures of the head coaches involved this season break down neatly.
Aston Villa’s Champions League fixtures
Club Brugge (A)
Fenerbahce (H)
Viking FK (H)
Barcelona (A)
Galatasaray (A)
PSG (H)
Borussia Dortmund (H)
Slavia Prague (A)
John Brewin
♫ ♪ 🎵 🎶 The champions ♫ ♪ 🎵 🎶! Bigger Cup is back, baby! Red-hot action from the world’s premier club competition across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Bigger Vase and Tin Pot clubs must wait for their slice of European action until after an international break almost as long as the Geopolitics World Cup itself. Rather like Gianni Infantino’s North American investment roadshow, Bigger Cup, with its revolving Swiss system, 36 teams reduced to 24 following 114 matches, has become baggier than MC Hammer’s trousers [now there’s a reference for the young readers – Football Daily Ed]. Back in Clive Tyldesley’s ITV pomp, ties such as Liverpool v Atlético, Napoli v Arsenal, and Real Madrid v Inter moved the dial, filling boozers and column inches.
Now, paywalled away and despite the whir of Darren Fletcher and Ally McCoist’s unrelenting hype machine, these nights can feel more routine, a golden goose not so much terminated as gathering dust on the mantelpiece. A trinket retaining monetary value but not as cherished as it once was. That holders PSG are so minted they can afford to play separate teams across Ligue 1 and Bigger Cup says much about modern football, where clubs and competitions have become content providers feeding an attention economy. In this case, that attention will run a deficit until, just like the GWC, the juice is in the knockout stages. There are, though, different dimensions to take solace in.
Ben Fisher
Unai Emery is not panicking. He may kick every ball on the touchline but, behind closed doors, Aston Villa’s players are used to him being the calmest person in the room, routinely more demanding after victory than defeat. John McGinn tells a story in which the Villa manager, early in his now almost four-year tenure, broke character and lost his cool during a half-time interval not owing to a lukewarm performance but because he witnessed his captain tearing into teammates. In Emery’s eyes, it was McGinn expending unnecessary energy rather than seeking solutions.
Emery, McGinn and Villa have been here before. Just last season, in fact; at this point, they were pointless in the Premier Leagueand still another 157 minutes from registering their first goal. So in one sense Villa, who shook off a slow start to qualify for the Champions League for the second time in three seasons, are ahead of schedule. Villa’s goalless draw at Hull on Saturday was not the most absorbing display but there were enough green shoots to trust Emery when he says he is confident they can again exceed expectations.
Team news
Joao Gomes returns from suspension to replace Ross Barkley in the Villa midfield. That’s one of three changes to the side that drew 0-0 at Hull on Saturday. Pau Torres and Aaron Wan-Bissaka come in for Tyrone Mings and the injured Matt E. Cash. That means the exciting teenager George Hemmings will make his Champions League debut.
Club Brugge (4-2-3-1) Sommer; Sabbe, Han-beom Lee, Mechele, Seys; Vetlesen, Potts; Carlos Forbs, Vanaken, Virgil; Tresoldi.
Subs: Jackers, Vanden Driessche, Tsawa, Vermant, Mike, Siquet, Coulibaly, Spileers, L Audoor, Diakhon, Vasovic, Lemarechal.
Aston Villa (4-2-3-1) Suzuki; Wan-Bissaka, Lindelof, Pau Torres, Maatsen; Joao Gomes, Kamara; McGinn, Buendia, Hemmings; Jackson.
Subs: Bizot, Wright, Mings, Barkley, Ruggeri, Garnacho, Abraham, Mbaye, Bogarde, Alysson.
Referee Sandro Scharer.
Preamble
The Champions League’s back, baby! A lot has changed since Paris Saint-Germain retained the giant trophy in May – not least at Villa Park. Aston Villa covered themselves in glory at the end of lsat season, qualifying for the Champions League on two fronts, but six of the XI that started their Europa League final victory over Freiburg have been pinched by other clubs.
No team can be de-spined without suffering the consequences, and Villa have had a tough start to the Premier League season: three games, one point, no goals. You’d expect Unai Emery to navigate the necessary transition, and we shouldn’t forget that Villa had an equally poor start last season. But for now the mood around the club might reasonably described as sub-optimal.
Villa start their Champions League in feckin Bruges, where they face the Belgian runners-up Club Brugge. Do they have to win? Of course they don’t haveta! But a victory – even a goal – would make everyone at Villa feel a bit better.
Kick off 5.45pm.