I'm really glad I didn't end up supporting a team that's excited to announce signing Tom Cleverley on a loan deal.
It really wasn't that long ago that Villa was considered a big club. I'm hoping that whomever buys the club from Randy Lerner will have deeper pockets. There should be a decent team in the Midlands.
I trained there as a kid with my club team as we were en route to a couple of tournaments in Scandinavia... so I have a certain soft spot for them- even if I'd never heard of them prior.
The nicest people, even if they were compelled to finish every sentence with a question. "Make the run off the last defender.. innit?
eta: oh... and that was where I got to experience the first of two very loving backhanded slaps at US soccer (which I took in stride, since it was still a while before we'd even qualify for a WC).
The AV youth teams family's were hosting the players on my team, and I was staying with the nicest couple (who's kids were at camp... weren't they?). The night of our arrival, after having a training session with AV staff, the host couple informed my GK and I that it was ok to lose the game we were scheduled to play the next day... the team we were playing was very good and had beaten the previous American team that had visited, hadn't they?. No shame in losing at all. Ok? Thanks? We beat the team 11-0... and it could have been more (couldn't it?), which sent the AV staff scrambling to get us better competition which we pounded, until setting we tied the AV u-16s.
Exact same thing happened a couple years later while travelling in Germany with NCal u-19s. Flew in, stayed with a host family for a night, trained, warned by host family that it was ok to lose to the team we'd be playing who were very good, and then beat them 10-0.
This trip, which was a couple of weeks rather than a few days, and it was interesting to see the people from the German side in charge of our schedule completely shake things up after that first blow-out. We were in the state that included Hannover- and trained at their facilities, using it as our home base. We'd play a game every few days- drive into a town, meet the mayor, and play the game. Each town we'd play in would put up flyers that described the time and location of the game, and our team in increasingly glowing ways. We started as the u-19 team from California.... progressed to the u-23 team from California, then the u-21 USMNT, and ended up as the full blown USMNT. Along the way we played a Div 2 bundesliga team (lost 2-0, and had our best player's leg snapped in two by a horrible over the ball, studs up tackle) and the local state team twice (lost 2-1 and tied 1-1 after giving up a late penalty on the most egregious dive I'd ever seen... to that point).
Even against the pro team, I never felt like we didn't belong- and honestly felt like we were as good or better than even their local equivalent of us (state team)... wish I had gotten the names of everybody on that team- I'm sure a bunch of them went on to be pros.
Oh... wait a sec. There was one team against which we didn't belong... I've told this before, but the Cameroon National team was also training for something at the Hannover training facilites. I got to have drinks at the club lounge with Roger Milla and discuss the end of the cold war and nuclear arms race in broken French with him and my club teammate who was on his way to the Naval Academy (and a pro-buildup hawk). That was a highlight (along with playing ping-pong with some of the other players)... but the real highlight was getting to play in them in a friendly. I think I got megged 4 times before I had even caught my breath- and they put in 4 or 5 goals before the half. It was definitely men against boys- and they were huge, fast and more skilled than anybody I'd ever seen (Maradonna and Bruno Conti excepted).
But in the last 10 minutes (already down 7-0, after they had taken the foot off the gas), I got the ball far up the field in a rare attack for us and got absolutely hammered outside the 18... maybe 25 or 30 yards out... drawing the foul. There were only a couple of us up there (the rest had their hands on their knees around midfield) and I remember the other guy who normally took our free kicks wanted nothing to do with it. So he rolled it unexpectedly to me to hit (not my specialty and I was feeling ready for a body cast after the tackle)... the whole thing took a split second, but I remember every aspect of it- the shock of ####! you want ME to hit this thing? looking up and seeing the GK standing on the PK spot with his arms crossed- daring me to shoot... me taking 3 or 4 steps and then just crushing the ball- I don't think I ever hit a ball as sweetly as I did that shot. With pace, screaming up and then down- dipping AND bending left to right over the 1 guy making the wall, over the GK (still standing, arms crossed) and heading perfectly to the upper right 90. I remember having the thought- holy ####! I'm going to score against Cameroon! and then see the GK (it was Thomas N'Kono of course) slowly unfold his arms, take one giant step/leap backwards and soar up and back to the upper corner to get a fingertip to my shot, sending it harmlessly over the bar. The defender making the wall trotted over and said- nice shot, kid. And then megged me again.