Not a lot of people know this, but when Sir Alex Ferguson arrived at Manchester United, the Red Devils had won the same number of league titles and European Cups as Aston Villa. The two clubs went on to enjoy very different futures from that point, with the Scot making United the second-most successful club in English football, whilst Villa struggled to remain in the Premier League.
There was a time, though, when the Villans were the country’s best team, even going as far as to win the European Cup in 1982. What, though, was the tale behind that major European win?
The Background
A look at the honours of Aston Villa will show you that the Birmingham-based club won seven titles between 1893 and 1981. Nowadays, that would mean that they had qualified for Europe’s elite competition seven times, but the fact that the European Cup, then known as the European Champion Clubs’ Cup, wasn’t even created until 1955 meant that the Villans failed to gain much experience playing on the continent. In fact, it took until the 1975-1976 season before Villa played in any form of European competition. That was thanks to their participation in the UEFA Cup.
They were in the tournament thanks to the fact that they had won the League Cup the year before, defeating Norwich City 1-0 in the final. They played Royal Antwerp in the first round of the UEFA Cup, losing 1-0 at Villa Park before being thrashed 4-1 in Belgium to be knocked out of the tournament at the first time of asking. Two seasons later and they were back in the UEFA Cup, having won the League Cup once more, this time defeating Fenerbahçe in the first round, Polish side Górnik Zabrze in the second and Athletic Bilbao in the third round before facing another Spanish side in the quarter-final.
That team was Barcelona, who escaped from Villa Park with a 2-2 draw before winning the home tie at the Camp Nou 2-1 to knock the English team out with an aggregate score of 4-3. In spite of this, the two UEFA Cup campaigns had given the Villans a solid foundation of playing in Europe, which would prove to be crucial for the club a few years later. Whilst the level of opposition has obviously always been significantly better in the European Cup when compared to the UEFA Cup, playing in Europe in general is something that teams need to get used to if they hope to win there.
The Squad Rebuild
Although Aston Villa made it to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup in the 1977-1978 campaign, which was significantly better than their showing two seasons earlier, the Villans struggled domestically. The good news was that Doug Ellis, who had been the club’s Chairman from 1968 to 1975, had stepped down from the role, being ousted from the board completely four years later. That meant that there was money to be spent, allowing Ron Saunders to rebuild the squad with the aim being to launch an attack on both the domestic and the European fronts, should the opportunity present itself.
6 years ago today the great Ron Saunders passed away at the age of 87 🙏💜💙#HEITS #Legend
#Doyouwanttobetagainstus— Hilary (@hilary14.bsky.social) 7 December 2025 at 07:11
In the 1980-1981 campaign, consistency was the watchword for Saunders, who used just 14 players. Of those 14, Jimmy Rimmer, Kenny Swain, Ken McNaught, Dennis Mortimer, Des Bremner, Gordon Cowans and Tony Morley were ever-present. By the time April came around, the team was neck and neck with Ipswich Town, when a 2-1 win for the Tractor Boys appeared to put them in the driving seat. They lost their next two, however, and it went to the final day. When Ipswich lost 2-1 to Middlesbrough, that made the Birmingham side champions for the first time since 1910 and put them in the following season’s European Cup.
Beating Bayern Munich
Aston Villa were drawn to play against Icelandic side Valur in the first round of the 1981-1982 European Cup, winning the first-leg 5-0 at Villa Park before a 2-0 win away handed them a 7-0 aggregate victory. In the second round, they lost the first-leg 1-0 at home but won 2-1 away, meaning that they progressed thanks to the away goals rule. The quarter-finals pitted them against Dynamo Kyiv, escaping from the Lokomotiv Stadium with a goalless draw before winning the second-leg 2-0 thanks to two first-half goals from Gary Shaw and Ken McNaught.
They won 1-0 in the first-leg against Anderlecht and left Belgium with a 0-0 draw to put them in the final against Bayern Munich. The defending English and German champions headed to De Kuip in the Netherlands for the showpiece event, which saw the Germans hoping to win it for the first time since 1976 and Villa looking to make it six victories in a row for English teams, following three wins for Liverpool sandwiching two for Aston Villa. It was a tight affair, with Peter Withe scoring the only goal after 67 minutes, making the Villans European champions for the first time in the club’s history.