Presumably some time between making another play for Marco Asensio and the Paris Saint-Germain forward pitching up on loan in February, Unai Emery, or at least Aston Villa’s administrative staff, sifted through the small print of Uefa’s regulations in case this very scenario presented itself. Less than three months after replacing Kvara Kvaratskhelia at Parc des Princes in a Ligue 1 draw against Reims, Asensio faces the unusual but not unprecedented challenge of trying to knock his parent club out of the Champions League, the competition PSG crave so badly.
Villa were on the other end of this peculiarity in October, though the stakes were nowhere near as high. When Bologna came to Birmingham, they arrived with a Villa player in their ranks. With Villa leading 2-0, coasting towards a victory that maintained their 100% start to the league phase, Samuel Iling-Junior entered late on to gentle applause from all sides. It was the 21-year-old’s first appearance at Villa Park – albeit for the visitors – and it could prove his last given Iling-Junior, who signed from Juventus last summer as part of the package that saw Douglas Luiz depart, joined Middlesbrough on loan in February.
“It is probably a strange one because you can never predict that you’re going to face your own team,” says the Villa midfielder Youri Tielemans. “He has been brilliant since he came in, he is working hard on the pitch, making efforts for the team defensively, and offensively you can see his class when he touches the ball. I remember his first cameo at Villa Park [against Tottenham in the FA Cup] and it was just brilliant, he just glided [past] some of the midfielders.”
There is the sense Asensio is just getting started. Villa have been building his fitness, resisting the temptation to showcase their shiny new toy at every opportunity. It has been a similar story with Marcus Rashford, who joined on loan from Manchester United.
Here is an appetite to construct the perfect narrative arc around Rashford but Asensio has made a bigger splash. The 29-year-old has scored eight goals in 11 matches, eclipsing his tally of seven for PSG in double-quick time. Asensio has started five games for Villa, three in the Premier League, two in the FA Cup, in which Villa face Crystal Palace in the semi-finals towards the end of a busy month. To tee up this quarter-final, he scored three goals across two legs against Club Brugge.
Villa won the European Cup in 1982 but this represents new territory for the club in the modern era. Asensio, meanwhile, is au fait with these kinds of matches and the grandest of stages: he is a three-time Champions League winner with Real Madrid. Villa have been impressed with his humility and character off the pitch. On it Asensio has shown a willingness to get his hands dirty, typified by his sliding challenge to deny Elliot Anderson a clean shot as Nottingham Forest pushed for an equaliser at the weekend when Villa were on the ropes. “No big egos,” Villa’s captain, John McGinn, said.
“When you look at him you don’t think he’s a hard worker,” Tielemans says, “because he’s more of a ball player, but off the ball he does his job really well … I think the system suits him to play as a No 10 off the striker and for him to be ‘free’ off the striker.”
How did Asensio get here? Emery tried to bring in Asensio in previous windows but it was always a complex – and expensive – deal. Villa’s manager drove his signing, aware his PSG counterpart, Luis Enrique, was not quite so enamoured. Enrique questioned Asensio’s attitude in training and commitment to trigger his team’s press in victory against Toulouse in November. Until then, he had played three of PSG’s four Champions League matches and 10 of their 12 league matches.
Then Asensio voiced his surprise at the criticism given PSG had won comfortably and was benched a few days later against Bayern Munich. He totalled another 25 minutes before being allowed to depart. “When he has the ball, [he] is a top player,” Luis Enrique said ominously before that episode played out publicly. Villa do not have an option to sign the Spaniard and nor does he have a release clause in his PSG contract, which runs until 2026.
Recently McGinn poked fun at an old social media post in which he declared his love for Asensio. On the night Asensio zipped a left-foot peach into the top corner to help Madrid past Barcelona to win the Supercopa de España, McGinn, then of Hibernian, posted on Twitter: “Asensio” and an emoji with a smiling face and heart-eyes. Asensio replied last week, posting a photo of the pair celebrating and the word: “Captain.”
Asensio is symbolic of Villa’s rise under Emery. A player who appeared a fantasy target to those behind the scenes the summer after Emery averted the threat of relegation in 2022-23 evolved into a distinct possibility. Monchi, Villa’s sporting director, has been tasked with exploring a permanent deal. “He came to the [2022] World Cup with me and was very important, and he was important for us last season and at the start of this season,” Luis Enrique said on Tuesday.
Could Asensio emulate those who have scored against their parent clubs in this competition? Patrick Roberts earned Celtic a point at the Etihad Stadium while a Manchester City player in 2016, though the game was a dead rubber. Fernando Morientes scored for Monaco to knock out Madrid in 2004 and Philippe Coutinho scored twice for Bayern in their 8-2 rout of Barcelona in 2020. James Rodríguez and Kingsley Coman scored against Real and Juventus respectively.
If Asensio is burning with a point to prove, then so is Emery, who spent two years at PSG. His brief was to win the Champions League. He won Ligue 1 and two Coupes de France but in Paris they remember La Remontada, Barcelona’s 6-1 second-leg comeback which sent PSG packing from the last 16 of this competition in 2017, when McGinn was drooling over Asensio. Now, Emery has the player he has always pined for and Villa are in a place they could only dream of when he walked through the door.
