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12 Mar, 2025
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Luis Enrique ready to party as Aston Villa shown enormity of Champions League task
@Source: birminghammail.co.uk
As Luis Enrique shared his plans for a celebratory dance after his PSG team knocked Liverpool out of the Champions League, Aston Villa were left firmly in the knowledge they will have to be at their very best to overcome their likely quarter-final opponents. Unai Emery's men play Club Brugge tonight in the second leg of their last 16 tie holding a 3-1 lead over the Belgians and red hot favourites to progress. But while the Villa hierarchy will have fancied themselves against a fellow Premier League team, especially after last month's encouraging 2-2 draw with Liverpool , a rampant PSG could be an altogether different prospect. As the enormity of their probable last right task became clear to Villa and boss Emery , his fellow Spaniard Enrique was savouring his triumph at Anfield, so often a graveyard for Europe's biggest reputations. That the French club had to do so on penalties was no matter according to the man who clinched the Champions League trophy with Barcelona in 2015. Leading 1-0 from the first leg, albeit against the odds after being dominated, they quickly found themselves pegged back by Ousmane Dembele’s 12th-minute goal at Anfield. For the record, PSG won 1-0 on the night in Liverpool thanks to Ousmane Dembele’s 12th-minute goal, but with the tie level at 1-1 on aggregate after extra time, it was left to penalties to decide the issue, the Ligue 1 champions prevailing 4-1 after Gianluigi Donnarumma saved from Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones He expressed his feelings post-match, Enrique said: "It's always special to play at Anfield. We are a team that's very young but we have a lot of personality. Now it's a big party, I'm looking forward to dancing a little bit. "Clearly I'm happy and really pleased with our performance. It is a significant moment for us. Both teams deserved to go through, but perhaps we deserved it slightly more because of the first leg. We have huge strength of character and personality. Tonight there were times Liverpool were perhaps better than us but we never gave up and created danger. "We certainly put in a good performance. We absolutely had to win tonight and that's what we did. We got knocked out in the semi-finals last season and hit the frame of the goal six times. But this time we got through. "People talk about penalties being a lottery but often they are not. Your mindset comes into it. We will take this momentum into our forthcoming games."
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