{"id":683397,"date":"2026-05-21T04:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T04:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683397\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T04:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T04:13:10","slug":"freiburg-0-3-aston-villa-prince-william-celebrates-europa-league-final-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683397\/","title":{"rendered":"Freiburg 0-3 Aston Villa: Prince William celebrates Europa League final win"},"content":{"rendered":"

A regular visitor to Villa Park, Prince William was spotted in the crowd celebrating as Villa beat Nottingham Forest<\/a> earlier this month to secure their place in the Europa League final. <\/p>\n

So it was only right that the prince made the trip to Turkey to witness Villa history.<\/p>\n

Television cameras picked up on the prince soaking it all in before kick-off, before celebrating with those close by as Villa got a grip on the trophy. <\/p>\n

The prince also made sure to capture the historic moment when John McGinn hoisted the trophy high above his head.<\/p>\n

Villa captain McGinn labelled Prince William as “just a normal guy” after the win.<\/p>\n

McGinn told TNT Sports: “He’s a classy man, he was in the dressing room before the game. <\/p>\n

“He’s a massive Villa fan, he was never going to miss it. He’s just a normal guy, it’s great to have his support.”<\/p>\n

The prince started supporting Villa during his school days in Berkshire, choosing a team further afield as he did not want to follow the crowd.<\/p>\n

“A long time ago at school, I got into football big time. I was looking around for clubs. All my friends at school were either Manchester United<\/a> fans or Chelsea<\/a> fans and I didn’t want to follow the run-of-the-mill teams,” he told the BBC in 2015.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to have a team that was more mid-table that could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.”<\/p>\n

William was born 26 days after Villa’s European Cup final win against Bayern Munich on 26 May 1982.<\/p>\n

He has spoken previously about the joy he gets from following a club with the ups and downs that Villa have experienced.<\/p>\n

“Aston Villa<\/a>‘s always had a great history. I have got friends of mine who support Aston Villa<\/a> and one of the first FA Cup games I went to was Bolton v Aston Villa<\/a> back in 2000. Sadly, Villa went on to lose to Chelsea<\/a> [in the final],” he added.<\/p>\n

“It was the atmosphere, the camaraderie and I really felt that there was something I could connect with.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A regular visitor to Villa Park, Prince William was spotted in the crowd celebrating as Villa beat Nottingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-683397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}