{"id":417845,"date":"2026-05-08T10:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417845\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T10:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:53:10","slug":"prince-william-celebrates-as-aston-villa-book-spot-in-europa-league-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417845\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince William celebrates as Aston Villa book spot in Europa League final"},"content":{"rendered":"
The royal was also seen speaking to the team\u2019s manager Unai Emery before the game.<\/p>\n
Prince William is a longtime Villa supporter, telling the BBC in 2015 he had chosen the team because they were not \u201crun of the mill\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA long time ago at school I got into football big time. I was looking around for clubs. All my friends at school were either Man United fans or Chelsea fans and I didn\u2019t want to follow the run-of-the-mill teams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to have a team that was more mid-table that could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Prince of Wales (right) chats with Aston Villa’s John McGinn, who scored two second-half goals as he helped the club to victory. Photo \/ Dan Mullan, Uefa via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The prince, who was made patron of the Football Association two years ago, has described attending a match in 2000 between Bolton and Villa as \u201cfantastic\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sat with all the fans with my red beanie on, and I was sat with all the Brummie fans and had a great time.\u201d<\/p>\n
His son Prince George has also attended several Villa matches, including last year\u2019s Champions League quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been 43 years since anything like this has happened in my generation as a Villa fan, and I want George to experience a night out away from home in a big European competition,\u201d he told The Independent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope it\u2019s not 43 years until the next one happens, but I think those memories are really important to create and bringing him along tonight is a big deal for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Villa ultimately lost the tie that year, this season has marked a major resurgence for the club on the European stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The royal was also seen speaking to the team\u2019s manager Unai Emery before the game. Prince William is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,134101,2108,9632,10001,18836,35902,6446,5904,6758,42,6628,78,14731,10543,43,4940,15412,9636,21694,27557,19554,7187,1361,40,38,41,39,9966,10744],"class_list":["post-417845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-aston","tag-book","tag-celebrates","tag-closer","tag-club","tag-europa","tag-european","tag-final","tag-glory","tag-headlines","tag-historic","tag-in","tag-league","tag-match","tag-news","tag-prince","tag-spot","tag-spotted","tag-step","tag-supporting","tag-taken","tag-team","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-villa","tag-william"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}