{"id":596188,"date":"2026-05-21T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/596188\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:00:21","slug":"birmingham-set-for-aston-villa-victory-parade-after-magical-europa-league-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/596188\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham set for Aston Villa victory parade after ‘magical’ Europa League win"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘They would never miss a match’published at 13:32 BST<\/p>\n

13:32 BST<\/p>\n

One family from Derby, who made their way to Istanbul for last night’s match, had a bit of precarious journey, mum Anaeka explained. <\/p>\n

‘Villa is all we sleep, eat, live and breathe in our house,” she says, “so they would never miss a match.”<\/p>\n

\"RaviImage source, Family handout<\/p>\n

Husband Ravi had originally booked the flights and tickets for himself and sons Arjun and Abhi. <\/p>\n

“But then we realised one of the boys’ passports was due to expire the day after they were going to fly, and he wouldn’t have been allowed in,” Anaeka says.<\/p>\n

“So I quickly booked a flight, packed a bag, grabbed him out of school and just drove straight to Birmingham Airport,” she explains. <\/p>\n

“We landed at half past 11, so I had half an hour to get him to passport control,” she adds, but it had turned midnight by the time they got there. <\/p>\n

“So we had to navigate that and eventually got him in on a temporary visa,” she says.<\/p>\n

\"RaviImage source, Family handout<\/p>\n

“I didn’t have a ticket, as I wasn’t meant to be there, but then about five hours ahead of the match I refreshed the Uefa app and one ticket came up two rows away from where they were sat, which was just perfect.”<\/p>\n

\"AnaekaImage source, Family handout<\/p>\n

“It was just such an amazing feeling for us all to be able to celebrate together, and the win as well,” she says. <\/p>\n

“That just topped it off.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘They would never miss a match’published at 13:32 BST 13:32 BST One family from Derby, who made their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-596188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}