Matt Maher previews Young Boys vs Aston Villa
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00:00Good evening from the Stadion Wankdorf, where Unai Emery has conducted his pre-match press conference ahead of Villa's Champions League bow against Young Boys here tomorrow night.
00:16Obviously a bit of a sombre mood really in the Villa camp, particularly among the supporters out here in Switzerland. Villa's long-awaited entrance to the Champions League, overshadowed by the death of Gary Shaw, the age of just 63, European Cup winner, league title winner, one of the most iconic players in Villa's history without question.
00:41Unai Emery paid tribute to Gary Shaw in his press conference, as you would expect, and the manager saying that they want to basically win it for Shaw tomorrow night. It's a big game obviously for Villa. It's not a glamour tie, it's not Bayern Munich, but it's the kind of game that they really need to be winning.
01:03The other talking point in the press conference was the pitch. It's a plastic surface or an artificial surface. There have been complaints in the past from Pep Guardiola when Manchester City came here about the way it plays, but Unai Emery has some experience of it. Villa Real played here in the Champions League three seasons ago and won. Villa changed their schedule basically to try and counteract the issue of the pitch.
01:31Normally they would train at Bodemoor Heath and then fly out and do the press conference later in the evening. Today they flew out early in the afternoon and took the opportunity to train on the surface, so they should know what it's all about. It's quite common for youth games in Europe to be played on artificial surfaces and Uri Tielemans, who was also in the press conference, made that point.
01:55It's more the English-based players that probably don't have the experience, but it will be a bit different. It has the potential perhaps to be a bit of a leveller as Villa go in search of a winning start to the Champions League campaign.