I DIDN'T CHOOSE ASTON VILLA....IT CHOSE ME... Featuring Peter Leijsten My Name is Peter and I have been a Villan for over 35 years. I live in the south of the Netherlands🇳🇱 and I am a journalist. @AVFCOfficial #VillaChoseMe #UTV #avfc🦁 STORY5⃣4⃣ Here is my Villa story.... In July I reached my half-century (had to get a cricket reference in, naturally), turning 50 years old. For over 35 of those years I have been a Villa fan. Now, of course I’d like to have proudly boasted here that I vividly remember Rotterdam and the most glorious night in our history but I’m afraid that that final in Rotterdam a hundred miles away from where I live was just before my time, being seven years old on the night of the final. No, I started supporting Villa in the middle part of the eighties when my dad, who himself to this day is a keen Spurs fan, would let me stay up late on Saturday night to watch Match of the Day together. What I saw was, as the author Richard Whitehead once famously said: ‘There are loads of Uniteds, lots of Citys and Towns, a good sprinkling of Wanderers and Rovers and even a few Albions. But there’s only one Villa – the greatest name in football in every sense.’ The glorious name and history, the first time I laid my eyes on the magnificent claret & blue shirt and being one to always love an underdog and not go for the easy route, I was hooked for life: Villa were gonna be my team. In the first few years I followed Villa from the television only. The calamitous relegation in 1987 didn’t curb my enthusiasm and I was rewarded with the magnificent resurgence under Graham Taylor in the early nineties and the runner-up finish to United in the inaugural Premier League season. Later in life I would twice be at Wembley with Villa playing there – I’ll come to that a bit later – but being a cash-strapped student in the nineties I had to watch our two League Cup final wins from the couch. In the meantime, I had joined the first Dutch branch of the Villa supporters’ clubs. The then chairman of our branch organized trips to Villa Park for home matches. And so, on March 15 in 1997 I undertook my first trip to Villa Park. I daresay that few Villans will ever forget the first time they witnessed the magnificent brick façade of the Holte End, and I’m no exception. Simply breathtaking, there is nothing quite like Villa Park. The match I saw was a forgettable one, a 0-0 draw against West Ham but as you can see by the look on my then puppy face with Villa hat on sitting in the Doug Ellis stand, I had the time of my life. Talking Deadly Doug, the Rolls Royce (I believe, correct me if I’m wrong) you can see in one of the pictures in the next tweet was Doug Ellis’ car in 1998 when I visited Villa Park for a second time. The date was November 21, and I witnessed a truly spectacular albeit in the end unsatisfying edition of Villa – Liverpool. We had a magnificent team in those days (Merson, Dublin, Southgate and a very, very young Gareth Barry to name but a few) and were top of the league at that time under John Gregory – who in the hours leading up to the match insisted on posing for a picture with me (see reply). With Robbie Fowler doing what he always did (I remember a lost FA Cup semifinal at Old Trafford as well…) against us, score shitloads of goals, we lost that match 2-4. On that day we were undone by a red card for @StanCollymore. But no worries, I have forgiven Stan since he has become an incredible voice of reason on all things Villa and equally as important things in life since retirement. Since those first trips to Villa Park in the nineties I must have visited Birmingham about a dozen times. Memorable trips, even the one time me and my Ipswich Town supporting mate @IpswichTownNL - who of course was in the away end that day – saw us lose to Ipswich (1-0) in the Championship in 2017. I remember the Town fans taunting us sitting in the upper Holte: ‘You’re not famous anymore.’ As you can see, I have not yet mentioned a Villa win here. Quite frankly, alas, the majority of matches I have seen live did not result in Villa wins. More than a couple of times I ended up drowning my Villa sorrows in The Barton Arms… Talking of gut-wrenching Villa losses… I was at Wembley in 2015, when we were absolutely murdered by Arsenal in the FA Cup final. And only three weeks earlier I was at St Mary’s Stadium in Southampton. On that day Sadio Mané scored the fastest Premier League hattrick of all time and of course he had to do that against us with me in the stands, Southampton eventually thrashing Villa 6-1. We stayed up by the skin of our teeth that season. The inevitable relegation was just around the corner though, but in the safe pair of hands of Deano and Jack and on the back of that record breaking ten match winning run we eventually returned to where we belong. And now the fallen giant is back on its feet. Finally, the good times are rolling. I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the play-off final against Derby in 2019. You can see a picture of me in front of Wembley on that glorious day in which a compatriot of mine, @elghazi1995, scored and we were back in the big time. Then two seasons ago a group of about twenty Dutch Villans including myself were there to see us qualify for Europe for the first time in ages with a hard-fought win against Brighton on the last day of the season. Which brings us to the King Unai era. My word, it’s all gone uphill since Emery took over from that fraud Steven Gerrard and I’m loving every minute of it. Last season I managed to get a ticket for three away matches in the Conference League: AZ, Ajax and Lille. In an Amsterdam pub I met ‘home and away’ Villa fan Michael who I now have contact with on a regular basis. And a few weeks ago, I was there on that magical night at Villa Park when we beat Bayern Munich in a repeat of the 1982 European Cup final. Beforehand I was in The Witton Arms with a mate who joined me on this trip. And there I even got recognized by an English Villa fan whom I had met a year earlier in Lille. I only vaguely remembered that encounter as I had had quite a few pre match drinks in Lille that day. But Scott had kept the selfie he took with ‘The Dutchie’ in Lille and showed it to me. And now he wanted to take another picture of him and me. Celebrity status in B6 for me, unheard of! Since you never know how long our dream run will last, I have already booked trips to Bruges and Leipzig. A ticket for the Club Brugge match is in the bag, I hope to acquire one for the Leipzig match as well. But if not, I will be watching from a Leipzig pub. Time to wrap things up. Always remember, even if the giddy heights won’t last and we end up visiting Rotherham again instead of Rotterdam: Up the Villa! Thats my Villa Story!💜💙 Kind regards Peter NAME's Twitter handle: @peterleijsten🦁 Didn't choose.. picture created by - [@avfc_edits]
