The initial three minutes of stoppage time in the second half had been and gone when Morgan Rogers thought he had snatched Aston Villa another famous victory against a European superpower with surely the final kick.
Teun Koopmeiners conceded a cheap foul on halfway, providing Youri Tielemans with one last chance to pump the ball into the box. Diego Carlos rose to challenge the Juventus goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio in pursuit of the high ball, but it skidded between his gloves and ran free at the back post, allowing Rogers to hook into an empty net.
The scoreboards in opposite corners shifted in Villa’s favour but, after a delay, it became apparent Carlos was reprimanded by the Spanish referee, Jesús Gil Manzano, for his part in a minor collision. The final whistle was jeered by the locals still coming back down to earth.
Ollie Watkins described the perceived foul as “soft” and, while disappointed, Unai Emery said he was resigned to Rogers’s goal being disallowed owing to different refereeing thresholds in the Premier League and in European competitions.
“The English referees would not interpret that as a foul but in Europe the interpretation is different,” the Villa manager said. “They have to be working to get the same decision when some actions like that happen.
“I don’t know why but we know when we are playing in the Premier League the interpretation of the referees is different. We don’t do blocks like we do in the Premier League. When the action happened, I thought: ‘In Europe, it’s a foul.’”
Until then, the moment of the match belonged to the Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez. About 15 minutes before kick-off Martínez paraded around the pitch, a touch of grandstanding to commemorate the Argentinian becoming the first goalkeeper to win the Yashin Trophy twice. Then, about an hour later, Martínez exhibited quite why he is held in such high esteem.
Martínez’s fantastic, impulsive save to thwart Francisco Conceição midway through the second half prevented Juventus from seizing the lead. Goal-line technology showed Martínez kept the ball out by a few millimetres, a shaving of the starred Champions League ball remaining on and not over the Villa goal-line.
Juventus, regulars on this stage compared to Villa, got the point they probably deserved. The Juventus captain, Manuel Locatelli, stuck out a left boot to prevent John McGinn from converting a Leon Bailey cutback in the second half and in the first Lucas Digne rattled the crossbar with a free-kick from the edge of the box.
For Villa, a draw against the Serie A side will surely be seen as creditable, but Emery’s team are now winless in seven matches. The last time Villa went seven games without a win was under Dean Smith four years ago when they – just about – avoided relegation, when McGinn, Ezri Konsa and Tyrone Mings were in the starting lineup. So, too, was Douglas Luiz, who was denied a Villa Park homecoming because of a muscle injury.
Emery has not gone seven games without a win since being dismissed by Arsenal in November 2019, a defeat at home by Eintracht Frankfurt, when Martínez was in goal for Emery, the final straw of a difficult run. Emery went six games without a win at the end of last season, when qualification for this competition had been rubber-stamped.
For Villa, there is no need to panic, but a tricky run could be extended to eight matches by the time they head home from Chelsea on Sunday. Villa, ninth in the Champions League table, remain in a good spot. Emery said of Juventus: “We were playing against favourites to be in the top eight. They are contenders to win this competition. In the last three matches we are going to try to be ambitious to compete for the top eight.”
On the eve of this game the Juventus manager, Thiago Motta, accused Emery of bluffing after his Villa counterpart, Motta’s coach in the twilight of his career at Paris Saint-Germain, suggested he would be happy with a point. Motta insisted it was a poker face, perhaps because Juventus arrived here light on numbers. Juve flew to Birmingham with a 17-man squad, minus Dusan Vlahovic, and named only six substitutes, two of them goalkeepers. But in the end this was a game that hinged on the actions of those in between the sticks.
Juventus’s big chance dropped on 65 minutes. Koopmeiners’s corner zoomed in and the ball thudded at the back post. The tricky Conceicao eluded Rogers and headed goalwards unmarked. For a split-second, the Portuguese peeled away in celebration, before realising Martínez had somehow prevented the ball from going in. Martínez plunged down to claw the ball out with his right glove. He did just enough. It was a similar story when Carlos bumped Gregorio in the dying seconds. “It wasn’t a goal,” Motta said with a smile.
