An hour before kick-off the few hundred Aston Villa supporters admiring the view from their seats cheered the first rendition of the Champions League anthem over the speakers and their mood was similarly jubilant after watching their team ruthlessly dispatch the Swiss champions on their first foreign assignment at this level for 41 years.
It was fitting that Jacob Ramsey, who joined Villa’s academy at six years old, got on the scoresheet as the travelling supporters sang the name of the late 1982 European Cup winner Gary Shaw, another homegrown hero and the youngest member of that revered team, from start to finish. Ramsey’s strike, scored in comical circumstances, was bookended by fine strikes from the Belgium pair Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana, the latter registering his third goal since a £50m summer move from Everton.
