Aston Villa face Club Brugge on Wednesday evening in the Champions League, with the Premier League club looking to continue their excellent start to the competition.
Unai Emery’s side are currently top of the table in UEFA’s elite competition, with three wins from three matches. They’ve managed to beat Young Boys, Bayern Munich and Bologna and make themselves a genuinely respected team on the European circuit.
Club Brugge, therefore, shouldn’t present too daunting a task, but Aston Villa’s Premier league form hasn’t been what it was and there’ll be an eagerness to use the match to put things right.
Aston Villa playing a Belgian team leads the country’s media to look for people to comment on the Birmingham club, and it can be no surprise that Luc Nilis has surfaced.
Ahead of Aston Villa playing Club Brugge, Het Belang van Limburg quote Nilis as saying: “I always think: I could have suffered that horror injury when I was eighteen. Then I wouldn’t have had a career at all. That would have been much worse.
“There was a three-year contract ready and I could stay at the club (PSV), so I was all for it. Until my agent, Dirk Degraen, called. ‘Aston Villa wants you too.’
“Well, I didn’t have to think long. I had never really played abroad, because Eindhoven was only an hour’s drive away. And if you can still go to the Premier League at 33, you shouldn’t hesitate. Their offer was also enormous.
“My career also started with a double open leg fracture. Juan Lozano’s. He dropped out and I came in. That can’t be a coincidence.”
