Aston Villa F.C.

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Aston Villa is one of the two professional football (soccer) teams in Birmingham, England (the other being Birmingham City F.C). They are part of the English Football League and currently play in the Premier League.

Their current home venue is Villa Park having previously played at Aston Park (1873-1876) and Perry Barr (1876-1897). They have a training ground at Bodymoor Heath in north Warwickshire.

It was formed in 1874 by members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Aston, Birmingham. The club was a founder member of the Football League (in 1888) and in the early years was a major force. By 1920 it had won the League Championship and FA Cup six times each. However it did not win another major trophy until 1957, when it again won the FA Cup. In more recent times, Aston Villa have won the League Cup twice in the 1990s (1994 and 1996) and as well as runners-up in the old First Division/new Premier League (1989-1990 and 1992-1993 seasons).

The club colours are Claret top with Sky blue sleeves, White shorts with claret and blue trim, Sky blue socks with claret and white trim. They were the original wearers of these famous clours and due mainly to their success in the early years of the football league, other teams, most notably West Ham Utd and Burnley adopted the same club colours. Arsenal also changed their kit in the 1930's to closely resemble that of Aston Villa, using a Red top with White sleeves. This was instigated by Herbert Chapman, a huge admirer of Aston Villa and their standing as the most succesful and famous club in the world at that time.

Aston Villa is one of four English football teams that have won the European Champions Cup. They did so in 1982 on 26th of May in Rotterdam, beating Bayern Munich 1-0 thanks to Peter Withe's 67th minute goal.

Table of contents

1 Achievements
2 Managers
3 Notable Players
4 Related Links