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BrentfordAston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. Founded in 1874, it competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football, and has played at its home ground, Villa Park, since 1897.
Aston Villa is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in England, having won the Football League First Division seven times, the FA Cup seven times, the League Cup five times, as well as the European Cup, European Super Cup, and Europa League once.
During the 1880s, Aston Villa was a pioneer of the modern passing game. This short, slick combination passing style was introduced by Scotsman George Ramsay, who Villa appointed as the world's first professional football manager in 1886. The club was influential in the sport's move to professionalism in 1885, and it was a Villa director, William McGregor, who founded the world's first Football League in 1888. Ramsay's trophy haul of six League Championships and six FA Cups established Aston Villa as the most successful club in England, a position it held from the 1890s until the 1970s.
Villa scored 128 goals in 1930–31, which remains the all-time top-flight record, but the club began its first decline in the mid-1930s; the 1940s and 1950s were generally a period of mediocrity followed by a steep decline in the 1960s which culminated in a takeover of the club by Doug Ellis in 1968 and Villa's first and only relegation to the third tier of English football in 1969–70. Villa returned to the top tier from the mid-1970s under manager Ron Saunders, who led the club to a seventh top-flight league title in 1980–81. They became only the fourth English club to win the European Cup, in 1981–82, followed by victory in the 1982 European Super Cup. In 1992, Aston Villa were founding members of the Premier League, one of only three sides to have been a founding member of both the Football League and the Premier League. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Villa regularly qualified for European football, but following a period of decline after the departure of Martin O'Neill the club suffered its only relegation from the Premier League in 2015–16. After three seasons in the EFL Championship and two ownership changes, the club returned to the Premier League in 2019. Under Unai Emery, the club qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 1982–83 and won the Europa League in 2025–26.
During its history, Villa has spent 113 seasons in the top-flight, the second highest of any club, and has provided 78 England internationals, also the second highest of any club. Aston Villa is ranked fifth in the all-time English top flight table since its creation in 1888, and is the seventh most successful club in English football by competitive honours. Villa have a fierce local rivalry with Birmingham City and the Second City derby between the teams has been played since 1879. There is also a local rivalry with West Bromwich Albion, with matches between the sides known as the West Midlands derby. The club's traditional kit colours are claret shirts with sky blue sleeves, white shorts and sky blue socks, and its traditional club badge features a rampant lion. The club has been fully owned by V Sports since 2019.
Formation and rise to prominence (1874−1886)
Aston Villa are believed to have formed on 21 November 1874, by members of the Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel in Handsworth: which is now part of Birmingham. The chapel stood at Villa Cross, a road junction whose name derived from a house known as Aston Villa, a suburban Georgian villa that over time had given its name to the surrounding locality. The four founders of Aston Villa Football Club were Jack Hughes, George Matthews, Walter Price and William Scattergood, who were members of the chapel's cricket team looking for a way to stay fit during the winter months. Having watched a fellow member of their Bible class playing in a rugby match, they paused beneath a dim gas lamp near Villa Cross and agreed that rugby was a little too rough, deciding instead to play association football. The meeting beneath the gas lamp is traditionally regarded as the birth of Aston Villa F.C.
Due to the lack of local football teams Aston Villa's first match was against the local Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby team. As a condition of the match, the Villa side had to agree to play the first half under Rugby rules and the second half under Association rules. Villa won their first game 1–0. The infant club's fortunes changed forever when a young Scotsman called George Ramsay stumbled across the Villa players' practice match in Aston Park in 1876. He was asked to make up the numbers, and they were amazed by his skills; they had never seen such a display of close ball control before. When the game was over, the Villa players surrounded him and invited him to join the club and become their captain.
Word spread about how fine a player Ramsay was, spectators began turning up to watch the little man nicknamed "Scotty". He also took charge of training, Ramsay later described the newly formed club's approach to the game as "a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball". On the other hand, Ramsay had been influenced by the Scottish club Queen's Park, who pioneered what became known as "combination football" in his native Glasgow. The intricate passing game he introduced was a revolutionary move for an English club in the late 1870s. Villa began to establish themselves as one of the best teams in the Midlands, winning their first honour, the Birmingham Senior Cup in 1880. The club went on to lift the trophy nine times in the next 12 seasons.