Fenerbahçe hopes for win at Aston Villa

ISTANBUL

Fenerbahçe players attend a training session in Istanbul ahead of a Champions League match against Aston Villa.

Fenerbahçe will take its good domestic form into a demanding Champions League test on Oct. 14 when the Turkish Süper Lig club faces Aston Villa at Villa Park.

Fenerbahçe opened the league phase with a 1-1 home draw against Roma, while Villa earned a 3-2 victory at Club Brugge. The Istanbul side enters Matchday 2 in 19th place with one point; Villa is ninth with three.

The visit presents a steep challenge for Fenerbahçe. Unai Emery’s Villa is unbeaten in its past 13 European home games and has won the past 10. The English side drew 2-2 with Brentford in the Premier League on Oct. 10 after an encouraging run before the international break.

Fenerbahçe arrives with momentum after consecutive emphatic league wins, including an 8-0 rout of Eyüpspor and a 3-0 victory at Rizespor. It has scored a league-high 19 goals in Türkiye’s top flight, form that will fuel hopes of ending an eight-match winless run in the Champions League.

Villa has conceded five goals across its two most recent competitive matches, giving Fenerbahçe reason to believe it can create chances in transition.

But history favors Villa, which has won all three previous meetings without conceding. Fenerbahçe lost 1-0 at home in last season’s Europa League league phase, and Villa won both legs when the clubs met in the 1977-78 UEFA Cup.

Also on Oct. 14, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, which have reshaped football with the financial backing of Gulf state owners, clash in their latest Champions League meeting.

City returns to Champions League action for the first time since the club was found guilty of breaking Premier League financial rules in a bombshell verdict that could threaten its place in the English top-flight.
PSG strived to follow City’s era of sustained success and is now firmly established as Europe’s top dog after successive Champions League titles to go along with its domination of French football.

Abu Dhabi-backed City won the race against Qatar-owned PSG to become the European champion for the first time in 2023.

The triumph over Inter Milan in Istanbul that completed a treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup was the pinnacle of City’s rise since a 2008 takeover fronted by Sheikh Mansour, the vice-president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

But a cloud now hangs over City’s haul of silverware from the past 15 years unless it can overturn the findings of an independent commission on appeal.

City was found to have used “sham” commercial deals with Emirati companies to inflate revenue and reduce costs to the tune of over 900 million pounds ($1.2 billion) between 2009 and 2018.

No sanction has yet been meted out, but a severe points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League are among the potential punishments.