Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club, founded in 1874, competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The team have played at their 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, and the European Cup and European Super Cup once.
Villa Park is a football stadium in Aston, Birmingham, with a seating capacity of 42,640. It has been the home of Premier League club Aston Villa since 1897. The ground is less than a mile from both Witton and Aston railway stations and has hosted sixteen England internationals at senior level, the first in 1899 and the most recent in 2005. Villa Park has hosted 55 FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium, and it is the 10th largest in England.
Dwight Eversley Yorke CM is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian professional football coach and former player who was most recently in charge of Australian A-League club Macarthur FC. Throughout his club career, he played for Aston Villa, Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Birmingham City, Sydney FC and Sunderland, mainly as a forward, between 1998 and 2009. Yorke formed a prolific strike partnership with Andy Cole at Manchester United, where he won numerous honours including several Premier League titles and the Treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League in 1999. Yorke scored 123 goals in the Premier League, a record for a non-European which was not broken until Sergio Agüero in 2017.
Bradley Howard Friedel is an American professional soccer coach and former player who played as a goalkeeper.
Jlloyd Tafari Samuel was a professional footballer who played as a defender and midfielder. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, he was raised in England and played for England up to under-21 level. He played 3 seasons for Iranian Esteghlal of the Persian Gulf Pro League. He played two full international matches for Trinidad and Tobago in 2009.
Bradley Edwin Guzan is an American professional soccer player who plays as a goalkeeper for Major League Soccer club Atlanta United FC.
Mark Aston is the head coach of Sheffield Eagles in the Betfred Championship. He is an English rugby league coach, and former rugby league scrum-half who spent the majority of his playing career with Sheffield Eagles. He also had short spells with Featherstone Rovers and Bramley, and won one cap for Great Britain in 1991. In 1998, he was awarded the Lance Todd Trophy after helping Sheffield win the Challenge Cup final at Wembley Stadium with a 17–8 victory against Wigan Warriors.
Gabriel Imuetinyan Agbonlahor is an English former professional footballer who played as a forward; he mostly played as a striker, but he was also capable of playing on the wing. He spent his entire professional career with Aston Villa in the Premier League and later the Championship, with loans at Watford and Sheffield Wednesday at the start of his career.
The 2013 Rugby League World Cup was the fourteenth staging of the Rugby League World Cup and took place in England, Wales, France and Ireland. between 26 October and 30 November 2013.
Fabian Delph is an English former professional footballer who played as a central midfielder or left-back.
Jay Enrique Rodriguez is an English professional footballer who plays as a forward for EFL Championship club Burnley.
Lagi Setu is a Samoa international rugby league footballer. In rugby league he primarily plays second-row, prop or lock.
Stanley Crowther was an English footballer who played in the Football League for Aston Villa, Manchester United, Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion during the 1950s and early 1960s. He won three caps for the England under-23 team, though he was never selected at senior level.
David Niumataiwalu, better known as David Niu, is an Australian-American dual-code international rugby league and rugby union administrator, coach and former player. Regarded as one of the founders of rugby league in the United States, he established the American National Rugby League (AMNRL), the United States' first domestic rugby league competition and formerly the national governing body for the sport. He later served as president of AFL Global, an organization promoting arena football.
The 2008–09 Premier League season was Aston Villa's 134th season in English football. It was the club's 98th season in the top-flight and their 21st consecutive season in the top flight. They were managed by Martin O'Neill – in his third season since replacing David O'Leary. The 2008–09 season was the first spell in European competition for O'Neill, and the first for Villa, in 6 seasons.
Ashley Roy Westwood is an English professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for MLS club Charlotte FC.
Midlands 2 West (North) is a level 7 English Rugby Union league and level 2 of the Midlands League, made up of clubs from the northern part of the West Midlands region including Shropshire, Staffordshire, parts of Birmingham and the West Midlands and occasionally Cheshire, with home and away matches played throughout the season. When this division began in 1992 it was known as Midlands West 1, until it was split into two regional divisions called Midlands 3 West (North) and Midlands 3 West (South) ahead of the 2000–01 season. Further restructuring of the Midlands leagues ahead of the 2009–10 season, lead to the current name of Midlands 2 West (North).
Benjamin Kevin Siegrist is a Swiss professional footballer, who plays in the Scottish Premiership for Celtic as a goalkeeper. He was a member of the Switzerland squad at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and went on to represent the Swiss Under-21s. In 2009, Siegrist was part of his nation's FIFA U-17 World Cup winning side, during which he also received the competition's inaugural Golden Glove award for best goalkeeper. During seven years in the Aston Villa Academy Siegrist undertook a series of short-term loans to English Football League and Conference sides. After a spell in the Swiss Super League with Vaduz, Siegrist signed for Scottish club Dundee United in 2018.
Michael Garvey is an American former rugby league player for the Philadelphia Fight in the USA Rugby League. He represented his country in the 2013 World Cup.
