Aston Villa are nothing more than a feeder club for the big guns

I TAKE my hat off to Fifpro and the World League Association for this week’s letter expressing their deep concern to how top-level football is being run by FIFA and their president Gianni Infantino.

Apparently this has ruffled the Italian administrator’s (below) feathers.

He loves to get pats on the back and loads of votes.

But do you know what? Weren’t Fifpro and the WLA absolutely spot on to talk about how FIFA do not do what is best for the players, for footballers, or for fans. Unfortunately, in spite of the calamitous ending to Sepp Blatter’s reign, nothing seems to have been learned.

Enough

I have no problem with the big clubs putting demands on their well-paid players who then have to disappear off to play in big tournaments for their country.

But for any player, trying to be the best team in your league, and then — every second year — trying to win a major tournament for your country, is clearly enough.

That is what the fans want.

You can’t create tradition. When you try and invent new competitions — which FIFA and UEFA have done — then the big days become smaller.

There is too much football. We don’t need anything new.

OUT OF THEIR LEAGUE: Ayoub El Kaabi of Olympiakos celebrates at full-time

I TUNED in expecting to see a Greek classic. Instead we got a Greek tragedy.

A tragedy for Aston Villa, that is.

The Europa Conference League was their best chance of winning silverware, but they flopped to Olympiakos a team who play in the Greek Super League. More like the Mediocre League.

And yet the team fourth in that league was too classy for Villa. And that sums up the club. In fact it sums up football in England’s second city.

Both them and Birmingham City should be giants in English football.

They are dwarfs. They should not just be beating teams like Olympiakos, they should be winning Premier Leagues.

Birmingham should be contending for a place in Europe. Instead they were relegated out of the Championship.

Announced

Aston Villa are owned by Egypt’s richest man Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens. Sawiris is worth €8.35bn.

Edens is worth €3.7bn.

Only recently they announced they had brought in a minority partner to join them — an independent strategic company that has €6bn in equity capital.

So with such massive money behind them, and at a club with so much history, to be in a city that is bigger than

Manchester and Liverpool, how can people pretend that Villa’s fourth place position is a massive overachievement?

That is nonsense. It is clearly the opposite — a massive underachievement.

In the early 1980s, when I was a young player making my way in the game, Villa were keen to sign me.

Distance

Ron Saunders was the manager. Tony Barton, his assistant, travelled a long distance to my house to speak to me, my brother Eamon, and our parents.

I always remember two things: how he said there was no-one bigger than Villa and the fact that my late mother noticed how humble he was as he was wearing plastic shoes.

I spent many weeks training with Villa at their top facilities. This was in an era when they won that memorable league title in 1981 and then followed it up the next year by winning the European Cup.

Then the following January they beat Barcelona to win the European Super Cup. What has happened since? After becoming Kings of England, Barton — an extraordinary human being — made the leap from assistant to manager and was able to guide Villa to the biggest club competition in the world.

That was what a great season looked like. Now, a great season is when they get hammered by a team fourth in the