Much has happened to both clubs in the intervening years since that 3-1 reverse, which completed a 5-2 aggregate defeat, as you might imagine given the timeframe. Juventus did eventually win the European Cup but not for another two seasons after they lost the 1983 final to Hamburg but subsequently beat Liverpool against the backdrop of the Heysel disaster in 1985. Since then the Turin club have moved ground twice, been involved in a bribery scandal which led to them being forcibly relegated and being stripped of two league titles, and have won a further Champions League as well as 16 league championships (not including the two they had removed), the last nine of which came consecutively.

Villa’s last forty-odd years has been equally eventful if not as successful, with a series of near-misses and a couple of trophies to give the fans hope. This is as well as two relegations after being run down by two owners and then almost made bankrupt by another. Villa’s return to the now re-named Champions League has been a climb of epic proportions over those 40+ years and all of those who have supported, owned, managed and played for the club have contributed to the story.

I was 11 on that night in March 1983 when the best team in the world showed they were just a bit better than the one in claret and blue. A fair chunk of the Italian team who had lifted the World Cup eight months previously were supplemented by two of the best players in the world in Platini and Polish striker Zbigniew Boniek. Their defeat by Hamburg in the final in Athens a couple of months later was an equal if not bigger shock than Villa’s win over Bayern the previous year.

Villa had plateaued when their trajectory should have remained upwards thanks to a returning chairman whose ego couldn’t stand that the club had scaled the heights without him. Four years later, less if you take into account Villa were still playing in the UEFA Cup in November 1983, he had dismantled the team. Villa stood bottom of the top division after two years of relegation battles. Of the players on show in Turin that night only four remained to experience the whole of the decline, with the manager forced out long before that. Ellis spitefully got rid of Tony Barton in the summer of 1984 after telling him he would remain as manager and replaced him with Graham Turner, a man woefully out of his depth. By the time Ellis admitted he was wrong it was too late and Turner’s replacement, Billy McNeill, proved even more inept. Uninterested would be more accurate though, as McNeill probably knew he was likely to take over at Celtic again in the 1987 close season.

Those players who had a pedigree of winning things weren’t treated much better than their manager. Some had already moved by the time of the Juventus tie; Kenny Swain had already joined Nottingham Forest. Tony Morley had competition from Mark Walters and Ken McNaught was to move to Albion that summer but the way Dennis Mortimer found himself frozen out by Turner at the insistence of the chairman is one of the major moral crimes in B6, and there have been many. Peter Withe also saw himself cast aside despite still being the club’s main source of goals. Even though I was only 13 I could picture the cartoon-like pound signs flashing up in Ellis’ eyes when Bari’s offer for Gordon Cowans and Paul Rideout came in that same summer. Seeing the writing on the wall those players who had been tempted to join the club by the previous success looked for a way out, Steve McMahon being a case in point.

The replacements for the proven winners came from within. David Norton, Darren Bradley, Ray Walker and Paul Kerr were all good honest professional footballers who went on to have decent careers but they were all far too young to be replacing players who had gone toe-to-toe with the best in the world. Once the standards had begun to slip the avalanche which followed was inevitable. Few of the signings made by Turner were a success and those who were looked for a way out as soon they could. Steve Hodge, you might have made a fortune out of Diego Maradona’s shirt but I’m looking at you. At a distance of more than a third of a century that kind of decision is understandable. Understandable but not forgivable.

After that first relegation Ellis proved he was capable of putting the club above his ego by appointing Graham Taylor whose managerial talent dragged Villa away from a footballing abyss. With a mixture of talented younger players, a few journeymen and at least two who would finance Villa’s assault on a European return once promotion, an unlikely proposition at one stage, had been secured at the first attempt in 1988

Alan McInally, along with Martin Keown who strangely was signed by Turner, left Villa, for a combined fee of almost £2 million in the summer of 1989. This allowed Taylor to quietly add to his squad which was to be built on three centre backs. Derek Mountfield had joined from Everton after promotion but on the same day in July 1989 Villa unveiled our first high-profile foreign player since Turner took Didier Six on loan five years previously. Alongside him was a Manchester United has-been. Kent Nielsen, scorer of Villa’s most famous European goal since Peter Withe’s shin diverted Tony Morley’s cross on to a right-hand post was the foreigner and the has-been from Old Trafford became one of the club’s most revered players of the last eighty years. A challenger for that title had already re-joined the club a year before; Sid Cowans.

Just watching Cowans, McGrath, David Platt and Dwight Yorke warm up was often the highlight of a Saturday afternoon even if we won convincingly. By turns Platt, in 1991, and Yorke, in 1998, were sold to allow first Ron Atkinson and later John Gregory to try to get Villa back into the Champions League. If a top four finish had been enough when those two managers were in charge Atkinson would have succeeded whereas Gregory never got Villa to finish higher than sixth. Brian Little, another of those revered players and who was the manager between those two, would also have got the club back to Europe’s top table.

After the last sixth place finish under Gregory in 2001, Ellis’ policy of selling Villa’s best players to buy multiple replacements was hampered by his manager not having enough players young enough to bring in the necessary cash. Gregory accused Ellis of‘living in a timewarpand not wanting to invest his own money and, frustrated, walked out. Graham Taylor in a short second stint in charge found Ellis more insufferable than his first time around and followed Gregory out of the manager’s office. Both managers had a point but neither could elevate the club closer to the European places, let alone those for the Champions League, mainly because of the chairman’s attitude.

Somehow a combination of academy graduates, cheap signings and those who remained from the previous two regimes dragged Villa to another sixth place finish despite being managed by David O’Leary in 2004. The cruelty of sport though meant for the only time in thirty years sixth didn’t mean a place in Europe with second tier Millwall, FA Cup runners-up, taking the place instead.

A takeover meant hope and Randy Lerner bankrolled Martin O’Neill to do no better than O’Leary although he managed it three times in a row. And that was as close as Villa came after O’Neill’s teams fell away dramatically each Spring. The spending couldn’t continue but adopting the Ellis sell-to-buy policy was as equally unsuccessful as it was in the 1990s and as destructive as it was in the 1980s. Anyone remotely sellable left – James Milner, Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph were just three – to be replaced by cheap, poorly coached, younger players. The inevitable happened and Lerner sold up to the disaster which was Tony Xia.

Xia’s spending was irresponsible as he couldn’t guarantee access to any money held in China. Effectively he put the entire club on red and the play-off final wheel came up black in 2018. Villa were fortunate that their history was able to attract Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens to turn the club around and fulfil their promise of returning Villa to the Champions League.

The boardroom shenanigans of the last 40 years have often been to the fore in B6 but every single player who has appeared for Villa across those 15,162 days has contributed to the club’s return. Some of the best players to play for the club since the Second World War have not appeared in claret and blue in the Champions League. McGrath, Platt, Yorke, Mellberg, Laursen, Bosnich, Benteke and Barry are just a few.

There are also others who didn’t the club’s return on Tuesday because even though sport is cruel life is much crueller. Dalian Atkinson, Les Sealey, Cyrille Regis, Eamonn Deacy, Paul Birch, Ugo Ehiogu, Peter Whittingham and Bernie Gallacher are some of the players unable to share the occasion. Ron Saunders, the architect of Villa’s 1982 European success, Tony Barton, Billy McNeil, Jo Venglos and the man who resurrected the club, Graham Taylor, are among the managers who won’t see Villa kick off against Young Boys.