The five minutes Stevenage fans will never forget

“We’re calling it Villa-stanbul,” says a young Stevenage fan outside the away end at Villa Park in reference to Liverpool’s famous comeback against AC Milan in the Turkish city of Istanbul to win the 2004-05 Champions League final.

It is hard to hold his attention for too long though before he rejoins his friends, camera phones held aloft, singing and dancing in celebration of one of the great FA Cup upsets of modern times.

Aston Villa are 11th in the Premier League and Stevenage are second in League Two, English football’s fourth division, but the club from the commuter belt north of London sensationally overturned a 1-0 lead by scoring two goals in the last three minutes of normal time.

“Wo-oah, everywhere we go, watching Stevenage Borough putting on a show,” the visiting fans sing over and over again as dejected Villa supporters drift past them, giddily ignoring the fact ‘Borough’ was dropped from the club’s name in 2010.

Put on a show they did in a final five minutes that will never be forgotten by fans of the Hertfordshire club.

First, Jamie Reid equalised from the penalty spot after Leander Dendoncker was sent off for pulling down Dean Campbell. Even taking the tie to a lucrative replay back at 7,800-capacity Broadhall Way next week would have been a huge result, but as the game went into stoppage time, Stevenage went one better.

A quick short-corner routine down their right found Campbell, who drilled it past 63-cap Sweden international goalkeeper Robin Olsen at his near post, sending the away fans over by that corner flag into raptures.

“It was just a party in there,” says fan Andrew Mansell. “My phone was pinging, I had my friends calling, (but) I couldn’t hear a thing.”

The mood was similar in the away dressing room afterwards.

Istanbul was not the only Liverpool comparison made by delirious Stevenage fans, with Mansell pointing out the similarity between Campbell’s late winner and Divock Origi’s famous goal against Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals four years ago, as Jurgen Klopp’s men overturned a 3-0 first leg defeat to reach a final they won.

There might be a case for making January 8 a public holiday in Stevenage, as this win came 12 years to the day after the club beat top-flight visitors Newcastle United 3-1 at the same stage of the FA Cup — a memory immediately recalled by many fans when asked where today ranks in their all-time Stevenage moments, alongside trips to Wembley.

Steve Evans has been a revelation as their manager since taking over in March with nine games to go and saving the club from relegation back to non-League for the first time since promotion in 2010.

They are now flying high in League Two, 12 points clear of the play-off spots with a game in hand as they chase one of the three automatic promotion places, playing their football in a direct, intensely pressing style.

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This was a good fit for a match against opponents who would expect to hog the ball against a side three divisions below them,

Stevenage’s rare spells of possession often led to a long ball which asked questions of the Villa defence. Their press led to the first goal, with Olsen and Dendoncker making a hash of playing it out from the back.

Fan Alec Maguire admits “we just wanted a goal to celebrate” on their day out away to the former European champions, while struggling to process the emotions of five minutes he will never, ever forget.

“The last few years have been dire,” he says, describing the club’s stagnation in the bottom half of the fourth division. “If we’d played this game a year ago, we’d have lost 4-0.”

Under Evans, a 60-year-old Scotsman with five non-League and lower-divisions promotions and a spell as Leeds United manager on his lengthy CV, everything has changed.

Villa did indeed hog the ball with 79 per cent possession, playing 732 passes compared to Stevenage’s 190. But they did precious little with that dominance. Just three of their 17 shots were on target, Philippe Coutinho, once bought from Liverpool by Barcelona for £142million, and Leon Bailey were responsible for half of the 14 that missed.

Bailey was not only profligate in front of goal but repeatedly gave the ball away, four days after weeping on the same pitch after missing a golden late chance to win a league derby against Wolves. And Coutinho, who has faded badly since joining Villa permanently in the summer after doing well on loan in the second half of last season, wastefully sent multiple long-range pot shots wide instead of working the ball into better positions.

But it is Dendoncker, at fault for the first goal, and Olsen, for the second, who must share the blame for the embarrassing late collapse.

Villa got a huge let-off in the first half when Danny Rose (not the former Tottenham and England defender) put the ball in the net after Villa were carved open by a through ball only for it to turn out he was fractionally offside.

The Premier League side were fortunate to be ahead at half-time, after little-used midfielder Morgan Sanson finished off a wonderfully-worked team move.

It was a rare glimpse into the supposed gulf in quality between these two sides.

According to the website Transfermarkt, the entire Stevenage squad is worth just €3.9million (£3.4m) — less than the same source’s individual transfer values for all 10 Villa starting outfielders yesterday.

New Villa coach Unai Emery wants more attacking options in the January window and what he saw on Sunday will surely deepen that desire.

He made eight changes from the side that struggled to a draw with Wolves in midweek and his new-look side was utterly bereft of fluency and speed compared to their opponents, a well-drilled unit used to playing and winning with each other.

After the tepid Wolves display, this dismal result marks a shift in the Villa Park vibes after an excellent start to Emery’s reign, with his first four Premier League games seeing wins over Brighton, Tottenham and Manchester United and an encouraging display in losing to Liverpool.

Emery has built a reputation as a cup specialist having won the Europa League four times in eight years with Spanish clubs Sevilla and Villarreal as well as two domestic cup doubles with France’s Paris Saint-Germain. When unveiled two months ago, he spoke of his desire to be the first Villa boss to win silverware — play-offs not included — since Brian Little lifted the 1995-96 League Cup.

Only five teams have won more FA Cups than Villa’s seven but just one of those has been in the last century and that was in 1957 — 19 years before Stevenage were formed. Villa lost the 2014-15 FA Cup final to Arsenal but have now suffered seven consecutive third-round defeats, a truly abysmal record.

A trip to Stoke City of the Championship in round four is the prize for Stevenage’s win.

That would have been a relatively kind draw for Villa, and combined with two of the ‘Big Six’  seeming set to fail to reach the last 16 — Manchester City beat Chelsea on Sunday, and will play Arsenal in the next round if the league leaders beat third-division Oxford United today (Monday) — the FA Cup is looking more open this season than is often the case.

This is also a year when Villa have the capacity for a cup run, as they are out of the Carabao Cup and both a relegation scrap and a push for European qualification look unlikely.

All in all, this feels like a massive opportunity squandered.

Instead, it will be Stevenage returning to the Midlands in three weeks’ time to take on Stoke.

While walking away from Villa Park, the “putting on a show” chants fading into the night, The Athletic passes three young Stevenage fans singing and shouting into their phones.

“This is the best day of my life!,” one of them shouts at nobody in particular.

After being asked his name and whether he’d be happy to be quoted on that, the fan thought for a moment before looking suddenly serious.

“My name is Marcus Francis — and this is the best day of my life.”

(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)