Top News

Aston Villa were locked at 0-0 with Freiburg when the first corner of the match was given shortly before half-time in the Europa League final.

Lucas Digne played it short to Morgan Rogers, which brought four Villa players charging into the six-yard box while Youri Tielemans drifted away outside the area. Rogers then chipped the ball towards the Belgium captain.

Tielemans thundered in a volley through a gap in the crowd that opened up when the four players in front of goal split into pairs and pulled their markers with them. Villa never looked back after going ahead and went on to win their first European trophy in 44 years.

The players involved in the first goal in Istanbul, at least the players who touched the ball, are no longer there.

Tielemans had a release clause of £35 million that had not previously been reported and is now at Manchester United. Digne is expected to complete a move back to Paris Saint-Germain for the same reason, though for a smaller fee.

Rogers left Villa for Chelsea in a British record transfer fee, and he has now been joined at Stamford Bridge by Austin MacPhee, the man behind the routine and the mastermind behind enough Villa goals over the years to leave supporters disappointed at his exit.

It says a lot about the times that a club with Chelsea’s unrestricted ambition would pay a rival for a specialist coach whose work appears so easy to repeat on the surface, but it is understood that Villa will receive compensation set out in a release clause.

The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.

Villa have had some changes in their backroom staff this summer, but it is MacPhee’s departure that has drawn the headlines. He arrived at Villa to work with Dean Smith, and both Steven Gerrard and Unai Emery kept him on.

The 46-year-old is the best in the business, a standing shown by the numbers but really confirmed only by watching Villa week after week and noticing the patterns in the way the man himself would.

It is tricky to judge a set piece coach purely on defensive numbers, but what should Chelsea supporters expect to see from their new chief set-piece operator at the attacking end of the pitch as new boss Xabi Alonso tries to put the club back on the right track?

It was no coincidence that Villa scored from their first corner against Freiburg. MacPhee always has something prepared, and his teams do not hesitate to use the plan at the earliest chance.

Villa’s first corners throughout 2025-26 alone were a spectacle, and Chelsea will be no different. The Blues will work on countless set-piece patterns under MacPhee, but the first corner of every match will be worth watching closely.

Surprising the opposition is a crucial edge and, perhaps, the biggest reason to appoint MacPhee specifically rather than simply hiring someone to copy Villa’s dead-ball clips.

Every opposition manager and set piece coach last season knew Villa would have a new move from their first corner, but none of them knew what it would be. In a game decided by tiny margins, MacPhee’s imagination is priceless.

Villa were the best set piece team in Europe in 2023-24. Only Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur scored more goals from corners in the Premier League last season. The consistency of MacPhee’s work is remarkable, and there is more to it than drawing up attractive passing patterns.

Player buy-in is the foundation of Emery’s success at Villa, and the willingness to understand and carry out MacPhee’s plans has been a major part of that. Chelsea have signed the man, but the collective mindset that turned his ideas into results does not come with a release clause.

MacPhee is a peerless manipulator of very expensive flesh puppets. Villa’s Europa League opener was a smart movement of the ball brilliantly carried out by top players, but the real genius lies in creating a hole in front of the goalkeeper big enough to land a Harrier jump jet in.

That is MacPhee’s strongest point of difference and what makes him worth paying for.

Set piece coaches are everywhere, but the Scot is the one whose method stands out for combining inventive set plays with the ability to understand how to move or block the pieces needed to make them happen.

Every top-level set piece coach knows how to create space and use blockers, but the MacPhee touch with the ball is unmatched.

As the game inevitably moves away from the overly physical yet highly choreographed nature of corners and free kicks, Chelsea may now be uniquely futureproofed.