Pau Torres collects property in front of Holte End, where a banner was unfurled in 2016 that read: “No fight, no pride, no effort, no hope.” He throws the ball over the halfway line, where Tony Xia was once the new chairman of Aston Villa and promised to build a theme park. In the dugout, Unai Emery leans forward expectantly, just a few feet away from the spot where – six years ago to the day – a disgruntled fan threw a cabbage at Steve Bruce.

And as Jhon Durán’s speculative shot brushes the back of the net, the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end and the crowd swells and swells: was it all worth it in the end? Worth the humiliations, worth the irrelevance, worth 11,000 against Middlesbrough in the League Cup, worth losing at home to Stevenage, worth Remi Garde and Roberto Di Matteo?

One-nil against Bayern Munich. History does not repeat itself, but sometimes rhymes. And Gary Shaw is no longer there, but Dennis Mortimer and Peter Withe are holding each other tight, and there are grown men in the crowd with tears in their eyes, and Durán just smiles and nods as if to say, ‘I told you you like that”.

This is a place that has tried to escape its ghosts over the decades, but has largely failed. The past is everywhere you look here. It lives in the weathered murals, the grainy photographs and the famous Brian Moore commentary taped to the Doug Ellis Stand, and even in the red brick structure itself, which actually resembles a Victorian sherbet factory, the kind of building you almost marvel at are over. can still be found open.

So it was perhaps only natural that Villa Park’s first taste of the Champions League would come with a certain sense of history. And not just the obvious parallels with 1982, but also the more recent past, the long and often shameful journey Aston Villa has taken to get here. Relegations and promotions, five managers in twenty months, rejected by Rickie Lambert. A night to feel a little dazed and shocked by the sheer pace of progress as decades of despair were swept away in one fell swoop.

But here too there is of course always a danger. The danger is that you play to the opportunity instead of the opponent, the ghost of the flesh. Is last season’s second place in the Bundesliga really a clear step forward in the league compared to fourth place in the Premier League? Is Kim Min-jae really that much better than Pau Torres, is Manuel Neuer really a huge upgrade over Emi Martínez, is Harry Kane really in a different league than Ollie Watkins? Simply put: will you play as the team that fulfills a long-cherished dream? Or the team that actually belongs at this level?

Twenty minutes into this game it felt like we had our answer. Bayern had 73% possession and all the territory. Villa was vigilant, disciplined, spacious and far too respectful. But Torres’ early goal – although disallowed for offside – seemed to click something into place.

Shortly afterwards, Morgan Rogers broke the pace. Amadou Onana had a chance. Jaden Philogene crashed into Alphonso Davies after maintaining a respectful distance for the first quarter of the match. Youri Tielemans spun Joshua Kimmich around as if he were disappearing through a trick door. Suddenly Villa seemed to remember that this was the team that ruined the Bundesliga last season, led by the man who lost here with Burnley last season.

And for the likes of Rogers and Philogene, as well as Jacob Ramsey before he left with an injury, this is the kind of history that matters. Unlike the thousands in the stands, Villa’s young England guard is not scarred by the past, nor naturally wary or fatalistic. Does Philogene even record 1982 as a year when that happened? Not on this evidence: a dazzling Champions League debut that belies the 43 minutes of football he has had this season and the fact he played for Hull City a few months ago.

Rogers was virtually unplayable, a spinning machete of a player, flying into clouds of Bayern shirts and somehow emerging with the ball still at his feet.

In between there were still long spells of Bayern possession, plenty of pressure, a few half-chances, but nothing truly terrifying until the final few minutes. Kane drifted in and out, ubiquitous and yet somehow utterly ephemeral, like the plot in a Claire Denis movie. Villa could break with pace and numbers. Ultimately, the exhausted Watkins gave way to Durán, and everyone knows what happens when that happens.

Time for a new page. This is a club with a rich and wonderful history, but at the moment the history is far from the most interesting thing about it. Perhaps it was fitting that this was a victory largely driven by the new generation, the players who can show this club where it is going, the young men who can shape its future. On a night when Villa celebrated their past, they somehow turned the clock forward.