Aston Villa v Lille: Lee Hendrie reflects on 1998's quarter-final 'nearly moment'

Suddenly, the ball breaks to 21-year-old midfielder Hendrie, then making just his 13th senior start. From the left-hand side of the penalty area, he bends a right-footed shot toward the bottom corner. But it is not quite far enough in the corner. Atletico goalkeeper Jose Molina is down quickly to palm the ball wide. Villa would not conjure a chance quite so good in the closing minutes as time ran out on their European dream.

“I don’t know to this day how I didn’t score,” says Hendrie. “I went for the far corner, I hit it well but it was a good height for the keeper.

“I always look back and wish it would have gone in. I would have been an instant legend.”

Hendrie, who went on to make more than 300 appearances for Villa over the next decade, still rates the performance among his best for the club and thinks the atmosphere at Villa Park may have even surpassed that of the famous penalty shoot-out win over Inter Milan four years previously.

“I was a ball boy for that one,” he explains. “Big Ron (Atkinson) had asked the YTS lads to do it to get the ball straight back into play and I was pictured in the paper afterwards, standing behind him celebrating.

“I thought it was incredible but I think the Atletico game at least matched it, if it wasn’t a bit better.”

Such occasions might almost have been taken for granted in an era when Villa regularly competed in European competition. They are the type Unai Emery now wants to make commonplace.

Thursday’s Europa Conference League quarter-final first leg with Lille marks another step along the way. The first time Villa have reached the last eight in Europe since the famous meeting with Atletico it is, to borrow a slogan from the club’s own media department, an event 26 years in the making.

Now challenging toward the top of the Premier League, in early 1998 Villa were a club in transition, John Gregory having replaced Brian Little as manager in late February with the team worryingly close to the relegation zone.

Hendrie, on the fringes of the first-team squad for the previous two years, found himself a regular starter, with the first leg in Madrid at the Vicente Calderon stadium one of his first matches.

“I remember it being so intimidating. It was horrible all around that game,” he recalls. When you move away from English football, it opens your eyes and that’s why you want to experience different cultures and it was different alright.

“I’d played for the younger age groups abroad but this was something else – playing at that level.”

Atletico were led by Christian Vieri, the Italy international striker then barely 12 months away from becoming the most expensive player in the world. Another of their stars was the Spanish playmaker Kiko, who Hendrie remembers both for his immense talent and the way he used to call for the ball.

“Every time he wanted it, he’d whistle for it!” he laughs. “He just kept whistling and whistling. It was high-pitched.

“I was talking to someone afterwards about it and they said: ‘Rather than shout all the time, that’s what he does, he whistles!’

“Whether it was because of the crowd noise, I don’t know but have never heard of anyone else doing it, either before or since. And I never came across it again as a player. And Kiko could play. He was probably the best player I’d come across at that stage of my career.”

Villa returned from Madrid trailing 1-0 through a Vieri penalty.

“We got battered for long periods of the game,” remembers Hendrie. “I felt shattered because I’d run my legs off trying to close them down. We just about stayed in it.”

For all the hard work, Villa looked out of it when a pinpoint Kiko cross caused chaos in the home defence and Jose Caminero doubled Atletico’s aggregate advantage half-an-hour into the return leg.

But with 20 minutes to go, Hendrie was involved in the move which saw Taylor pull one back before, two minutes later, setting up Collymore for one of the most iconic Villa Park goals of all-time.

“I chased a ball down the left and flicked it inside to Stan, who stepped inside and it zoomed into the top bin,” says Hendrie.

“I ran to the net in front of the Holte. I thought: ‘We’re going to win this’. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck. It reminded me so much of that night against Inter Milan.”

Villa went for broke, the match becoming end-to-end with both Kiko and Vieri missing chances to ease the visitors’ nerves. With seven minutes to go, came Hendrie’s moment.

“I hit it too true, if anything,” ponders Hendrie. “If I had put it right in the corner he wouldn’t have got it. It’s a big regret for me. I had that chance.

“We were a good side. Players like Stan, Steve Staunton, Taylor, Bosnich, Southgate.

“Stan’s goal was an absolute worldie. I doubt he ever hit one sweeter than that. I remember him going up to the Holte End. We pushed and pushed. Those nearly moments, eh?”