How Dion Dublin and Unai Emery turned William into football's first royal superfan (2025)

For Prince William, the passion is real. The biggest event of this week will be Aston Villa’s Champions League quarter-final second leg tonight against Paris Saint-Germain.

Whether the heir to the throne is at Villa Park or watching on television at home remains to be seen but either way there will be obsessing in the Wales household over pre-match rituals and lucky clothes, as Villa try to overturn a 3-1 first leg deficit against the French champions.

William’s enthusiastic support for the Birmingham club and his knowledge of the game is no confection, illustrated by a television interview in which he talked tactics while in Paris to watch the first leg with Prince George last week. It gives us a picture of a future King, perhaps more like many of his subjects than any of his ancestors.

Many monarchs have had their sporting obsessions. William’s late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, knew horse racing inside out, for example, but nobody in the Royal Family has ever been quite so passionate about the people’s game.

In spite of his privileged upbringing, his love of football helps give him the common touch and a chance to bond with millions of Britons.

The football world went wild last week when he talked with Rio Ferdinand and Ally McCoist during a live interview with TNT Sports in Paris, eloquently breaking down Villa coach Unai Emery’s tactics to “get round the high press.”

Ferdinand, a former England and Manchester United defender, was impressed. “Do not go for a punditry job, please, because I could be out of the game,” he said to William. “The way he just dissected that there, I’m going to nick that for later on.”

The Prince was tactile too, filmed hugging the Villa players in the tunnel before the game. Pictures of him last week and at earlier matches showed him getting caught up in the emotion of it all, happy and natural in a world where royals have often been expected to maintain a stiff upper lip.

William’s interest in Villa started when he was at school. “I was looking around for clubs to support, and all my friends at school were either Man U fans or Chelsea fans,” he told Gary Lineker in an interview before the 2015 FA Cup final.

Welcome to Parc des Princes, Prince William! 👋

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The Prince of Wales, and Aston Villa fan, joins @rioferdy5 and @Ally_McCoist9 to talk about the Villans' Champions League clash against PSG 🗣️@KensingtonRoyal pic.twitter.com/AttIJDHxkK

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) April 9, 2025

“I didn’t really want to follow the run-of-the-mill teams, and I wanted to have a team that was more middle of the table, that could give me the more emotional rollercoaster moments. To be honest, now, looking back, that was a bad idea. I could have had an easier time.”

Villa Park was just up the M5 from his father’s Highgrove home, and they had family friends who supported Villa and took the young prince to games.

At the 2000 FA Cup semi-final, he sat in a red beanie hat with the Villa fans and watched Dion Dublin score the winning spot-kick as they beat Bolton 4-1 on penalties. “It was just the atmosphere, the camaraderie, and I really felt it was something I could connect with,” he recalled.

His common touch first became apparent when he went to New Zealand in 2005 on his first solo overseas visit.

In fact, it was a trip based around another sport – he had gone to watch the British Lions rugby union tour – and during a game of a third sport, volleyball, in a Christchurch school, one of the pupils passed him the ball. “Thanks, mate,” the then 23-year-old prince said, prompting those of us there to wonder if Queen Elizabeth, the then Prince Charles, or any other royal had ever referred to someone as “mate” before.

Football is a universal game, though, and as he started undertaking official engagements in the UK, it helped him connect.

“Any Aston Villa fans here?” he asked when he and the then Kate Middleton went to Blackburn for a series of engagements in April 2011, shortly before their wedding. As he watched children taking part in football skills training, one boy looked up at him and asked: “Are you posh?”

“Exceedingly,” William replied.

Down the years, his allegiance to Villa has become part of his persona and an ice breaker on many duties. It has also helped fuel his official work as first president from 2006 and, since July last year, patron of the Football Association, the governing body in England.

He has also used football to get his message over on other projects, particularly in his work to highlight the crisis of anxiety and depression affecting so many young people.

It helps, according to those close to him, that he is so genuinely passionate and knowledgeable about the game. He still plays regularly in matches and informal sessions with friends despite the ravages of age at 42 slowing him down.

When he became Prince of Wales, there was speculation that he might become patron of the Football Association of Wales, but he knew it would look phoney. It was even more awkward when England were drawn in the same group as Wales in the 2022 World Cup, but he knew he had to be authentic.

“I’ve supported England since I’ve been quite small, but I support Welsh rugby, and that’s my kind of way of doing it. I happily support Wales over England in the rugby,” he said.

“I’ve got to be able to play carefully with my affiliations because I worry otherwise if I suddenly drop England to support Wales, then that doesn’t look right for the sport either. So I can’t do that.”

In England, the monarchy’s association with football goes back more than a century. It dates back to the King’s great-grandfather George V, who became the first monarch to attend an FA Cup Final in 1914 as a patron of the Football Association.

George V, whose love of Abide with Me is said to have inspired the FA to make it the cup final hymn from 1927, was followed by his son George VI. He also became FA patron and regularly attended the cup final at Wembley.
Queen Elizabeth, a frequent visitor to Wembley earlier in her reign, presented England captain Bobby Moore with the World Cup there in 1966 as patron of the national sport.

However, Mike Huggins, Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at the University of Cumbria, said none of the monarchs appeared to have a real passion for football. “It was a political decision to be patron,” he said.

In this new reign, King Charles has dispensed with the tradition of the monarch also being a patron of the football governing bodies in England, Scotland and Wales – roles held by the late Queen – but south of the border, he at least has his elder son and heir flying the flag for the monarchy.

Charles, who has shown an interest in Burnley Football Club’s fortunes after his charities helped efforts to regenerate the Lancashire mill town, has been an infrequent visitor to games. He attended the 1991 and 1995 FA Cup Finals, but even the offer of a VIP season ticket at Burnley’s Turf Moor has not seen him take in a league game.

In the Prince and Princess of Wales’s household, all the family share an interest in the sport.

William insists he is putting no pressure on George, Charlotte, and Louis to support Villa, but he moves them around at home to change the team’s luck if they are watching on TV. “They do have Villa shirts and ask to come to games with me, but they have other shirts as well,” he told The Sun last month.

The football-mad prince also admitted to lurking on football message boards and posting under a false name. Intriguingly, he said last month that he became more emotionally involved with Villa when they were relegated in 2016.

That was around the time that his relationship with his brother was deteriorating, and soon after, Harry started dating Meghan Markle.

But sports psychologists and those who know him well have poured cold water on the idea that William’s intensified interest in Villa has much to do with finding an emotional release from his rift with the Sussexes or, indeed, his wife and father’s battle with cancer.

Martin Perry, a sports psychologist, said football could be a temporary escape, and there was the joy of bonding with others for William. “You become part of that tribe,” he said. “But it’s not a way of resolving problems.

“You can get away from your troubles for 90 minutes; you can experience euphoria and be on a high for two or three days. But you’re still not solving the problem.”

For Prince William, the immediate problem is how Villa are going to overturn that 3-1 deficit tonight.