Tyrone Mings and the Aston Villa captaincy
Aston Villa’s Tyrone Mings has just signed a new contract. Only one man can explain why he isn’t their captain anymore.
Saturday afternoons speak for themselves but Saturday morning football is one of my life’s great pleasures.
My work with HUNDRED involves watching football from all manner of far-flung places, and over the years has led me to various foreign leagues that have made a lasting mark.
Major League Soccer, Serie A, the Scottish Premiership, the Austrian Bundesliga and Denmark’s Superligaen came into my life independently but being an analyst for IBWM 100 and now HUNDRED has opened up my interest to Germany, Portugal, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina to name just a few.
But give me a Saturday morning J1 League match or a tasty 8.45am A-League fixture (and they usually are!) and you’ll seldom find me happier.
Japan’s top flight returned this past weekend and its international YouTube channel will stream several games every week. If you like quality football from off the beaten track, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Tyrone Mings and the Aston Villa captaincy
Suddenly there he was, larger than life. As the supporters shook off the last cruel knockings of their hangovers, Tyrone Mings strutted through the ticket barriers at Bournemouth railway station, fresh as a daisy and resplendent in the Aston Villa strip in which he’d won the EFL Championship Play-Off Final some time before.
Nobody really knows what happened between Wembley and the south coast, save for a trip with the safest outside bet in any race to be the nation’s most soul-destroying train operating company.
A number of Villa players had partied long into the next day after securing promotion to the Premier League in May 2019. But Mings looked in the highest of spirits and duly bolted his name right above the door of the Villa folklore vault with that one choice of outfit.
Bournemouth is where I grew up but I was born in Birmingham and I support Aston Villa. AFC Bournemouth loaned Mings to Villa on the last day of January in 2019, upending everything I thought I knew. Bournemouth were my quirky second team in the third and fourth tiers as a kid. Their path and Villa’s, I thought, would never cross.
But kids are stupid and cross they did. The Cherries on the way up passing the Villa on the way down was a bonkers state of affairs. With Villa in their third season in the Championship and Eddie Howe (a magnificent player in his day, by the way) still doing fantastically well, Bournemouth threw the unmighty Villa a Tyrone.
Howe and then-owner Maxim Demin had moved in the transfer market and Mings was deemed surplus to requirements. Whether because of injury – to which he was no stranger – or the pecking order, he wasn’t fancied at Dean Court any longer. Dean Smith and Villa? Rats up a drainpipe.
Bournemouth supporters were comfortable enough with the outcome. Mings was a latecomer to the professional game and to the centre back position he would later admit to having learned on the job in the Premier League. It showed then and it shows a little now too.
But he was heroic in Villa’s promotion season, not to mention in the vital Wembley win over Derby County. Smith took Villa up quite unexpectedly and Mings had proved such a hit, such a perfect fit, that it was assumed he would be among the first of the team’s loans necessarily converted to permanent transfers for the surprise assembly of a top-flight squad.
It took longer than planned but Mings signing for Villa was a done deal the day he flaunted his success in front of the presumably baffled commuters at Bournemouth station. The Twitter few wanted to be offended, of course, but really it was the result desired by all parties.
Villa avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth in the covid-hit 2019/20 season and improved on that significantly behind closed doors for much of 2020/21. Smith masterminded famous wins aplenty, galvanised by the scintillating form of captain Jack Grealish and crucial contributions elsewhere.
With Villa Park empty, Mings’ leadership was evident. His voice boomed around the cavernous stands. When Grealish agitated for a move away, not one supporter was shocked that Mings took over the armband.
That should have been that. Mings, by now an England international routinely disrespected by fans of other clubs despite some excellent displays under Gareth Southgate and against most of their own teams, kept on leading by both example and volume.
He makes mistakes that lead to goals because he’s an imperfect defender who will take responsibility anywhere, anytime. In the age of social media, the laughter of one-dimensional mouth-breathing banterhounds drowns out the rest of us. But leadership isn’t conditional and Mings is a leader, Villa’s leader.
Being the captain was never more than a symbol of that. The captaincy of a Premier League club is of questionable import, not least because the player awarded it has usually proven himself a captain – whatever that really means – by the time he’s appointed. From that point on the armband is just there.
Until it’s not. A manager selecting a captain is routine. A manager removing one as well regarded as Mings is unavoidably a story. In the late summer of 2022, Mings was stripped of the Villa captaincy by football management cosplayer Steven Gerrard and replaced with John McGinn, whose own performance had been a little sketchy. But that’s not all.
“It didn’t relieve me of a burden, it didn’t free me up to play any better, it didn’t take any pressure off me,” Mings told Ben Fisher of The Guardian after signing a new contract long after Gerrard’s ignominious departure.
“When I’m on the pitch, I’m exactly the same player. I’m vocal and I try to help other people – that doesn’t change if I’m captain or not. It didn’t really change anything in terms of my mental state. I just wanted to play and I got left out of the team – that was a bigger thing to deal with than the captaincy.”
Gerrard dropped Mings for Villa’s first league match of 2022/23 and who could blame him? After all, with an out-of-form Ezri Konsa and (checks notes) free transfer Calum Chambers available along with a new signing, what role could Tyrone Mings possibly play?
Villa played Bournemouth that day and lost. When Mings doesn’t play, they always do. It’s the most tiresome trope in the endless back and forth between supporters about Mings’ worth; it’s also the truth.
The new signing was Diego Carlos. He made his debut against Bournemouth and played his first league game at Villa Park (with Mings) a week later, rupturing his Achilles tendon. Whatever is the opposite of a blinder, Gerrard had played it and been exposed in no time.
Their names will always be intertwined at Villa and Mings deserves so much better than that. Gerrard was never going to be long for Villa Park – if he’s got any sense he’ll stay out of management altogether – and Mings, while he has his critics both rational and over-the-top, is a player with an enormous amount of goodwill stored up among the Villa support.
Unai Emery won’t rush to right this particular wrong. He’ll consider the impact on McGinn and indeed Mings himself. He’ll seek the views of Ashley Young, now the club captain having also been promoted past Mings by the former manager. He’ll be mindful of the potential damage to the dressing room atmosphere and his own lack of credit with the supporters by comparison.
He certainly won’t drop Mings and then stick the boot into him in the media after a game in which he didn’t even play. That was a thunderous miscalculation by Gerrard, who presumably overlooked or underestimated the chasm in affection between himself (none, if he’s lucky) and Mings (lots, because he deserves it).
Whether we realise it or not that affection, that credit, matters. It’s a product of promises kept. It’s a mark of common history and it lives somewhere between achievement and connection. Mings has both with Villa supporters. Gerrard has neither. He never did and he never will.
Quite apart from being twice the player people think he is – including a large faction of Villa supporters but primarily those on the outside who seem to have him confused with someone else – Mings has a good soul.
He cares about things, about life. He speaks up when his own day would be easier if he didn’t. He pisses off all the right people in the process and he does it from a place of genuine righteousness and curiosity about the world because he lived in it before football.
Tyrone Mings brought his whole self to the game and his club is better for it. Insofar as I care about the captaincy at all, that’s my sort of skipper.
“We have a huge platform in football for this kind of action. We are one of the few clubs in the world to do this kind of initiative. Other clubs around the world – England, Italy – they should think of this initiative and copy it, and be more responsible for disabled persons.
“They are huge fans and the team wants to help and support them. The players feel inspired by this - when I played for Brighton, we visited facilities for disabled fans, and I want people to learn about what they need for accessibility.”
Real Betis defender Martín Montoya hails his club’s collaboration with World Football Summit to create the world’s most inclusive football match. Betis won 3-1 against Real Valladolid in a game adapted in several regards for people with disabilities.
Salty beef extracts
How Newcastle and Liverpool’s ‘toxic’ rivalry was entirely invented by one man (Football365)
Inside Neil Warnock's press conference as masterclass shows why Huddersfield Town turned to him (Huddersfield Examiner)
The Final Whistle (Kult)
A stain on France: police brutality against football fans has become systemic (The Guardian)
Goal of the Week
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