John McGinn

[Tuscans]

@jmcginn7

What a night at Villa Park to secure champions league football again 😍 An unbelievable effort from the boys this season with some very tough competition. 10 goals in the one season has been an ambition of mine my whole career and I’m proud to finally have done it! Now we refocus for one last job. Enjoy the week stay safe, see you in Istanbul and UP THE VILLA ✈️ 🇹🇷


📲 Morgan Rogers on Instagram:

“Retire the 7.”

[Eckybloke]

Someone mentioned singing Sunshine on Leith when he leaves. I think it should be sung if he lifts the EL on Wednesday. Don’t want to leave it for the day our hearts get broken 🤣

[eamonn]

Our most important player in decades.

Just when you think you can't love him any more..

Monty or McGinn? They both play key roles in Villa's present.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Our most important player in decades.

Just when you think you can't love him any more..

Monty or McGinn? They both play key roles in Villa's present.

There are certain questions on here you shouldn't ask.

[Monty]

It's just an honour to be nominated.

[Drummond]

Firstly, that goal on Friday was like time stood still for a moment as he just paused and waited before picking his spot.

Martinez, Torres, Kamara, McGinn, Watkins.

That's a great spine of a team and at times, various of them have been declared our most important player. If any of them are missing, we're significantly weaker. But there's something about McGinn that elevates him, he's a proper leader on, and off, the pitch. Much like Gerrard for Liverpool, Fernandes for ManUtd, Rice for West Ham then Arsenal and all the other examples out there, he's the player that can lift everyone else. His sheer will to perform sets an example for everyone to follow. He performs consistently well and gets better all the time.

I loved the interaction he had with my son and other supporters after a game last season. It was late, he was the last one out, and yet he had time to talk to everyone and be personal with it. He understands what it means to be a captain and role model and frankly he's just immense.

As has been mentioned, that work he did last year in Arizona sounds exceptional, and it was his motivation and drive that got him to do it. Love the player, love the man.

[Dogtanian]

Interview with our captain:

https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/news/02a5-20a75def2976-b4be97bc529b-1000--john-mcginn-interview-aston-villa-s-captain-on-his-europ/

"It would mean everything to me, personally. There’s no one in that dressing room that wants it more than me. I’ve been through a lot here, so to get my hands on that trophy would mean absolutely everything." 

[Hillbilly]

Greedy sod. He’s already got winner’s medals in the Scottish League Cup and FA Cup. What more could a man need?

[Smirker]

Someone mentioned singing Sunshine on Leith when he leaves. I think it should be sung if he lifts the EL on Wednesday. Don’t want to leave it for the day our hearts get broken 🤣

Why? He's a Celtic fan.

[Walmley_Villa]

Someone mentioned singing Sunshine on Leith when he leaves. I think it should be sung if he lifts the EL on Wednesday. Don’t want to leave it for the day our hearts get broken 🤣

Why? He's a Celtic fan.

Have to agree as he isn't a Leith native....Flower of Scotland?

[ADVILLAFAN]

He's a big fan of 'If you want to go to heaven when you die. You must wear a Shawfield bonnet and a tie' I heard.

[Dogtanian]

Surely, he'll get a right tear in his eye with a heartfelt rendition of something more traditional:

[Hillbilly]

Surely there's only one song fits the bill - altogether now...

I like big butts and I cannot lie...

[Mister E]

Wonderful. Best player for Villa since Yorke.

For sheer commitment, it would be 'since Gazza Bazza' for me.
Re SJM, he is a throwback to a time when players really did play for the club with emotional commitment and 'love'. I think he has been - along with Konsa and Watkins (and perhaps Big Emi) - stalwarts and a product of both Deano and Emery's development of proper dedication to the cause. Maybe it's been SJM's attitude which has made that emotional bond so strong for others.
As Drummond said above, he is an icon for the club in the same way as other talismen have been for other clubs.

[Tuscans]

John McGinn’s last cup final: ‘He was young, rampaging about – exactly the kind of character we needed’

By Jacob Tanswell


May 21, 2016. It is three minutes into the Scottish Cup final and a 21-year-old John McGinn is typically hustling and bustling.

As we now know a decade on, raucous atmospheres and big games bring the best out of the midfielder.

Sure enough, he is buzzing around the pitch at Glasgow’s Hampden Park, head down, chest angled towards the floor — the customary McGinn posture. There is a heavy touch but he nips at Rangers midfielder Andy Halliday’s heels, regaining possession. He protects the ball immediately, as is his instinct, by thrusting his backside between Halliday and the ball.

The Hibernian youngster then duels with James Tavernier, managing to spin through both him and Halliday. Rangers are disorganised, unprepared, and McGinn — fortuitously, as he is fouled and stumbles to the turf — finds his good friend Jason Cummings, who then passes to Anthony Stokes down the left.

The forward drives into the box and shoots low, finding the far corner. Even with the smoke of the pre-match flares still to clear, Hibernian are ahead.

It is the first action of a wildly dramatic afternoon at Hampden, which sees Rangers recover to lead midway through the second half, then Hibernian equalise 10 minutes from time and plunder a winner deep into stoppage time to win 3-2. In doing so, the Edinburgh club end a 114-year wait to claim their third Scottish Cup. They had been beaten finalists 10 times in the intervening years, including back-to-back in 2012 and 2013.

McGinn would suffer similar semi-final heartbreak with Aston Villa later in his career, in the last fours of the 2024 Europa League and the following year’s FA Cup.

But, on Wednesday night, the midfielder — now aged 31 and Villa’s captain — has a chance to break through the pain barrier to silverware at the third attempt, just as his Hibernian side did a decade ago. At the Besiktas Stadium in the Turkish city of Istanbul, he will look to inspire the Birmingham club to a first European trophy in 44 years.

The Europa League would be the biggest reward yet of McGinn’s 14-year senior career, eclipsing that domestic success in Scotland in 2016. Here, The Athletic speaks to three former team-mates who played alongside him against Rangers that day and witnessed the big-game player lurking inside McGinn come to the fore.

Paul Hanlon cracks a smile as he recalls the young dynamo in Hibs’ midfield that afternoon.

“It’s the Scottish Cup (final) and everyone’s supposed to be cagey,” says the now 36-year-old defender, who has just finished the season with Raith Rovers in Scotland’s second-tier Championship. “But John is trying to burst through the middle of the pitch. He loses it, tackles back — all action. I’m at the back thinking, ‘Right, let’s settle into the game, keep it simple at the start.’ But he’s not.

“He’s rampaging forward, trying to make something happen. It was just his infectious character.”

Hanlon is speaking from the Spanish island of Mallorca, taking time out of his post-season holiday to recall memories of McGinn, a team-mate for three seasons until his summer 2018 move to Villa.

“He was the most humble person you could ever meet,” he says. “A fantastic guy from a fantastic family.”

Later this month, Hibernian are planning a reunion of their cup-winning squad from that season, hosting a dinner where those involved will reminisce.

“It will be nice to catch up with the lads,” defender Niklas Gunnarsson, who came on as a second-half substitute, tells The Athletic. “John is a busy guy, but he will probably come. There were not many games I can think of where he didn’t have a good performance. His lowest level was very high, but in the Cup final, he played a really good game. It would have been very difficult to win without him.”

Like Villa this week, Hibernian’s need to prevail that day was acute.

Both they and Rangers were in the Scottish Championship at the time. Rangers had won the division to complete their four-year rise back to the Premiership after liquidation. Hibernian, after finishing third, had lost in the promotion play-offs to second-placed Falkirk and edged out 2-1 in the League Cup final by a late Ross County winner in March.

A season that had promised so much was in danger of cratering. The group had to break their duck in the Scottish Cup final.

“We went into it thinking this was the be-all and end-all,” says Hanlon. “We had one game left to make it a successful season or it would have turned into a disaster.”

Manager Alan Stubbs set his team up in a 3-5-2 shape. McGinn’s specific remit was rather broad; he was to the left of a midfield three, where his energy was needed to shuffle wide out of possession and, essentially, perform the responsibilities of two players. The area of the pitch where he regained the ball for Stokes’ early first goal captured his role perfectly.

Play: Video

“He was a perfect fit at the perfect time,” says Hanlon. “He was a young player, rampaging about. He was exactly the character we needed in the middle of the pitch. He’d take the ball on the edge of our own box and, before you knew it, we’d be on the edge of the other team’s box.”

“He’s not an elegant, beautiful footballer to watch,” adds Liam Fontaine, another defender in that side. “Everyone knows that, but just because he doesn’t look as graceful as Xabi Alonso or someone like that, he’s got all the ability and more.

“The biggest attribute is that he’s not fearful. That’s the difference between why some players make it and some don’t. You can’t coach it. You watch John, and he’ll tell you himself about his big backside and how he gets it fired into people, but he gets stuck in and he moves people out of the way.

“He’s so influential.”

In the Arizona heat, the Villa midfielder prepared for the season with Natalie Kollars, a PT whose clients range from Disney to the NFL
McGinn is already a Villa legend based on his performances over the past eight years, though he now has an opportunity to achieve footballing immortality.

In many ways, his stunning strike against Liverpool last Friday was simply the latest episode in the Scot’s eye-catching career in the West Midlands. He seems to be at the epicentre of any big game or any big moment in the club’s recent history.

“There will be someone younger or sexier, with a longer name, or someone who has signed for £50million ($67m at time of writing), but it just makes that wee bit more determined to prove you’re worth,” McGinn told The Athletic earlier in the season.

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“There will be a time at some point where I’ll have to hold my hands up: ‘All right, this player’s actually better than me’ or maybe if the level (Villa are then playing at) does exceed me. But at this moment I don’t think that’s anywhere close, and I’m determined to prove that.”

Impressively, McGinn held those resilient traits a decade ago, too.

Team-mates speak glowingly about the strength of character the 21-year-old version of him had, evidenced in how he dealt with the pressure of that Scottish Cup final.

“He held that inner confidence to say, ‘I know what I’m doing, and I’m confident enough to do it’,” explains Hanlon. “I remember a season after, where we had a training session with Neil Lennon, our manager. When Neil spoke, you listened. But one day, there was a session when John was trying to make a pass over the top to the strikers. He thought it was the right pass and kept trying. It wasn’t coming off.

“Neil told him not to do it and to try a simple pass instead. But the next time he got the ball, he did it again and pulled it off. He had that inner belief — ‘I know what I’m doing’. He’ll hold his hand up when he’s had a bad game, and he’ll go again to the next one.”

“There’s no falseness with him,” adds Fontaine. “He’s genuine and hilarious. A great type of individual you’d want in any squad. Coming into our Hibs squad at that point, he was 21 and had that label you get when you’re young — raw and erratic.

“But I sensed a difference. If you look at any young player who comes through, the reason why they do well is because they have no fear. Stubbs used to talk about Wayne Rooney being 16 when he broke into Everton’s first team (Stubbs was an Everton player at that time). Most 16-year-olds would go into their shell, but Stubbs said Rooney didn’t care who he was playing against. John had that mentality from a young age.”

Current team-mates often talk about how underestimated McGinn remains among the broader footballing public, echoing the sense that, unless you watch him regularly or play alongside him, it is difficult to grasp how genuinely good he is. Ostensibly, McGinn’s gait is not the most aesthetically pleasing nor sophisticated. Early on in his career, that limited his appeal to prospective teams.

“He has his style and it works,” says Fontaine. “I had a couple of managers call me at the time and said, ‘What do you think of him? Is he that good? Does he have it?’.

“I said, ‘Believe me, He’s got it — whatever it is, he has it’. But they opted not to sign him… and the rest is history.”

John, Paul and Stephen McGinn would enjoy ferocious kickabouts as kids back in Duntocher – grounding for the careers each has forged since
“I knew he was a big Celtic fan,” Gunnarsson adds. “When we were speaking together, he said his dream was to be a legend at Celtic. But in the end, he said no to them and went to Villa (who were then) in the Championship.

“He has a funny way of running. It’s like he’s falling down, with his head facing the floor. When he is in this position, you will never take the ball from him.

“I remember once we were in the dressing room and Stokes showed a picture of a young John playing for St Mirren (in their youth set-up). He was between six and eight years old, and he had the same posture — head down and running with the ball. It was so funny.”

McGinn would spend two more seasons in Scotland, helping to restore Hibernian to the top division as runaway Championship title winners in 2017, 11 points clear of runners-up Falkirk, before joining Villa for a fee of around £2.75million.

Moving to another club and a new country did not change him in any way.

“How would I describe John McGinn?,” ponders former Villa goalkeeper Jed Steer, who played with the Scotland international for five years. “What you see is what you get with Ginny. He’s so down to earth, says how it is and loves a laugh. If there is any elephant in the room, he’ll always be the one to bring it up and make it a bit awkward at times. But everyone loves him. He’s a top player as well.

“As a person, you gravitate towards him immediately. He always puts his team-mates first, and that’s what he did straight away at Villa.”

Almost eight years since making the move south and after 327 Villa appearances, McGinn will lead them out in a European final tomorrow night against Freiburg, who just finished seventh in Germany’s Bundesliga.

“He’s hilariously genuine,” says Fontaine. “He’s almost too raw at times, but that’s him in a nutshell. John had the opportunity to go to England and some Scottish players have tried to do it, but it hasn’t worked. The type of person he is, John wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip.”

“He’s been the talisman in every team he has played in,” Hanlon says. “He won the League Cup at St Mirren (in 2013, starting the final as a teenager), he’s won promotion and the Scottish Cup at Hibs. He’s got to a World Cup now. He’s been promoted with Villa, got to the Champions League, and now he’s aiming for a European trophy. He’s a winner. He is absolutely adored by every fan he’s played for.”

McGinn is now an adopted son of a city forged from hardworking industrial roots and he mirrors such characteristics on the pitch. Lifting the trophy in Istanbul and returning with it to Birmingham would be fittingly symbolic.

“I’ve met a lot of players who have good careers that can be a bit cocky,” adds Gunnarsson. “But he’s a very humble person, comes from a very nice family and they are lovely people.

“His mum and dad can be proud that they raised their boy with good manners.”