William says he posts anonymously on Aston Villa fan forums
The Prince of Wales said he fell in love with the club after being taken to matches by family friends when he was younger.
The Prince of Wales has said he posts anonymously on Aston Villa fan forums and described his match day superstitions.
William told The Sun he moves his children around the house to bring good luck when games are not going Villa’s way.
He said he fell in love with the Premier League club after being taken to matches by family friends when he was younger.
During the interview at Villa’s training ground, William, 42, said: “With the camaraderie among the fans and the chanting and the singing, I just felt like I belonged there.”
The prince was at Villa Park on Wednesday evening to see his team qualify for the Champions League quarter-finals, beating Belgian outfit Club Brugge 3-0 to seal a 6-1 win on aggregate.
Before the game, he said his interest grew when Villa were relegated to the Championship in 2016, a few years after finishing sixth in the Premier League.
“The rise of the smartphone” made him even more invested as it became possible to track and discuss a team’s progress all the time, he added.
He told The Sun: “I’d grown up looking at Ceefax on the television or the back pages of newspapers and if you didn’t have those to hand you were a bit out of the loop.”
William added: “I like going on the forums, I can be on there for ages. I listen to what other fans have to say and give them my opinions. I get quite into it, definitely. It’s important to have that debate.”
His children have Villa shirts, among others, but he is not forcing them to support his team, he said.
He told The Sun: “If I’m home alone with the children, I probably don’t have the pre-match pint but I do have a bit of superstition about where I sit when I’m watching them.
“If we’re not doing very well, I start moving round the house quite quickly and I put the children in different positions hoping that’s going to change our luck.”
The prince also revealed one of his hardest challenges as FA president was consoling players after the Euro 24 final defeat.
“That was the hardest changing room atmosphere I’ve ever had to walk into,” he told The Sun.
But a World Cup win next year is “definitely possible”, he said, praising new England manager Thomas Tuchel as “exactly the right person” for the job.
