Tyrone Mings: ‘I would like to be fluent in playing piano, to get on to some Beethoven’

A n empty Holte End looms large at Villa Park as Tyrone Mings takes a seat in the Corner Flag suite. He is soon discussing Aston Villa’s uplift under Unai Emery, coping with the noise after being stripped of the captaincy in pre-season, the pride of seeing his family celebrate wins, England aspirations and the small matter of hosting Arsenal on Saturday, but life beyond the bubble of a professional footballer has always interested Mings more than most.

It is well documented that he spent Christmas Day feeding the homeless while a youngster at Ipswich and last year he donated to the funeral costs of a Villa supporter and set up a fundraiser for Ghana Lions, a group of Villa fans in Juaben. “On game days, it’s amazing to see the village they live in, how they come together to watch Villa games, the face paint and the dancing in the street,” Mings says. “Getting them over to a game would be a great thing for us to do one day.”

Mings is engaging company over half an hour and perhaps it should come as no surprise that his appetite to broaden his horizons has extended to taking up piano and martial arts; he practises jiu-jitsu in Sutton Coldfield – his teacher is a Villa supporter – and has piano lessons a few times a month.

“I’m not Tyrone the footballer, I’m Tyrone the beginner at piano,” he says, smiling. “In the world that we live in, there’s a lot of sticking in your comfort zone. People go to work, come home, have some food, go to bed and it becomes a little monotonous. I like to do things that I know nothing about and step into someone else’s world. I’m learning at the top end of football, the elite where it is kind of fine-tuning … I like going in at entry level and being like: ‘I know nothing, teach me from the