Emery’s The Unai One

Villa fans are on cloud nine as I write this having strolled to the Europa League title with a routine 3-0 humbling of Freiburg, not that the result was ever in doubt when you look at the record of the man sitting in their dugout.

Unai Eery is the mastermind of the Europa League and after this win he has made it a record 5 victorious final appearances with 3 different teams in just 11 and a half seasons, only 6 of which he was leading teams competing in the competition.

Having joined Sevilla in January 2013 he led them to 3 Europa League finals in a row and won every single one, first sneaking past Benfica on penalties in Turin before defending their title in Warsaw against Dnipropetrovsk and completing the trifecta in Basel against a new Jurgen Klopped Liverpool side.

This incredible hat-trick of consecutive Europa League wins earned Emery a move to PSG and the easy qualification to the Champions League that this offered. This move lasted 2 seasons before he left Paris to try and win something with Arsenal, in the era of them being almost as much of a banter club as Spurs are these days.

He managed to take an Arsenal team that had been on their asses for way too many seasons at that point all the way to the Europa League final in Baku, where he tasted defeat for the only time ever in a European final. Chelsea had their domestic rivals number and ran out 4-1 winners.

Emery doesn’t take losing lying down though and just 2 seasons later he was back in the final and taking his revenge on another English club, the unlucky victims being Ole’s Man United.

Back in Spain again Unai had taken over at Villarreal in the summer of 2020 and in his first season there he won them their first ever European title, leading them to an 11-10 penalty triumph over the sleeping giants from Old Trafford. Even in their diminished state there were very few people who backed Villarreal to secure victory over the European juggernauts, but they hadn’t counted on the Emery way… this is a man who understands the Europa League like he designed the competition himself.

The next season he took Villarreal all the way to the 2021-22 Champions League Semi-final, not bad for an underdog in La Liga.

Being able to win the Europa League with Spanish teams wasn’t enough for Emery though and perhaps he felt he had something to prove in the English game, after his less than stellar time at Arsenal, and he decided that Aston Villa were the team for him in October 2022.

He came in at a bad time for the club as Steven Gerrard’s time at the helm had seen them drop to 16th in the league table and just 2 points above the bottom 3, so Emery set to work.

Villa finished that season in 7th place and back into Europe for the first time since 1982, a mere 41 years previous.

Sure they lost in the Semi-finals of that Europa Conference League campaign but they did so to the eventual winners, an Olympiacos team fighting to earn their place in the final at their home ground. This blow was dented somewhat by qualification to the Champions League for the 2024-25 season.

However a loss in the Quarter-finals to an all conquering PSG team, that would go on to win the final 5-0, convinced Emery that having tried the other European competitions it was time to take Villa back into his competition in 2025-26.

Back in his comfort zone of the Europa League, which really should be renamed the Emery League, he helped them waltz to the final and even banished the ghost of his domestic failure in 2019 by leading Villa to Semi-final success over fellow English team Nottingham Forrest.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with a few Villa fans a couple of weekends ago and when I mentioned the Europa League final, their first European final since 1982, they were unanimous in their opinion…. we will win.

They knew who they had in the dugout and just what he is capable of in this competition and they were right.

This win makes it 5 Europa League Titles for Unai Emery and in the Champions League that’s enough for a team to get given the trophy for keeps, so it’s hardly a stretch to say it should work the same for coaches too across all European competitions.

Win it 5 times and you get to keep the trophy, so UEFA get too it and give Emery his trophy, he is the master of the Europa League.