Unai Emery's Quest for Super Cup Glory with Aston Villa
Unai Emery has built an empire in Europe’s second competition. Five Europa League titles, the latest with Aston Villa in May, when Freiburg were swept aside in Istanbul and a 30-year trophy drought in Birmingham finally cracked.
Yet the Super Cup keeps turning its back on him.
On Wednesday night in Salzburg, against Champions League winners Paris St-Germain, he gets a fourth crack at it. Same stage, same stakes: one game, one trophy, one more chance to close a gap in an otherwise glittering European résumé.
The one line missing from the CV
Emery’s obsession with details is well known. Last season he made no secret of his target: third place in the Premier League, something he had not yet achieved with Villa. They finished fourth. A triumph by any reasonable standard, but not quite enough for a man who lives in the margins between “good” and “perfect”.
The Super Cup sits in that same uncomfortable space for him. Not a failure, not really. But unfinished business.
His record in the game is brutal. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea. Three different giants, three different defeats. Cristiano Ronaldo struck twice in 2014 to give Real the trophy against his Sevilla side. A year later, a 5-4 extra-time epic against Lionel Messi’s Barcelona ended the same way: Emery on the wrong side of the podium.
By the time Sevilla lost the 2016 Super Cup to Real, he had already gone to PSG. In 2021, with Villarreal, he dragged Chelsea to penalties in Dublin and still watched the cup go elsewhere.
Now comes another shot, this time with Aston Villa, against his former club, in a compact Red Bull Arena that will hold 6,000 travelling Villa fans and the weight of his own history.
He knows it. His players know it. John McGinn certainly knows it.
The Villa captain has been reminding his manager about that Chelsea defeat. Emery has responded in the only way he knows: by treating this like a final that matters.
“A trophy is something that can give us a special moment,” he said. For him, for his players, for a club that has only just rediscovered the habit of lifting silverware.
PSG are favourites. Emery says it himself. But that only sharpens the edge of the occasion. He wants to see how far his team can push the back-to-back European champions, how far this Villa project has really come.
Is this more than a glamorous friendly?
The Super Cup often lives in a strange space. Officially, it is a European trophy. In practice, it can look like a high-end pre-season showpiece with a medal at the end, not unlike the Community Shield that Arsenal and Manchester City contested on Sunday.
PSG are keen to shut down that narrative. Vitinha, a serial Ligue 1 winner with the club, brushed aside any suggestion that this is a soft launch to the season, though he did admit their “pre-season was a little short”.
“We’re still hungry for victories, trophies. It’s very difficult to maintain those levels but we’re still hungry,” the Portugal midfielder said.
Marquinhos struck the same note. For a club that has built its modern identity around relentless domestic success, the message is clear: you don’t pick and choose trophies.
“Just because we’ve won things these past seasons, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We know there’ll be plenty of obstacles,” the defender said. “Personally, I want more, and each player in the squad is like that. We’ve all worked to get here, to arrive in the best condition.”
PSG were even unhappy with the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena, prompting Uefa to hand them an additional space. Margins matter at this level, even off the pitch.
Echoes of a quarter-final that changed perceptions
This is not just a one-off meeting. It is a sequel.
Wednesday’s clash is a repeat of last season’s Champions League quarter-final, a tie that did as much as anything to alter how Europe looks at Aston Villa under Emery.
At Parc des Princes, PSG took control, winning 3-1. In Birmingham, they surged 5-1 ahead on aggregate and looked ready to stroll into the last four. Villa were staring at a humiliation.
Then they roared.
From 2-0 down on the night, they came back to win 3-2, pushing PSG all the way before slipping out 5-4 on aggregate. It was breathless, chaotic, and a statement: Emery had turned Villa into a team capable of trading blows with the elite, not just admiring them from a distance.
Vitinha hasn’t forgotten.
“It was such a difficult test, especially the second half,” he said. PSG will arrive in Salzburg wary, not complacent.
A new look Villa, same ruthless standards
That quarter-final second leg was only 484 days ago. The team that walks out in Austria will look very different.
Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have been sold. Amadou Onana is sidelined until next year. Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad but only just returning from the serious knee injury that wrecked his season in January.
Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have all been given a month off after their World Cup exertions and have not travelled. The spine that dragged Villa through so many high-pressure nights will be watching from afar.
The result? Emery could start with only four of the XI who faced PSG 18 months ago. Five of the substitutes from that night have gone as well. For a side that has felt so settled, so consistent under this manager, it is a jolt.
McGinn has lived through it all.
“A lot has changed in the eight years I’ve been here,” the captain said. When Villa move for the best young English talent, when players shine on the biggest stages, the market reacts. Offers come. Squads evolve.
Yet inside the club, the message is continuity. Structure. Standards. Rules. The framework Emery has built is designed to withstand departures.
“We have a structure in place, standards and rules which have made us a success. I’m really excited about the new Aston Villa,” McGinn said. The core remains: same manager, same methods, same appetite to prove that the ceiling others imagined for them was an illusion.
Emery’s chance to close the circle
Across Europe, Carlo Ancelotti sits with five Super Cup wins, two with AC Milan and three with Real Madrid. Pep Guardiola has four, spread across Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. Ancelotti’s third came at Emery’s expense in 2014, when Real beat Sevilla.
Those are the names and numbers Emery is brushing up against now. He already owns the Europa League like no one else. The Super Cup has been his blind spot.
In Salzburg, against his old club, with a reshaped squad and a fanbase that has rediscovered its swagger, he walks into a familiar kind of night: a European final, a trophy on the line, a narrative waiting to be rewritten.
For Emery and for Villa, this is not just about adding another piece of silver to the cabinet.
It is a chance to prove that Istanbul was not the peak, just the beginning.
