Emery's Quest for the Super Cup with Aston Villa

Unai Emery owns the Europa League. Five titles, the latest carved out with Aston Villa in May when Freiburg were swept aside in Istanbul to end a 30-year wait for silverware.

Yet one European trophy keeps slipping through his fingers.

The Super Cup.

On Wednesday night in Salzburg, the Spaniard takes a fourth swing at it as his Villa side meet Champions League winners Paris St-Germain at Red Bull Arena. For a coach obsessed with details and margins, this is not a glossy friendly. It is a blemish he wants gone.

A king without a crown

Emery has built a reputation as Europe’s knockout specialist, but the Super Cup has repeatedly shut the door in his face.

• Real Madrid.
• Barcelona.
• Chelsea.

Three giants, three defeats.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s double did for his Sevilla side in 2014. A year later, Lionel Messi dragged Barcelona through a wild 5-4 extra-time epic. By 2016, Emery had already left for PSG when Sevilla fell again to Real.

His most recent shot came with Villarreal in 2021, a penalty shootout loss to Chelsea in Dublin. Close. Agonisingly so. Still empty-handed.

Now comes another chance, against a club he once managed, with around 6,000 Villa supporters heading to Austria to see if their manager can finally crack the code.

“He was reminding me last week,” Emery said, nodding towards captain John McGinn as he recalled that Chelsea defeat. The smile was wry, not warm. He has not forgotten.

“Of course, it’s an opportunity. A trophy is something that can give us a special moment. To play for trophies is, as a professional, our objective.

“PSG are the favourites but I am looking forward to playing, how we can test this match against PSG with our capacity?

“As a coach, as a player, as a club, it’s a trophy. It’s one thing that makes us proud of how we are and how we arrive here.”

Does the Super Cup really matter?

Every August, the same question returns. Is this a serious prize or just a glamorous curtain-raiser with a medal at the end?

Carlo Ancelotti clearly treats it as the former. He has five Super Cup wins – two with AC Milan, three with Real Madrid – more than anyone. Pep Guardiola sits one behind after lifting it with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

One of Ancelotti’s triumphs came at Emery’s expense in 2014, when Real beat Sevilla. The Italian has turned the game into another mark of dominance. Emery wants it to be a mark of progress.

The comparison with the Community Shield is obvious. Arsenal and Manchester City traded blows on Sunday in a match that looked and felt like a serious contest, even if some will always file it under “pre-season”.

Inside PSG’s camp, there is no suggestion they are treating Salzburg as a tune-up.

Vitinha, already a four-time Ligue 1 champion, brushed aside any idea that a team chasing back-to-back Champions League crowns might relax here, though he admitted PSG’s “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.

Defender Marquinhos echoed that edge, even as PSG grumbled about the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena and were handed an extra one by Uefa.

“Just because we’ve won things these past seasons, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We know there’ll be plenty of obstacles,” he 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.”

Echoes of a thriller

This is not a fresh pairing. It is a rerun of last season’s Champions League quarter-final, a tie that turned into one of the clearest statements yet of what Emery has built at Villa.

The numbers still sting in Birmingham. Trailing 3-1 from the first leg at Parc des Princes and then collapsing to 2-0 down at home, Villa looked buried at 5-1 behind on aggregate.

Then something snapped.

They tore into PSG, rattled them, and won 3-2 on the night, going out 5-4 overall but walking off to a roar that sounded like a club stepping back into Europe’s top tier.

It left a mark on PSG as well.

“It was such a difficult test, especially the second half,” Vitinha admitted. “We’ll be ready but we’re conscious of how difficult it’s going to be.”

A very different Villa

The Villa side that pushed PSG to the brink that night will look nothing like the one that walks out in Austria. Only 484 days have passed, but the squad has been sharply reshaped.

• Morgan Rogers,
• Lucas Digne
• Youri Tielemans

have gone. Amadou Onana will not play again this year after injury. Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad but only just returning from a serious knee problem suffered in January.

Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have all been left at home after their World Cup exertions, Emery granting them a month off.

All of that points to a startling statistic: there is a real chance only four of the starters from that quarter-final will begin this Super Cup. Five of the substitutes that night have also moved on.

For a team that has felt so stable under Emery, such churn is jarring. Inside the dressing room, though, the message is continuity, not chaos.

“A lot has changed in the eight years I’ve been here,” McGinn said.

“When you are signing the best young English talent and players are performing at the highest level there will be interest.

“We have a structure in place, standards and rules which have made us a success. I’m really excited about the new Aston Villa.

“We have our main core, the same manager, same methods and same desire to achieve more. A lot of people thought we reached a ceiling a couple of seasons ago and we proved them wrong.”

The next step

That is what Wednesday represents for Villa: not a friendly, not a distraction, but a test of whether their ceiling has shifted again.

For Emery, it is more personal. He has Europa Leagues stacked up like novels on a shelf, but this slimmer, shinier book keeps slipping from his grasp.

In Salzburg, against the club that once employed him and the team that denied him last spring, he gets another crack at it.

How many more will he need?