Unai Emery's Quest for Super Cup Glory

Unai Emery, the Europa League king, has one trophy that keeps slipping away.

He has conquered Europe’s second-tier competition five times, the latest with Aston Villa in May, ending the club’s 30-year wait for silverware with victory over Freiburg in Istanbul. Yet the Super Cup, that one-off clash between continental champions, still refuses to bend to him.

On Wednesday in Salzburg, he gets another crack at it.

Emery’s missing piece

This will be Emery’s fourth Super Cup. The previous three have all ended in frustration, and not against modest opposition either.

Real Madrid first denied him in 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice for Carlo Ancelotti’s side to overpower Sevilla. A year later, Lionel Messi dragged Barcelona through an outrageous 5-4 extra-time win, again at Sevilla’s expense. By 2016, Emery had already left for Paris St-Germain when Sevilla lost another Super Cup to Real.

His most recent attempt came in 2021 with Villarreal, who pushed Chelsea all the way in Dublin before losing on penalties. Close. Agonisingly close. But still no trophy.

For a coach wired like Emery, those scars do not fade easily. Last season he openly chased third place in the Premier League with Villa because he had never achieved it there. They finished fourth. A triumph in almost every sense, yet you know it will have bothered him.

The Super Cup will be no different. Some still see it as a glorified friendly, a glamorous warm-up with medals. Emery does not. Not when there is a trophy on the line, not when a career defined by details keeps circling the same missing line on the CV.

PSG again – and old wounds

The stage this time is Red Bull Arena, against his former club PSG, with around 6,000 Villa supporters making the trip to Austria. The narrative writes itself: Emery versus the Champions League holders, the back-to-back kings of Europe, chasing a competition that has taunted him for a decade.

He knows the history. So do they.

This is a rerun of last season’s Champions League quarter-final, one of the wildest ties of Emery’s Villa reign. Trailing 3-1 from the first leg at Parc des Princes, Villa then fell 5-1 behind on aggregate in Birmingham. The tie looked dead. Embarrassing, even.

Then Villa erupted.

They surged back from 2-0 down on the night to win 3-2, roaring through the second half and dragging PSG into a scrap they did not want. The French side survived, edging through 5-4 on aggregate, but the impression Villa left lingered.

Vitinha has not forgotten it. The Portugal midfielder, already a four-time Ligue 1 winner, called it “such a difficult test, especially the second half” and spoke with clear respect about what awaits in Salzburg. PSG, he insisted, are still hungry, still chasing trophies, even if he admitted their pre-season had been “a little short”.

There is no sense from Paris that this is a throwaway night. Not from Vitinha. Not from Marquinhos, who underlined how much PSG want to keep stacking trophies and warned that “there’ll be plenty of obstacles” despite their recent success. The defender talked about a squad that “want more” and have worked to arrive “in the best condition”.

The message is simple: they are not here on holiday.

A very different Villa

Villa, though, will look very different from the side that rattled PSG 484 days ago.

Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have gone. Amadou Onana is out until next year. Boubacar Kamara is only just back from a serious knee injury suffered in January and is still feeling his way into full sharpness.

The spine that drove that comeback has been disrupted further by Emery’s decision to rest his World Cup contingent. Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have all been left at home, granted a month off after their summer exertions.

The upshot? There is a real possibility that only four of the starters from that famous night against PSG will begin in Austria. Five of the substitutes from that game are no longer at the club. For a team that has felt so stable, so relentlessly consistent under Emery, this is a jolt.

John McGinn has lived the entire transformation. Eight years at Villa Park gives him perspective, and he is honest about the churn.

“A lot has changed in the eight years I’ve been here,” the captain said, pointing to the calibre of talent now passing through the club. When you sign the best young English players and push deep into Europe, interest comes. Players move. The squad evolves.

McGinn insists Villa are ready for that evolution. He talks about structure, standards, rules – the pillars behind their rise. He talks about being “really excited about the new Aston Villa”, about a core that remains in place, a manager whose methods have not shifted, and a group still burning to “achieve more”.

Plenty thought Villa had already hit their ceiling, he reminded everyone. They were wrong.

Does this one matter?

So what is the Super Cup for Emery and Villa? A measuring stick against the European champions? A chance to avenge that quarter-final? Or just another shiny plate at the end of pre-season?

The comparisons with the Community Shield are obvious. Arsenal and Manchester City treated that as a serious contest on Sunday, yet the wider debate rumbled on: is it a real trophy or a dressed-up friendly?

Emery answered that in his own way.

He spoke about McGinn reminding him of the Chelsea defeat. About the chance to turn those near-misses into something tangible. “A trophy is something that can give us a special moment,” he said. For him, for his players, for a club that has waited decades to feel like this again.

PSG arrive as favourites. They know it, he knows it, everyone in Salzburg knows it. But Emery is relishing the test, talking about how Villa can measure their “capacity” against the Champions League winners, how this is exactly the kind of stage they now expect to occupy.

Carlo Ancelotti sits on five Super Cup titles, Pep Guardiola on four. Emery, the Europa League specialist, is still searching for his first. The competition may not define a season, but on nights like this, it can say a lot about where a club – and a coach – are heading.

In Salzburg, under the lights, with his past in one dugout and his present in the other, Emery gets another chance to answer the question himself.