Unai Emery aims for quintuple in Europa League with Aston Villa

Aston Villa – Fribourg

Call him the Europa League Mister. With Sevilla and Villarreal, Unai Emery has already won the trophy four times. He will try to give Aston Villa this little European cup on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, against Fribourg in Istanbul. It would be his fifth personally and the first trophy for the Villans in over 30 years.

“Europe means a lot to me. First of all, out of gratitude towards European football and, especially, towards the teams with which I have been able to compete in Europe,” explained the 54-year-old coach to the Spanish newspaper Marca. “In Seville, I understood what the Europa League represented for the club and the fans. They instilled in me this spirit of competition, and we won it three times,” he continued.

Thanks to Birmingham’s good faith, Emery, who arrived in 2022, approaches his sixth continental final as the favorite, with a team that includes internationals in every line, like the goalkeeper of the Argentine world champions Emiliano Martinez, the French left-back Lucas Digne, and the English forward Ollie Watkins, in great form.

Already holding the record for Europa League victories (with Sevilla in 2014, 2015, and 2016, and Villarreal in 2021, with a defeat in the final with Arsenal in 2019), the Spanish coach has the opportunity to bring Aston Villa back to the forefront of European football, 34 years after the 1982 championship in the European Cup, and to win a first title since 1996 (League Cup).

“Prestige Issue”

“It is a new step in our progression. We went from the Europa Conference League to the Champions League, where we reached the quarterfinals against PSG, and now we are in the Europa League final,” declared Emery. “It is a matter of prestige, it allows us to reposition the club in Europe, to remind everyone that this club won a European Cup several decades ago, and to reaffirm it as a major European brand.”

In Istanbul, the Villans must end a long series of failures in finals: League Cup (2010, 2020) and FA Cup (2000, 2015). Relegated to the Championship in 2016, returning to the Premier League in 2019, Aston Villa has made a name for itself among the top English clubs since Unai Emery’s arrival in 2022.

This season in the Premier League, the Spaniard, a meticulous and extremely popular coach who experienced two mixed years at PSG (2016-2018), managed to turn things around after a catastrophic start: three draws and two losses, before spectacularly stringing together twelve victories in thirteen matches. Then, he kept the team at the top of the table to secure, before the final day, the valuable ticket for the next Champions League.

Fribourg, not at all favored

In England, he enjoys a flattering reputation for his achievements with Aston Villa, a club he took over in a difficult situation when he replaced Steven Gerrard in October 2022. He worked miracles from the first months, pulling the club out of relegation to take it to seventh place in the end, winning 15 out of 25 Premier League matches.

Emery did even better in his first full season on the Villans’ bench (2023-2024): a Europa Conference League semi-final and a fourth-place finish in the league, qualifying for the Champions League.

On the other side, Fribourg, 7th in the Bundesliga, will play its first-ever European final after overturning Braga, despite a defeat in the first leg.