Emery's Quest for Super Cup Glory with Aston Villa

Unai Emery has built an empire in Europe’s second-tier competition. Five Europa League titles, the latest carved out with Aston Villa in Istanbul in May, when Freiburg were beaten and a 30-year wait for silverware in Birmingham finally ended.

Yet the Super Cup keeps spitting him out.

On Wednesday night in Salzburg, at the Red Bull Arena, the Spaniard walks back into a familiar storyline. For the fourth time, he stands 90 minutes away from a trophy that refuses to join his collection, as his reshaped Villa side take on back-to-back Champions League winners Paris St-Germain.

This is not a coach who shrugs at the details. Last season he spoke openly of wanting third place in the Premier League, precisely because he had not done it with Villa. They finished fourth. A triumph by any rational measure, but Emery does not operate on rational measures. That kind of near-miss lingers.

So will this, if it slips away again.

A trophy that nags at a serial winner

Emery has known only pain in this fixture. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea: three heavyweight opponents, three defeats. Two with Sevilla, then that penalty shootout loss with Villarreal to Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea in Dublin in 2021.

The scars are specific. A 5-4 extra-time epic against Lionel Messi’s Barcelona in 2015, a year after Cristiano Ronaldo’s double dragged the Super Cup to Madrid. In 2016, Sevilla lost again to Real, but Emery had already gone, lured to PSG before that particular wound was opened.

Now he faces his old club, chasing a different kind of closure.

In Salzburg, with around 6,000 Villa fans making the trip, the stage feels smaller than a Champions League final but sharper than a pre-season friendly. It sits awkwardly in the calendar, yet it needles at managers who live for the ledger of honours.

Emery did not pretend otherwise as he sat alongside captain John McGinn, who had been teasing him about that Chelsea defeat.

“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,” Emery said, before quickly framing the scale of the task. “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.”

Carlo Ancelotti sits at the top of the Super Cup tree with five titles – two with AC Milan, three with Real Madrid. Pep Guardiola stalks him with four. Ancelotti’s third came at Emery’s expense in 2014, when Real beat Sevilla.

Those numbers matter to coaches like Emery. They watch those lists.

Friendly in name, not in edge

Critics will label this another Community Shield: glossy, global, but essentially a dressed-up warm-up. The players do not talk like that.

Vitinha, already a four-time Ligue 1 champion with PSG, brushed off the idea that the French side would treat it as anything less than a real final, though he admitted 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. PSG, who were irritated enough by the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena that Uefa granted them an extra one, are not in Austria to cruise.

“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.”

The message from the French champions was clear: this is a trophy, not a training exercise.

Echoes of a quarter-final that changed Villa’s status

The matchup carries fresh history. This is a straight rerun of the 2024-25 Champions League quarter-final, a tie that did as much as anything to change the way Europe talks about Aston Villa.

Back then, Villa left Parc des Princes trailing 3-1 and looked buried when PSG stretched the aggregate score to 5-1 in Birmingham. The tie felt dead. The stadium did not.

What followed was a surge of defiance that has stayed in PSG minds. Villa came roaring back from 2-0 down on the night to win 3-2, eventually going out 5-4 on aggregate. They exited the competition, but not the conversation.

It was one of the clearest signs Emery had dragged Villa into the orbit of the continent’s elite. Not as tourists. As contenders.

Vitinha still feels it.

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

A different Villa, same core obsession

Yet that Villa, the one that rattled PSG, has been stripped and rebuilt in barely 16 months.

Just 484 days after that quarter-final, the side Emery sends out in Austria will look strikingly different. Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have gone. Amadou Onana is out until next year with injury. Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad after a serious knee problem but only just returning to fitness.

Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have not even travelled, granted a month off by Emery after their World Cup exertions.

The result is a rare sight under this manager: instability. For a team that has been one of the Premier League’s most settled, only four of the starters from that PSG tie are likely to begin in Salzburg. Five of the substitutes from that night are no longer at the club.

McGinn, who has lived through Villa’s transformation, did not shy away from the scale of the churn.

“A lot has changed in the eight years I've been here,” the captain 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.”

That is the backdrop as Emery walks into another Super Cup. A new-look squad, an old opponent, and a competition many still treat as a footnote.

For a man who counts trophies like milestones, and who has watched this one slip away three times, Salzburg offers something else entirely: the chance to close a circle, and to show that Aston Villa now belong in every conversation that matters.