Unai Emery's Quest for Super Cup Glory with Aston Villa

Unai Emery has built an empire in Europe’s secondary competition. Five Europa League titles, the latest carved out with Aston Villa in Istanbul in May, ending a 30-year wait for silverware at the club. That night against Freiburg only deepened his reputation as the master of the marathon.

But the Super Cup? That keeps slipping through his fingers.

On Wednesday in Salzburg, under the lights at Red Bull Arena, Emery gets another crack at the one that keeps saying no. Aston Villa against Paris St-Germain. Europa League winners against back-to-back Champions League winners. A coach obsessed with trophies against a club that measures itself in them.

This will be Emery’s fourth Super Cup. He has lost the previous three.

The one missing from the collection

For a manager so defined by European success, the Super Cup has become an awkward gap on the shelf.

Real Madrid beat his Sevilla side in 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice. A year later, Lionel Messi dragged Barcelona through a 5-4 extra-time thriller against the same Andalusian team. By the time Sevilla lost again to Real in 2016, Emery had already left for PSG.

He returned to the stage with Villarreal in 2021, only to lose on penalties to Chelsea in Dublin.

Those nights linger. So does last season’s Premier League finish. Emery publicly set third place as the target with Villa. They finished fourth. A magnificent season by any normal measure, but not quite the one he wanted. With Emery, the bar is always a fraction higher than the final outcome.

The Super Cup sits in that same space. Some call it a glamorous friendly dressed up as a final. For him, it is another chance to turn opportunity into hardware.

“He was reminding me last week,” Emery said, nodding towards captain John McGinn, about that Chelsea defeat. There was a smile, but not a dismissive one. He feels these things.

“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.”

A different kind of pre-season

Carlo Ancelotti leads the all-time Super Cup roll of honour with five titles, Pep Guardiola sits one behind on four. Emery, for all his European pedigree, is still waiting for his first.

So what is this game, really? A curtain-raiser with a medal, or a trophy that genuinely matters?

PSG are treating it as the latter. Vitinha, now with four Ligue 1 titles behind him, brushed aside any suggestion that the Champions League winners would coast through it, even if 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 was just as clear. For a club that has grown used to collecting domestic titles, the defender framed the Super Cup as another obligation, not an optional extra.

“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.”

PSG were irritated enough by the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena that Uefa gave them an additional one. Details, yes, but they speak to a mindset: this is business, not a friendly excursion.

Echoes of a quarter-final that changed perceptions

This is not a new meeting. It is a rerun of that wild Champions League quarter-final from the 2024-25 season, a tie that went a long way to changing how Europe talks about Aston Villa.

PSG led 3-1 from the first leg at Parc des Princes. In Birmingham, they stretched the aggregate lead to 5-1. The tie looked over.

Then Villa erupted.

From 2-0 down on the night, they surged back to win 3-2, falling just short at 5-4 on aggregate. It was not enough to go through, but it was enough to make people look at Emery’s side differently. This was no plucky outsider, no tourist in the latter stages. This was a team that could go toe to toe with Europe’s elite and make them sweat.

That impression has stayed with PSG’s players. Vitinha called it “such a difficult test, especially the second half”, and his tone carried the respect of someone who has felt the pressure of Villa’s surge up close.

“We'll be ready,” he said, “but we're conscious of how difficult it's going to be.”

A new-look Villa, same hard edge

The Villa that walks out in Austria will not be the same one that rattled PSG 484 days ago.

Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have all been sold. Amadou Onana is out until next year. Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad but only just returning from the serious knee injury he suffered in January.

Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have not travelled after their World Cup exertions, Emery granting them a month off. As a result, only four of the starters from that quarter-final second leg are likely to begin this Super Cup. Five of the substitutes that night have left the club altogether.

For a team that has come to be defined by its continuity under Emery, that is a significant shift.

“A lot has changed in the eight years I've been here,” McGinn said. He has seen Villa from the Championship grind to Champions League glamour, and now into the realm where losing a European quarter-final by a single goal is a source of frustration, not pride alone.

“When you are signing the best young English talent and players are performing at the highest level there will be interest,” he added. The consequence of progress is churn. The core remains, the cast around it evolves.

“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.”

Another step, or another scar?

So Emery returns to a familiar stage with a familiar question hanging over him.

Is the Super Cup just a polished friendly? Not to him. Not to a manager who counts trophies, not plaudits. Not to a club trying to prove that Istanbul was not a one-off, but the start of something.

PSG arrive as favourites, as he readily admits. They carry the Champions League crown, the deeper squad, the bigger budget. Villa bring a reshaped side, a manager with unfinished business, and 6,000 travelling supporters who have waited decades for nights like this to feel normal.

For Emery, the Europa League king, this is not about legacy in the grand sense. He already has that. It is about closing a circle, turning near-misses into something tangible, something that fits alongside all those Europa League medals.

If Villa can do that against his former club, on a stage that has repeatedly denied him, it will say something powerful about where this team is heading – and about how high their ceiling really is.