Emery's Quest for the Elusive UEFA Super Cup

Unai Emery has built a throne in the Europa League. Five titles now, the latest carved out in Istanbul in May when Aston Villa ended a 30-year wait for silverware by beating Freiburg.

But one trophy keeps slipping through his fingers.

On Wednesday night in Salzburg, under the lights of Red Bull Arena and against his former club Paris St-Germain, Emery takes a fourth swing at the UEFA Super Cup. Three times he has stood on this stage. Three times he has watched someone else lift the cup.

This one nags at him.

The one gap on an obsessive’s CV

Emery is wired for targets. Last season, he spoke openly about wanting third place in the Premier League with Villa because he had never done it there. They finished fourth. A magnificent achievement for the club, yet not quite enough for a coach who lives off fine margins.

The Super Cup sits in that same space for him. Not a failure, but an itch.

His record in the game reads like a roll call of European giants. Real Madrid beat his Sevilla side in 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice. A year later, Lionel Messi dragged Barcelona through a wild 5-4 extra-time win over Sevilla. In 2021, with Villarreal, he went all the way to penalties against Chelsea in Dublin and still lost.

By the time Sevilla fell to Real Madrid again in 2016, Emery had already left for PSG. The stage moved on without him. The trophy did too.

Now he returns to this match with Aston Villa, against PSG, at a stadium where around 6,000 Villa fans will try to turn Salzburg claret and blue. It feels like a circle closing.

“He was reminding me last week,” Emery said, nodding at captain John McGinn as the Scot teased him about that Chelsea defeat. The smile was there, but so was the edge.

“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.”

Friendly, or something more?

The Super Cup often gets thrown into the same box as the Community Shield – shiny, high-profile, but tagged as a “glorified friendly”. Arsenal and Manchester City went through that routine on Sunday. Win it, enjoy it, move on.

Try telling PSG they are in Salzburg for a kickabout.

This is a club that has just gone back-to-back in the Champions League. Vitinha, with four Ligue 1 titles already behind him, dismissed any idea that the Super Cup is treated lightly, 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.

Defender Marquinhos echoed it. PSG, even in the small details, want their status to be felt. They were unhappy with the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena and were given an extra one by UEFA. That might sound trivial. It isn’t to them.

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

A quarter-final that changed perceptions

This isn’t just another European night between strangers. Villa and PSG know each other’s scars.

The Super Cup is a rerun of last season’s Champions League quarter-final, a tie that shifted how Europe looked at Aston Villa.

At Parc des Princes, PSG took control with a 3-1 first-leg win. In Birmingham, they stretched that advantage to 5-1 on aggregate. It should have been over.

Instead, Villa roared. Two goals down on the night, they dragged it back to 3-2, pushing PSG to the edge before going out 5-4 overall. They lost the tie, but gained something else: respect. It was one of the clearest signs that Emery had turned Villa into a side capable of trading punches with Europe’s elite.

Vitinha hasn’t forgotten.

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

A very different Villa, same ruthless standards

Here’s the twist: only 484 days have passed since that quarter-final, yet the Villa side that walks out in Austria will look dramatically different.

Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have all been sold. Amadou Onana, a key midfield presence, is out injured 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 been given a month off after the World Cup and have not travelled. The spine of the team, missing.

The numbers tell the story. There is a chance just four of the starters from that night against PSG will line up again. Five of the substitutes used that evening are no longer even at the club.

For a side that has felt so settled under Emery, so defined by continuity and repetition, this is a jolt.

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

“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 to Salzburg: a coach obsessed with details, a club in controlled evolution, a squad reshaped but still bristling with ambition.

Emery has his Europa League empire. PSG have their Champions League era. One of them will walk away from Red Bull Arena with another trophy, another line on a legacy.

For Emery, the question lingers: does this finally become the night the Super Cup stops being the one that got away?