Emery's Quest for Super Cup Glory Against PSG
Unai Emery has built an empire in Europe’s second competition. Five Europa League titles, the latest with Aston Villa in May, when Freiburg were swept aside in Istanbul and a 30-year wait for silverware in Birmingham finally snapped.
Yet one step above, the Super Cup keeps spitting him back out.
On Wednesday night in Salzburg, at Red Bull Arena, he gets another crack at it. A fourth attempt. Aston Villa against the back-to-back Champions League winners, Paris St-Germain. The Europa League specialist against the modern superclub he once coached.
The stage is familiar. The outcome, historically, has not been kind.
A perfectionist with a missing line on the CV
Emery has never hidden his obsession with detail or his appetite for milestones. Last season he spoke openly about wanting third place in the Premier League because he had not done it with Villa. They finished fourth. A triumph in almost any other context, yet you sense it still grates.
The Super Cup sits in the same category for him. Not essential to a legacy, but infuriating in its absence.
He has walked this tightrope before. Real Madrid beat his Sevilla in 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice. A year later, Barcelona, driven by Lionel Messi, edged a 5-4 extra-time thriller. In 2021, his Villarreal side pushed Chelsea to penalties in Dublin and still saw the trophy slip away.
Sevilla’s 2016 defeat to Real came after he had already departed for PSG, another reminder of a door closing just as he reached for the handle.
Now it is Villa, not Sevilla or Villarreal, who carry his ambition. Against his former club. With around 6,000 Villa fans travelling to Austria, many of them still riding the high of Istanbul and hungry for more.
Emery knows exactly what this represents.
“A trophy is something that can give us a special moment. To play for trophies is, as a professional, our objective,” he said, with captain John McGinn teasing him last week about that Chelsea loss.
PSG may be favourites. Emery does not flinch at that. “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.”
Super Cup: showpiece or serious business?
The Super Cup always provokes the same debate. Is it a glorified friendly with fireworks, or a genuine piece of silverware?
Carlo Ancelotti, with five wins – two at AC Milan, three at Real Madrid – clearly treated it as a competition to be collected. Pep Guardiola sits one behind him, with four across Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. These are not managers who waste energy on exhibitions.
Ancelotti’s third came against Emery’s Sevilla in 2014, another scar on the Spaniard’s Super Cup record.
The comparison with the Community Shield is inevitable. Arsenal and Manchester City traded that curtain-raiser on Sunday, a game that looks like pre-season on paper but feels like a statement once the whistle blows.
PSG are not treating this as a run-out. Vitinha, already a four-time Ligue 1 champion with the club, brushed off the idea that this is anything other than a trophy to be won, 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 went further. PSG, annoyed enough by the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena that Uefa granted them an extra one, are in no mood to relax their grip on the honours list.
“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.”
This is not a night off. Not for them. Certainly not for Emery.
Echoes of a quarter-final that changed how Villa were seen
This meeting carries fresh history. Just 484 days ago, Villa and PSG produced a wild Champions League quarter-final.
Villa arrived in Birmingham trailing 3-1 from the first leg at Parc des Princes. When PSG stretched the aggregate lead to 5-1, the tie looked dead. Emery’s side refused to accept the script.
They fought back from 2-0 down on the night to win 3-2, going out 5-4 on aggregate but leaving a deep impression on Europe. That second half, that surge, felt like a declaration that Aston Villa were no longer just a revival story, but a team that could stand toe-to-toe with the elite.
Vitinha has not forgotten.
“It was such a difficult test, especially the second half,” he said. PSG will not underestimate them this time. “We'll be ready but we're conscious of how difficult it's going to be.”
The pressure that night came from a settled, well-drilled Villa side. The version that walks out in Salzburg will look very different.
A new-look Villa, same iron core
This is where Emery’s task becomes more complex.
Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have gone. Amadou Onana is out until next year. Boubacar Kamara has made the squad but is only just returning from the serious knee injury he suffered in January.
Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins are all missing after their World Cup exertions, granted a month off by their manager. For a team that has built its rise on continuity and clear structure, that is a brutal level of disruption.
The numbers are stark. Only four of the starters from that quarter-final 18 months ago are likely to begin here. Five of the substitutes from that night have already left the club.
Yet the message from inside the camp is not one of anxiety, but evolution.
“A lot has changed in the eight years I've been here,” McGinn 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.”
This is the tension at the heart of Villa’s night in Salzburg: a club in transition, led by a coach who craves control, facing a PSG side that knows exactly what it wants – and usually gets it.
A chance to break the pattern
Emery’s Europa League record has given him a crown. The Super Cup has given him only bruises.
Now he stands in front of PSG, the club that once let him go, with a reshaped squad, a travelling army behind him and a chance to scratch out one of the few remaining gaps on his CV.
Friendly or not, curtain-raiser or not, this is the kind of game that tells players and supporters what sort of season lies ahead.
For Emery, the question is blunt: does the king of the Europa League finally conquer the one-night summit that has always sent him back down?
