Unai Emery's Quest for the Elusive Super Cup
Unai Emery has built a dynasty in Europe’s second competition. Five Europa League titles, the most recent with Aston Villa in May, when Freiburg were swept aside in Istanbul and a 30-year wait for silverware in the Midlands finally ended.
Yet the Super Cup keeps dodging him.
On Wednesday in Salzburg, at Red Bull Arena, he walks back into familiar territory: a European final, a heavyweight opponent, and a personal itch that refuses to go away. Aston Villa against Paris St-Germain. Europa League winners against back-to-back Champions League winners. Emery against his own history.
He has been here three times and left empty-handed. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea – the roll call of his conquerors is brutal and elite. With Sevilla he ran into Cristiano Ronaldo and then Lionel Messi, losing 2-0 to Madrid in 2014 and 5-4 after extra time to Barcelona in 2015, Messi dragging Barça over the line in a classic. By the time Sevilla fell again to Madrid in 2016, Emery had already gone to PSG.
In 2021, with Villarreal, he went the distance with Chelsea in Dublin and lost on penalties. Close, but not enough. The competition has become his one European blemish.
Now he gets another crack at it, against the club that once employed him.
A perfectionist chasing the missing line on his CV
Emery’s standards are unforgiving, mostly for himself. Last season he openly targeted third place in the Premier League with Villa, not because anyone demanded it, but because he had not done it before with this club. They finished fourth. A superb achievement by any rational measure, yet one that will have gnawed at a manager who measures progress in tiny increments.
The Super Cup occupies a similar space. Some in the game shrug and call it a dressed‑up friendly, a glossy August showpiece with a trophy bolted on. But Emery does not think in those terms. For him, a trophy is a trophy, another landmark, another layer of proof that his methods work.
He knows the narrative. He also knows what this could mean to Villa.
With around 6,000 Villa supporters expected in Austria, Emery spoke of the opportunity, of the chance to turn a strong story into something more permanent. This is not just about revenge on a competition. It is about a club that has re-emerged as a serious European force under his watch and now wants something tangible to show for it on the continental stage.
PSG arrive as favourites, as they almost always do. Emery framed it as a test: how far his reshaped side can stretch themselves against the team that owns Europe’s biggest prize.
PSG treat it like business, not a bonus
If anyone is tempted to label this as a warm-up, PSG’s dressing room is not playing along.
Vitinha, already a four-time Ligue 1 champion with the club, brushed aside the idea that a team who have just defended their Champions League crown might treat the Super Cup as a gentle run-out. He did admit their pre-season has been short, the rhythm still building, but the message was clear: the hunger remains.
The midfielder talked about the difficulty of maintaining those levels, of staying greedy for trophies when you already have so many. The challenge is mental as much as physical. PSG, he insisted, are still leaning into it.
Marquinhos echoed the same theme. A club accustomed to lifting silverware cannot afford to drift into complacency, he argued. The defender spoke of obstacles, of the need to keep demanding more, of a squad that has worked to arrive in Salzburg in the best possible condition. Even a minor irritation – PSG were unhappy with the size of their dressing room at Red Bull Arena and were given an additional one by Uefa – underlined their insistence on standards.
This is not a team turning up for a ceremonial kickabout. They want another line on their honours list.
The quarter-final that changed how Europe viewed Villa
This is not a new meeting, either. The last time these two collided, in the Champions League quarter-final of 2024-25, Villa walked away beaten but transformed.
They had trailed 3-1 from the first leg at Parc des Princes. When PSG surged into a 2-0 lead in Birmingham, the aggregate score ballooned to 5-1 and the tie looked dead. Villa were staring at a lesson, not a contest.
Then came the response.
Emery’s team roared back, turning 2-0 down into a 3-2 win on the night. They went out 5-4 on aggregate but left a different impression entirely: a side that could go toe-to-toe with Europe’s elite, that refused to accept the script, that made PSG sweat right to the end.
Vitinha admitted those nights have stayed with the French champions. The second half in Birmingham, he said, was a brutal test. PSG will not underestimate Villa this time. They have seen the intensity up close.
A new-look Villa, same iron framework
Yet the Villa that step out in Salzburg will not be the same one that rattled PSG 484 days ago.
Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have gone. Amadou Onana, a key part of Emery’s midfield rebuild, is out injured until next year. Boubacar Kamara is back in the squad but only just returning from a serious knee injury suffered in January.
Then there is the spine that is missing by design. Emi Martinez, Ezri Konsa and Ollie Watkins have not travelled after their World Cup exertions, Emery granting them a month off. It opens the door to a very different starting XI. There is a realistic prospect that only four of the players who began that quarter-final second leg will start here. Five of the substitutes from that night are no longer at the club.
For a team that has prided itself on continuity under Emery, that is a dramatic overhaul in a short space of time.
John McGinn, who has lived through the club’s entire modern journey, did not shy away from that reality. Eight years at Villa have brought constant change, and this summer is no different. When you recruit the best young English talent, when players perform at the highest level, other clubs circle. That is the ecosystem Villa now live in.
Yet McGinn spoke of structure. Of standards. Of rules that underpin everything and have carried Villa from mid-table drift to Champions League football and European trophies. He called this the “new Aston Villa”, and he sounded genuinely energised by it.
The core remains: same manager, same methods, same ferocious drive to prove that the ceiling people once imagined for this club was an illusion.
One night, one gap to close
So here they are again, Emery and PSG, crossing paths in a different configuration.
For PSG, it is about reinforcing dominance, stacking another trophy on a growing pile and sending a message that their appetite is intact. For Villa, it is about something more nuanced: validating their rise, testing a reshaped squad against the very top, and giving Emery the one European prize that keeps slipping from his grasp.
Is the Super Cup a glamorous friendly? On paper, maybe. On the touchline in Salzburg, under the lights and with a perfectionist coach chasing the last missing line on his European CV, it will feel like anything but.
