Unai Emery's Quest for the Elusive Super Cup

Unai Emery has built an empire in Europe’s secondary 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 curtain-raiser keeps denying him.

The Super Cup has become Emery’s blind spot. On Wednesday in Salzburg, against Champions League winners Paris St‑Germain, he walks back into a familiar arena with a familiar itch: three times he has come for this trophy, three times he has gone home without it.

This is not a man who shrugs and moves on.

Last season he set his players a target that sounded almost modest from the outside: finish third in the Premier League. Not a title charge, not a miracle. Third. Because he had not done it with Villa. They finished fourth. Historic, impressive, transformative – and still, to a perfectionist, a mark missed.

The Super Cup sits in the same category. Officially, it is a one-off between European champions. Unofficially, it has long been dismissed in some corners as a glossy friendly with a medal at the end. Emery does not work in unofficial terms. For him, a trophy is a trophy, a line on the CV, a moment that fixes a team in time.

He has been here before, and against the biggest.

Real Madrid beat his Sevilla side in 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring twice to tilt the night. A year later, Barcelona – driven by Lionel Messi – edged a wild 5-4 extra-time epic. By the time Sevilla lost the 2016 edition to Real again, Emery had already gone to PSG. In 2021, with Villarreal, he took Chelsea to penalties in Dublin and still watched the cup slip away.

Three chances. Three giants. Three scars.

Now comes a fourth attempt, at Red Bull Arena, against the club he once coached and with around 6,000 Villa fans making the journey to Austria. The storylines are stacked before a ball is kicked.

On the training pitch this week, John McGinn has kept the memory of Dublin alive. The Villa captain has been reminding his manager of that Chelsea defeat, nudging, needling, knowing how Emery stores 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,” Emery said, leaning into the significance of the night rather than trying to play it down. PSG, he admitted, are favourites. The question that interests him is different: how can Villa measure themselves against this PSG, with their own growing “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.”

He knows the company he is chasing. Carlo Ancelotti sits on five Super Cup wins – two with AC Milan, three with Real Madrid. Pep Guardiola has four, spanning Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City. Ancelotti’s third came in that 2014 win over Emery’s Sevilla. The Italian and the Catalan have turned this fixture into another space to assert dominance. Emery wants to join that club, not admire it from across the room.

The wider debate about the Super Cup rumbles on. Is it closer to a Community Shield – Arsenal v Manchester City with a bit more glamour – than a full-blooded final? PSG’s dressing room mood in Salzburg tells its own story.

Vitinha, already with four Ligue 1 titles, brushed aside any idea that a team fresh from back-to-back Champions League triumphs might treat this as a gentle warm-up, though he did concede their “pre-season was a little short”. The hunger, he insisted, has not dimmed.

“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, the captain who has lifted so much in Paris, echoed that sense of edge. PSG were unhappy with the size of their allocated dressing room at Red Bull Arena and were given an extra one by Uefa. Details, yes, but details that show a club still obsessed with control, with standards, with winning.

“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.”

They have already felt Villa’s breath on their necks.

Echoes of a quarter-final that changed how Europe saw Villa

This is not just a Super Cup pairing; it is a quickfire reprise of one of last season’s most compelling Champions League ties. The quarter-final between these clubs in 2024‑25 shifted perceptions.

At Parc des Princes, PSG looked to have done the hard work with a 3-1 first-leg win. In Birmingham, when they surged 2-0 up on the night and 5-1 ahead on aggregate, the tie seemed dead.

Villa refused to accept the script. They came roaring back, turning 2-0 down into a 3-2 win, dragging the champions to the brink and exiting 5-4 on aggregate. For Emery, it was not a heroic failure; it was proof. Proof that his Villa could stand toe-to-toe with Europe’s elite, not just for 20 defiant minutes, but across a tie.

Those 90 minutes at Villa Park have not faded for PSG either. Vitinha admitted the memory still bites.

“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.”

The twist is that Wednesday’s Villa will not look much like that Villa.

Just 484 days on, Emery’s starting XI in Austria could contain only four players who began that quarter-final second leg. Morgan Rogers, Lucas Digne and Youri Tielemans have been sold. Amadou Onana is out until next year with injury. 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 – the spine of so much of Villa’s recent success – have not travelled after their World Cup exertions, granted a month off by Emery. Five of the substitutes from that night against PSG have also moved on.

For a team that had become one of the Premier League’s most settled and consistent under Emery, this is a jolt. A reset in real time.

“A lot has changed in the eight years I've been here,” McGinn said, reflecting on a club that has climbed from instability to Champions League football. The Scotland international knows what that rise brings.

“When you are signing the best young English talent and players are performing at the highest level there will be interest,” he said. The churn is the cost of success.

McGinn insists the foundations remain intact. “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.”

So here they are again, in another European final of sorts, facing the champions of the continent with a reshaped squad and a manager still chasing the one European night that has always turned sour.

For Emery, this is not about friendly labels or pre-season caveats. It is about walking up those steps at Red Bull Arena, finally holding the Super Cup that has dodged him for a decade, and sending a message that Villa’s ceiling is still nowhere in sight.