Aston Villa face a huge task up against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League quarter-finals, but manager Unai Emery knows what it takes to win as underdogs on this stage.
Paris Saint-Germain are rightly big favourites to overcome Aston Villa in their Champions League quarter-final tie, starting on Wednesday this week.
They have far more pedigree in the competition, having made the knockout stages in each of the last 12 seasons, and at least the semis in each of the last five. They have just been crowned Ligue 1 champions (again) without losing a single game, and could feasibly win the treble this season. Having recorded the second-biggest aggregate win in Champions League history (10-0 vs Brest) in their play-off before knocking Liverpool out in the last 16, manager Luis Enrique has PSG looking like genuine contenders.
It’s no wonder the Opta supercomputer gives the Parisians a 72.2% chance of progressing to the semi-finals.
But, make no mistake, this is no cut-and-dried situation. PSG have never won the Champions League, and will not be counting their chickens even though they are up against an Aston Villa side in Europe’s premier competition for the first time since 1982-83.
Part of the reason for that will be Villa’s recent form. Their 2-1 win over Nottingham Forest on Saturday means they have won seven consecutive games in all competitions as a top-flight team for the first time since 1980-81 – the last season they won the title and the year before they became European champions.
Another part of the reason, however, will be manager Unai Emery.
Emery knows better than most how to win European ties. He has won the Europa League a record four times, doing so in three successive seasons between 2014 and 2016 with Sevilla, and then again with Villarreal in 2021. He also has seven previous seasons worth of Champions League experience; in the most recent of those, he took Villarreal on an unlikely adventure to the semi-finals only to eventually be beaten by Liverpool.
This week, his side may be the underdogs up against one of the favourites to win the competition, but Emery gives his team an edge that shouldn’t be underestimated.
He has contested 49 winner-takes-all ties in the Champions League, Europa League/UEFA Cup and Conference League across managerial spells with Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, PSG, Arsenal, Villarreal and Villa, and has come out on top in 40 of them. That gives him a success rate of 81.6%.
He lost four of his first 11 – all with Valencia before 2013 – meaning he has won 33 of his most recent 38 such ties. Perhaps he learned some valuable lessons in those early years with Los Che.
Narrowing things down to just the knockout stages of the Champions League (since 1992) and Europa League (since its rebrand from the UEFA Cup in 2009), Emery has 32 triumphs from 39 ties. His success rate of 82.1% is second only to Zinedine Zidane (87.5%) of managers to contest at least 10 knockout ties, and Zidane competed in just 16 such ties, making Emery’s record arguably the more impressive.
Emery is above some huge names in this list, such as Jupp Heynckes, Vicente Del Bosque, Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola. One of the other big names high up this list – but still below Emery – is current PSG manager Luis Enrique.
His PSG, the youngest team remaining in this season’s Champions League – with an average age of their starting XI of 24 years 242 days – are vibrant, exciting and bursting with talent. They look like real contenders this time around, and Luis Enrique, having won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2014-15, has previous in the competition. There is hope he can end PSG’s wait for European glory.
He also has a very strong record against Emery, winning eight of their 10 meetings. However, only two of those meetings came in a two-legged knockout European tie, with the managers winning one match apiece. And what a tie it was.
Back when Emery was in charge of PSG and Luis Enrique was with Barcelona, the teams met at the last-16 stage of the Champions League in 2016-17 after the French side had been beaten to top spot in their group by Arsenal.
A Barcelona team with a front three of Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar, who had only two years previously won the treble, were blown away in the first leg in Paris. Goals from Julian Draxler, Edinson Cavani and two from Ángel Di María handed Emery’s PSG an astounding 4-0 first-leg lead.
But then came a truly historic night that has since come to be known as La Remontada. The comeback.
Barcelona scored three times before Cavani managed what seemed to be a crucial away goal around the hour mark that should, really, have seen PSG through. They led 5-3 on aggregate as late as the 88th minute, but then contrived to concede three goals in the final seven minutes to complete one of the most embarrassing defeats in the history of the competition. It was the first time ever that a team had won the first leg by 4+ goals and failed to progress, and it was a while afterwards before Emery’s reputation recovered.
For a long time, he was known as the manager who’d succeeded in the Europa League but was on the wrong end of la remontada almost as soon as he was in the Champions League.
He came close to further Europa League success with Arsenal, beaten in the 2019 final by Chelsea, but he didn’t command a great deal of respect during his time in London. However, Villarreal’s march to Europa League glory in 2021 followed by them making the Champions League semis a year later reminded the world of his expertise at this level.
Like that Barcelona comeback, it can take something special to beat Emery in a knockout tie. The only four teams to ever beat him in a Europa or Champions League knockout tie are Barcelona, Real Madrid (both while with PSG), Liverpool (with Villarreal) and Chelsea (with Arsenal).
Meanwhile, he has produced some incredible results, too, seeing off Arsenal, Juventus and Bayern Munich with Villarreal, and Liverpool, Porto and Benfica with Sevilla. Aston Villa’s 1-0 win over Bayern in this season’s league phase suggests Emery still knows what it takes to win high-stakes European matches, and they were also mightily impressive in seeing off a decent Club Brugge side without issue in the last 16.
There will be some who question how much Emery has achieved in the Champions League given he failed in his only two knockout ties with PSG, and in one case, “failed” feels like it could be a bit of an understatement.
But after being knocked out of his first three Champions League knockout ties, he has progressed from three of his last four. Villa will hope he has learned from his early mistakes in the competition.
If he takes Villa past this hugely impressive PSG side, it might just become his biggest achievement in the competition. In truth, it would only overtake his 4-0 win over a legendary Barcelona side because of what came after, but that colossal second-leg collapse did happen, and Emery could do with a statement win to silence the doubters yet again.
In his first meeting with Luis Enrique since that remarkable day in 2017, Emery will be desperate to exact some form of revenge. There’s certainly reason to believe he will.
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Unai Emery’s European Knockout Record Could Give Aston Villa an Edge vs PSG Opta Analyst.
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