PREVIEW | Freiburg vs Aston Villa Europa League final | OneFootball

Freiburg will look to cap off their magnificent Bundesliga campaign with their first major trophy when they take on Aston Villa in the UEFA Europa League in Istanbul on Wednesday night.

Julian Schuster’s charges capped off another sensational season by securing European football for 2026/27, having finished ahead of Eintracht Frankfurt and Augsburg in seventh which will see the Breisgau club play in next season’s Conference League.

After a 2-1 defeat in Braga in the first leg semi-final, a goal from Lukas Kübler either side of Johan Manzambi’s strike sent Freiburg on their way to their first ever European final, seeing off their Portuguese counterparts in a hard-fought 4-3 aggregate victory.

“Of course we couldn’t have expected to reach the final from the start,” explained captain Matthias Ginter. “But we worked hard to get into that position to be able to set out to do it and then actually do it.”

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Freiburg team news

Having broken his collarbone against Wolfsburg at the start of May, Freiburg will be without key attacker Yuito Suzuki but Schuster has plenty of variations at his disposal. In Saturday’s 4-1 win over RB Leipzig, Jan-Niklas Beste, Manzambi and Derry Scherhant started behind Igor Matanović, but another option could see Vincent Grifo start on the left with Lucas Höler, both of whom came on at the weekend, start in the No.10 position.

Impressively, 12 of Matanović’s 15 goals in 2025/26 have come in 2026, while no Freiburg or Villa player has registered more goal contributions than Grifo (five goals, four assists) in this season’s competition, with Ollie Watkins (five goals, two assists) following the Italian.

What they said

“It definitely wasn’t easy to reach the final,” said Matanović. “When I think back to the [round of 16], we didn’t play well in the away game against Genk. But that’s a quality in itself, to keep going and take those negative experiences as they come. To get a 5-1 result in the second leg was a real statement.”

Speaking about the team’s development throughout the season, the Croatian forward added: “It gave us huge confidence to be able to test ourselves against teams that don’t just play in Germany.

“If you can see you’re on the same level as top clubs from various countries and then also win the matches, it certainly gives you self-confidence. It wasn’t as if it went well from the start – if I compare us now to how we started the campaign, we’re playing much, much better football.”

If Ginter, Noah Atubolu and Co. can keep Watkins and John McGinn and bay, while continue being prolific in the final third, then Freiburg have an excellent opportunity to make history on Wednesday night.

GGFN | Daniel Pinder