Aston Villa win the Europa League and the Premier League is next for Unai Emery | OneFootball

Aston Villa have won the Europa League and Unai Emery has already set a new “dream'”after making his first a “reality”. They’re coming for the Premier League.

“He told us he wanted us to be playing European football and you’re thinking ‘good one’,” John McGinn said ahead of kick-off, reflecting on Emery’s first team meeting as Aston Villa boss in October 2022, when they were only clear of the relegation zone on goals scored with nine points from 11 games.

Villa qualified for the Conference League that season. Further demonstrating the power of target-setting from Villa’s visionary coach, Ollie Watkins revealed: “He told me he wanted me to score 15 goals and I think I was on about three [actually two] by Christmas. The confidence that gave me – I went on to score 15 goals.”

In the three seasons since, with a net spend of under £50m, Villa have qualified for the Champions League twice and have now won their first trophy for 30 years and their first European gong since 1982. Asked for three words to sum their manager up, McGinn, Watkins and Ezri Konsa unanimously agreed he was a “genius”. Amen.

Such was the mismatch here, Villa as good as secured the Europa League trophy after their stunning second-leg win over Nottingham Forest in the semi-final.

Despite Villa’s relatively low spend in Premier League terms since Emery took charge, the £340m outlay is more than Freiburg have spent in their entire history. As was widely suggested before kick-off, the Bundesliga side, appearing in their first-ever European final, “were just happy to be here”.

And credit to them, they restricted Villa to nothing of note for 40 minutes as Emery looked as though he was going to tear strips off his team at the break, only for Youri Tielemans and then Emi Buendia to score two of the great European final goals to put the game beyond their inferior opposition by half-time.

Set-piece coach Austin MacPhee was given his dues on social media on Friday when a cleverly-worked corner sliced Liverpool open for Morgan Rogers to curl into the top corner, and MacPhee’s flowing locks could be seen in a huddle of celebrating Villa substitutes when a variation on the move saw Villa break the deadlock in Istanbul.

Rogers’ looping ball into the box was lovely, but the chance was made by defenders being dragged into the six-yard box to make space and by Tielemans’ arcing run. The Belgian still had a lot to do though and the technique to strike the ball with that power and that precision on the volley while on the run was extraordinary.

For seven minutes we wondered whether Tielemans might not only be the perfect player for that role but perhaps the only Villa player with the required quality to score in that position. Buendia changed our minds.

That said, Ally McCoist was just plain wrong in suggesting “this one might be even better, y’know” as Buendia took one touch and curled the ball into the top corner. “A goal worthy of winning any cup final”, sure, just not the most worthy of winning this particular cup final.

The second half was a procession. Rogers scored Villa’s third, dashing to the front post to get his toe on Buendia’s cross to poke the ball past the goalkeeper, and Emery’s side should have scored a couple more and looked as though they could have embarrassed Freiburg if they really wanted to. There was a chasm of quality between the two sides.

But it makes European glory no less meaningful for the Villa fans watching in the stadium or at home, plenty of whom won’t have experienced winning a trophy of any kind; most of whom won’t have celebrated a European trophy.

It’s Emery’s fifth Europa League title and when the Istanbul party is over, perhaps while struggling through one last beer in the airport tomorrow, bleary-eyed Villa fans might start to think about what else their team are capable of under their master tactician.

“The next step, if we can be consistent, would be to be able to do something similar to what Leicester did, or come close,” Emery said this week. “We have to set ourselves dreams and make those dreams a reality. What we’re doing here might have been a dream when I arrived three and a half years ago, and now it’s a reality.”