How Unai Emery Reacted After Aston Villa’s Comeback Against PSG Fell Short | OneFootball

Paris Saint-Germain fell 3-2 to Aston Villa on Tuesday night at Villa Park in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League quarterfinal, but still advanced to the semifinals with a 5-4 win on aggregate. They’ll face either Arsenal or Real Madrid in the next round.

PSG came out flying and quickly built what looked like an insurmountable 5-1 lead on aggregate. Achraf Hakimi opened the scoring in the 11th minute, and Nuno Mendes followed up with a second in the 27th. With a four-goal cushion, it seemed like smooth sailing for the visitors—but Aston Villa weren’t ready to bow out.

Youri Tielemans gave the home crowd something to cheer about with a goal in the 34th minute, and after halftime, the energy shifted. John McGinn scored in the 55th minute, and just two minutes later, Ezri Konsa added another to cut the deficit to 5-4 on aggregate.

Villa kept the pressure on late, but PSG did just enough to hold on and secure their place in the semifinals.

Unai Emery opens up about Aston Villa’s comeback falling short

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Following the match, Unai Emery spoke to Amazon Prime and shared his thoughts on his squad falling short of the comeback (h/t BBC).

I am very proud of everything. Getting to this level is the next step forward, I want to try to win with Aston Villa. We played two legs, we competed well and it wasn’t even. Today we competed better and we were close to the result. I want to try to work for my next process at Aston Villa. The crowd was fantastic, they gave us energy. Even at 2-0. Still, a little bit more to do better to try to get it.”

“Every player at this level has a huge level to play and to try and be a protagonist. We were a protagonist as well with our skills. We were focused on our game plan. I was thinking only to play out game plan and be consistent. We were attacking and those transitions, they were clinical. We knew it. We tried to avoid transition and today we took the new game plan and were pushing more.”