Aston Villa vs Freiburg LIVE: Team news as Villa chase European glory in Europa League final | OneFootball

Pre-match thoughts from Unai Emery

"Three years ago the semi-final of the Conference League, last year we played the quarter-final of the Champions League and this year the [Europa League] final; we have played enough matches in Europe,” said Aston Villa’s boss.

“Those experiences are very important for us, how we are playing this year, how we played last year, the first leg, second leg, different rounds and now it is a new chapter to play the final.

“This is a new challenge we have together. We are confident. The players are here because they deserve it."

(Reuters)

Everything I did, is done

Unai Emery says that his past wins in the Europa League don’t matter as he has yet to win the competition with Aston Villa.

"I am not a king in this competition. I am now with Aston Villa in a new chapter and everything I did is done,” Emery explained at the pre-match press conference yesterday.

“It’s there in that moment, but with it I am not winning tomorrow. I need to win tomorrow with the players we have now, with Aston Villa now, with the opponent we face tomorrow.

“So it’s a new way, a new moment and hopefully a new era. I don’t want to speak a lot about the thing we did before.

“Now, this year, and the matches we played before in the Conference League, they are showing the capacity to play at a high level."

'You can't plan this journey'

More from Schuster who spoke about Freiburg’s journey to reach the final.

"You can't plan this journey that we had,” he said.

“It's important to think from task to task and from round to round. We really deserve it because we had some really good performances over the last rounds.

“It's absolutely amazing for me, for every one of us, and also for this great football club to be here with so many supporters. It's really special."

Mike Jones20 May 2026 17:48

The Unai Emery lesson Aston Villa can learn to bring back the European glory years

Some are calling it Astonbul. It is also part of the Villa trilogy. And not, though Unai Emery has flagged it up, Aston Villa’s progress to the quarter-finals of three different European competitions in as many seasons. But having won the Europa League with Sevilla and Villarreal, now he could do likewise with the Villa as they face Freiburg in Istanbul.

A fifth Europa League crown would cement Emery’s status as the Carlo Ancelotti of this competition; only Giovanni Trapattoni has won it more than twice, but that was in a different era when, with a solitary club per country qualifying automatically for the European Cup, the Uefa Cup was arguably the hardest to claim.

Richard Jolly20 May 2026 17:30