Six Europa League finals, four titles, and Istanbul next: the greatness of Unai Emery at Aston Villa

John McGinn scored twice in the final nine minutes on Thursday night, both times fed by Morgan Rogers, both times tucking the ball low into the corners. The final score was 4-0.

Aston Villa overturned a 1-0 first-leg deficit, beat Nottingham Forest out of sight and booked a trip to Istanbul on May 20, where they play Freiburg in the Europa League final.

Villa's first European final in 44 years. Unai Emery pumped his fist at the Villa Park crowd a few times after the final whistle, then walked off the pitch and let his players enjoy the moment. That restraint, the absence of theatre, is almost the defining image of what he does.

Thursday was his sixth Europa League final as a manager. As Goal confirms, only Giovanni Trapattoni, with seven major European finals across his career, has managed more in the competition's history. Emery won the Europa League with Sevilla in 2014, 2015 and 2016, three consecutive titles, then lost the 2019 final with Arsenal against Chelsea, then won it again with Villarreal in 2021, beating Manchester United on penalties after a 1-1 draw across 120 minutes.

He is now one win from five. Nobody in the history of European football has won this trophy more times as a coach. Pellegri has three.

Aston Villa had lost three Premier League games in a row going into the semi-final second leg. Forest came in on a five-match unbeaten run with a one-goal lead from the first leg. Emery made one enforced change, Victor Lindelof coming in for the injured Amadou Onana, and then set up his side to press Forest high and exploit their physical limitations in midfield.

Watkins scored in the 36th minute to level the aggregate. Emi Buendia converted from the spot in the 58th after a VAR-spotted shirt pull on Pau Torres. McGinn's double closed it out. The final scoreline was 4-1 on aggregate and it wasn't particularly flattering to Nottingham Forest, who had Morgan Gibbs-White only fit enough to sit on the bench and who ran out of answers long before the end.

What makes Emery's achievement at Villa specifically notable is where the club was when he joined in October 2022. Steven Gerrard had just been sacked, the team were 16th in the Premier League, and the general feeling around Villa Park was that the club had spent much without any coherent direction.

Emery walked in, won his first game against Manchester United, and the transformation was almost immediate. He took them into the top four in his first full season, back into European football for the first time in years, and has since built a squad that now competes seriously on two fronts at the same time. Villa face Burnley, Liverpool and Manchester City in their final three Premier League games of the season still chasing Champions League qualification. They face Freiburg in Istanbul twelve days later.

Emery's weaknesses are real and worth being honest about. In the Premier League this season, Villa have been inconsistent in a way that their European performances have not. They've dropped points against sides they should be beating, lost three on the bounce before Thursday, and there have been stretches where the energy and organisation that defines their best nights hasn't been replicated in domestic football.

The squad depth, particularly in midfield with Onana now injured, is a genuine concern for a club trying to handle 50-plus games across a compressed final month. Douglas Luiz came off the bench on Thursday but hasn't been at his best since returning from a hamstring injury. Boubacar Kamara remains sidelined. If Champions League qualification comes down to the final day and Villa are running on empty from Istanbul four days earlier, the demands of this month could yet cost them in the league even while delivering in Europe.

But the story of what Emery has built is not diminished by those details. He took a club with no clear identity, gave them one, got them back into Europe, qualified for the Champions League, and has now put them into their first continental final since they won the European Cup in 1982, the year before he was born.

That 1982 triumph came against Bayern Munich in Rotterdam. The 2026 final is against Freiburg in Istanbul. The two situations are not the same, in terms of opposition or prestige, but the emotional weight of a first European final in 44 years is the same regardless of who's on the other side.

Per ESPN, Ollie Watkins said after Thursday's game that “there's no better manager to get us prepared for this.”

The tactical detail of what Emery does in training, the video analysis, the specific game plans for specific opponents, the way he uses his squad rotation across competitions without losing shape or identity, is something Villa's players have spoken about consistently since his first week in the job.

He is not a charismatic press conference man, not the kind of coach whose name trends on social media for the right reasons every weekend. He is just, quietly and stubbornly, one of the best managers working in football today.

Istanbul on May 20 is his chance to make that case with a fifth trophy.