Emery: Aston Villa Must Not Stop After Europa League Triumph

Unai Emery insisted the Europa League must be only the beginning for Aston Villa after he led the club to a fifth personal triumph in the competition, securing their first major silverware since the 1996 League Cup. The manager rejected the label of “king of the Europa League,” preferring to focus on the present and the future.

“Next year we will play in Champions League and this is the challenge,” Emery said. “The best teams in the world are there and it will challenge us a lot. The Premier League is the most difficult league in the world. To be fighting top seven, top five, top four is something very difficult. Hopefully we can be close with teams like City and Arsenal.”

Winning the Europa League, he explained, is part of a larger process. “Play for Europe, play for trophies,” Emery said, describing the stages of fulfilling the dream he outlined in his introductory press conference. “This is the first one and we are achieving and the experiences we are having is every important in how we can get better. Trophies make sense of what we are doing. We are not going to stop.”

A key element of that process has been set-piece coach Austin MacPhee, exemplified by the move that led to Youri Tielemans scoring a ferocious volley to put Villa ahead against Freiburg.

“I’m biased, but we have a great set piece coach in Austin MacPhee,” Villa captain John McGinn said. “We tried to deceive a bit with the set piece. We did it against Liverpool at the weekend. Youri has great quality to find the goal. It’d have been over the bar if it were me!”

Emery called MacPhee “a really fantastic creator. We must be so, so demanding in our details. Austin is fantastic. Everything we are working on makes sense. The hours in each training session each day to try to get as best as possible our challenges in set pieces. When we are scoring like that of course we are proud of what we’re doing.”