“Football is pure emotion. This sentiment in football brings people together, and in England that is very defined, entrenched. In England that identification with your team brings the game alive. It’s deeper there, like a church.”
Unai Emery will soon be immersed in the emotions of English football once again after taking Aston Villa up on the opportunity to become the club’s new Head Coach. It’s the latest step in a managerial career that has taken him to some of the biggest clubs in European football and has seen him lift 11 major trophies.
In his own words, the 50-year-old arrives on these shores better prepared to take on the Premier League. And you don’t need to look far to find validation of that claim after Emery guided Villarreal to their greatest feat, winning the Europa League, in 2021.
It was one of four Europa League titles that jump out on the Spaniard’s CV, which also includes a trophy-laden spell in France with Paris Saint-Germain, capturing seven trophies in two seasons.
While his teams’ successes on the pitch have taken centre stage during Emery’s career to date, the ongoing development of the man himself gives an insight into the coach who will soon be patrolling the technical area at Villa Park.
Emery was born with football in his blood; his grandfather won two Spanish Cups with Real Unión de Irun and his father played for Deportivo de La Coruña among others. Unlike his father and grandfather, who were both goalkeepers, Emery was a left-sided midfielder.
After coming through the ranks at Real Sociedad and scoring a First Division goal for the club, the majority of his playing career was spent in the second and third divisions of Spanish football.
A knee injury brought the curtain down on his playing career in 2004 at the age of 32, with the club he was playing for at the time, Lorca Deportiva, quickly snapping him up as head coach. Success came almost immediately to Emery in his new vocation, guiding Lorca to promotion from the Third Division in his first season.
Successive Miguel Muñoz Trophies – awarded to the best performing coach in each of the top two divisions – were collected after Emery steered Lorca to fifth in the Second Division before winning promotion to La Liga during his first season with Almeria. The plaudits kept coming as the coach took seamlessly to life in Spain’s top tier, guiding Almeria to an eighth-placed finish and attracting the attention of Valencia.
Four seasons at the Mestalla saw Emery record three consecutive third-placed finishes and compete in the Champions League for the first time despite having to sell two of his leading lights, David Villa and David Silva, due to the club’s financial troubles.
Emery’s focus on psychology also came to the fore during his time at Valencia when he co-authored the book Winning Mentality: The Emery Methodology.
"As a manager, it is important to understand that every player is a person before they are a footballer," Emery said.
"That is the same whether it’s Neymar, who I coached at PSG, or whether it’s any one of the players I had at Lorca. What I do is I try to interact with them on a personal level as a means of setting out my objectives and my expectations."
The consideration Emery has towards the needs of his players, both as professional footballers and human beings, has not gone unnoticed by those who play for him.
Adrien Rabiot said: "This is a coach who really communicates with everyone. He is asking us our opinion after the sessions, what we liked, what we didn’t like. He asks if you are not too tired after training.
"This is really important for the staff to know as they can then adapt [the training sessions]. They need to know if we can withstand the workload being asked of us. Communication is essential, not only in football but in all sports. This is what I find really good about Emery."
After a short spell at Spartak Moscow, Emery’s methods delivered the first silverware of his coaching career at Sevilla. He masterminded victories against Benfica, Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Liverpool in three consecutive Europa League finals as the Andalusians dominated the competition.
While Emery’s first foray outside of Spain ended after six months in Russia, he was set up for success when PSG came calling. Three of the four domestic trophies available were captured in his first season before Ligue 1 was won by 13 points in his second campaign at the club as a famous quadruple was secured.
Neymar, Dani Alves, Kylian Mbappe and Thiago Silva were just a handful of the world-class players that Emery coached during his time in the French capital, and he left his mark on the squad.
"From the moment Unai arrived at Paris, he showed his passion for football,” Edinson Cavani said.
“I really liked his way of working. It’s the small details that determine these kinds of games; they are won in the small aspects, and for that you need to be very focused. He’s a hard-working coach and that is why he has won titles.”
Emery’s affiliation with the Europa League continued during 18 months at Arsenal, where he took the Gunners to the final. The trophy eluded him against Chelsea in Baku, but he still managed to record the second-highest win ratio of his career (55%) during his time in north London.
Throughout his career, Emery’s attention to detail has been a recurring theme in interviews with those who have played and worked alongside him, and it stood out at several moments during his Villarreal tenure.
In the build-up to the Yellow Submarine’s Europa League final against Manchester United in 2021, which they won on penalties, Emery admitted to watching the Red Devils’ past 17 matches as he analysed their opponents to the “last detail”.
The following season, his tactical acumen again helped bridge the gap between his side and Europe’s biggest names as Juventus and Bayern Munich were dispatched en route to a Champions League semi-final against Liverpool. Emery watched 15 of the Reds' matches in their entirety at Villarreal Sports City complex to prepare for the game.
Emery can look forward to taking on Jurgen Klopp once again now that he is back in the Premier League with Villa. But it is not just the big games and names that the Head Coach looks forward to facing, he relishes each and every match.
Emery says: “Anyone who works in football has to love football and feel passion. If you love it as I do, the good times, the bad times, you take them on happily.”
