Just like all the other matches that generated a local tremor measured at 1 on the Richter scale when that seventh and final goal went in at the Camp Nou in March 2017. It was inevitable that Unai Emery would be asked about the Remontada game on the eve of Aston Villa’s Champions League engagement with Barcelona, his own first trip back to the Camp Nou in this competition since one of the most visceral and traumatic experiences of his managerial career. Emery was Paris Saint-Germain’s manager the night the Neymar-Messi-Suárez triple-godhead reversed a 4-0 first-leg quarter-final deficit in this stadium.
For all the talk of lasting trauma Emery stayed in Paris for another season, won a domestic treble, and three clubs later has two more European trophies to his name. Plus, of course a trip back here now, with only the lurking shadow of being asked to do the Manchester United job hanging over an otherwise cloudless period in his elite coaching career. I started coaching in 2004, 22 years in a row.
I’ve played in Europe 16 years in a row. And I’ve learnt in all the competitions and matches. And in that match I learnt so, so much.” European football has done a pretty good job in the last two seasons of turning its autumn fixture blizzard into a hopeless and baggy blur.
What serious sport actually has a 36-team mega table? And a deeply predictable 36-team mega-table at that, one where you pretty much know who’s going to be up there at the end of it. If the intention was to create a series of exhibition-style TV-product events, thereby heading off the Super League’s desire to do exactly the same, then mission semi-accomplished.
There are still exceptions in the period of drift, one-off events that speak to the colour and cultural weight of this competition. Tuesday night is one of them, for Villa’s fans a genuine staging point in the progress of this ever-evolving team, with a chance, dependent on results elsewhere, to actually top the Champions League mega-table at this early stage. Mainly this feels like a deeply Emery occasion.
Not so much a homecoming; the Basque coastal town where he grew up is 350 miles northwest of here. As a player Emery never made it on to the pitch against Barça. But as a manager this has been an endlessly gruelling two-hander: 30 games across Almería, Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, PSG and Villarreal, and an ongoing tale of sorrow, with 21 defeats and just three wins.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
