PSG vs Aston Villa: Emery has lost three Super Cup finals, and Luis Enrique beat him in one

Europe’s season opens at the Red Bull Arena in Salzburg, where Paris Saint-Germain meet Aston Villa at 12.30am IST on Thursday. It is the first Super Cup staged in Austria and the first major European final Salzburg has hosted. Both managers spent the build-up explaining why it might not be much of a game.

Luis Enrique is not selling it

Fifteen PSG players went to the World Cup, and their coach is not pretending that has been absorbed in three weeks. “The internationals have only just come back,” Luis Enrique said. “Some of our players have barely trained but the ones who have will play tomorrow.” Asked what the standard might be like, he did not dress it up. “In terms of a top-level game tomorrow, it will be difficult to see that. In terms of preparation, this is not how it should be.”

The list explains the mood. Achraf Hakimi was central to Morocco, Nuno Mendes, Vitinha and Joao Neves were all in the Portugal squad, Marquinhos started for Brazil and Willian Pacho did the same for Ecuador. Fabian Ruiz went furthest of the lot, coming home a world champion after Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time in the final on 19 July.

Wind back a little further and the schedule looks even less forgiving. PSG won the Champions League in Budapest on 30 May, drawing 1-1 with Arsenal through Kai Havertz and an Ousmane Dembele penalty before winning 4-3 on spot-kicks. Most of that side then played deep into July. There has been no pre-season worth the name.

Enrique’s stated priority is telling. “We want to be in the best condition at the end of the season, rather than at the start of the season.”

Villa are short too, in a different way

Amadou Onana and Johan Manzambi, the club-record signing from Freiburg, are both injured. Beyond that, Emery has the same World Cup hangover to manage.

“We do not have some players because they finished their season late,” he said. “They’re resting, which is very necessary.” He was blunter about where that leaves the two squads: “PSG are in the same situation as us. Tomorrow we will start with the players we have and we hope to get a good result with the capacity that we have.”

The bigger change is who has gone. Youri Tielemans left for Manchester United for £35 million after they triggered his release clause. Morgan Rogers went to Chelsea for £117 million, a British record that makes him the most expensive British player in history. Jadon Sancho and Douglas Luiz have also moved on, and Lucas Digne signed for PSG.

Emery is not framing any of it as an alibi. “The effort is not changing,” he said. “The club is making a really huge effort. But we want more. We are not stopping here.”

Three Super Cup finals, three defeats

Nobody in Salzburg has a longer history with this trophy than Emery, and nobody has less to show for it. Sevilla lost the 2014 final to Real Madrid. A year later Sevilla lost it again, 5-4 after extra time, to a Barcelona side coached by Luis Enrique. In 2021 Villarreal took Chelsea to penalties and lost there too.

The Europa League has treated him rather differently. Villa’s 3-0 win over Freiburg at the Besiktas Stadium in Istanbul on 20 May gave Emery a fifth title in the competition. Three of those came at Sevilla, one at Villarreal, one now at Villa. Diego Simeone is the only other manager to have won it more than once, and he has two.

For Villa it ended a 30-year wait for a major trophy, the last being the 1996 League Cup, and their first European silverware since January 1983.

Both clubs have been here before, decades apart

That 1983 date is the Super Cup itself. Villa qualified as European Cup holders, having beaten Bayern Munich 1-0 in Rotterdam in May 1982 through Peter Withe, and then met Barcelona over two legs. Barcelona won 1-0 at the Camp Nou, Villa won 3-0 at Villa Park after extra time, and the trophy went to Birmingham on a 3-1 aggregate.

PSG’s record is thinner. They lost the 1996 edition to Juventus by 9-2 across two legs, then finally won it last August, coming from two down against Tottenham in Udine to draw 2-2 and win 4-3 on penalties. They arrive as holders, chasing back-to-back Super Cups.

The last time these two met

April 2025, Champions League quarter-final. PSG won the first leg 3-1 in Paris, Villa won the second 3-2 at Villa Park, and PSG went through 5-4. Villa scored four goals across the tie and two of the men who got them, Rogers in Paris and Tielemans at Villa Park, have been sold this summer.

That is the honest measure of the gap Emery has been closing. Villa had gone 26 years without a major trophy when he arrived in 2022. They have since reached a Conference League semi-final in 2024, a Champions League quarter-final in 2025 and won the Europa League in 2026. Salzburg will not be pretty, on the evidence of what both managers have said. It is still a trophy, and Emery has spent 12 years being handed the runners-up medal in this one.

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