Unai Emery has cemented his spot among the best managers in Europe in recent years, and is currently enjoying a successful spell at Aston Villa in the Premier League following a more difficult time with Arsenal in England previously.
The Spaniard is leading a revolution at Villa Park and renowned journalist and author Guillem Balague has been alongside him throughout the journey, with his latest book ‘Rise of the Villains’ revealing all from behind the scenes.
GIVEMESPORT caught up with Balague to discuss the origins of the book, his personal relationship with Emery and his time at Villa and Arsenal.
Emery Had Unfinished Business in the Premier League
“It was the beginning of his time at Aston Villa, and we thought, how about having a look at his story,” revealed Balague. “He’s got a past in the UK with Arsenal. He had unfinished business in the Premier League. So he was going to make sure that he was going to do very well at Aston Villa. And the more I looked at it, I realised Unai Emery had a massive story of somebody that comes from a background – like many others – of the Basque Country. So, I wanted to find out more about that.”
After being sacked in November 2019 by the Gunners, Emery rebuilt his reputation back in La Liga with Villarreal before returning to England with Villa just under three years later.
A meeting with Villa owners NSWE was productive, and it was an opportunity he simply couldn’t refuse.
Balague continued: “When the Aston Villa possibility came up and he held a meeting with Nassef Sawiris, there was that iconic moment in which he gave him a blank piece of paper. It was difficult to resist.
“He wanted to make sure that his assistants were there, that the people were going to help him, and boom, he went into it, beat Manchester United at home for the first time in 27 years – [albeit] not in the way that he wanted, in the way the players wanted and the fans wanted. But eventually he convinced everyone to do it his way, and he’s found the perfect place to have a stable team with a group that protects him and looks after him, and a place to grow.”
Emery led Aston Villa to Champions League qualification for the first time in 41 years in the 2023-24 season, before extending his contract at Villa Park until 2029 just weeks later.
The 53-year-old has won the Europa League four times (three with Sevilla and once with Villarreal) and was a runner-up in the same competition with Arsenal in 2019, and he considers the participation in European football as critical for him and his players.
“We’re talking then about a Unai Emery that had been in Europe for 15 consecutive years,” explains Balague. “For him, Europe is everything, because it gives him the name, gives him prestige, and he tells the players the same, ‘you’re in Europe. You get bigger contracts, you go to bigger clubs, and those nights will be absolutely memorable’. So he keeps feeding from Europe and also getting stories from the past, good and bad, that allow him to grow.”
Emery was particularly frustrated when Villa missed out on the top four last term, but he is using the disappointment to try and bounce back by winning the Europa League this season – a trophy that would see them qualify for the Champions League again.
“Their problem was the five draws at home,” explains Balague. “One less and it would have been different, and that was the annoyance. But in the last game against Manchester United, at half-time, he told everyone not to tell him what the other results were. It was all about getting a result at Old Trafford, which didn’t happen, and he was disappointed at the end. And there was that moment where he starts looking into the distance, because there was so much in his head, so much more than people know, which people will know now because it’s in the book, but there was a lot in his head and it was like a volcano inside.
“[The Europa League] is a competition that everybody feels looking forward to playing, and in my eyes, is perhaps the right one to be in given the situation, and with the squad that they have got. If they win it, they’ll be in the championship next year, maybe in a better position to get some players that can help them to do well.”
Aston Villa Have Been Hampered by PSR
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Emery and the club off the pitch either, with the well-documented PSR issues often hampering the club in the transfer market and meaning they’ve had to be clever with player sales.
Rather than a simple look at the numbers, Balague decided to look at how the problems have affected those behind the scenes at Villa Park.
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“There is an obstacle. There’s a limit with wages. There’s a limit to how much you can spend,” he said. “I leave that story because it keeps moving, and focus on the people that deal with it and how they go through a summer where they cannot sleep, where they are on the beach and constantly have to be on the phone, where they try deals, including private conversations with players that don’t come off well, the frustration of that, the battles amongst themselves, how the owner is trying to get information, and what kind of information he gets, and what’s the reaction to that. I’m more interested about how the people inside deal with the difficulties.”
Balague believes one of the biggest issues at Villa from a financial sense is the capacity of Villa Park, which simply doesn’t generate enough money.
The Spanish journalist said: “You can take a few steps back and say if Birmingham was in London, different story. If Birmingham was a tourist destination, [it’s a] different story. You also can tell there’s a difficulty of trying to push for the top six. There’s a bigger issue here, but the stadium is not big enough. It doesn’t bring enough money. There is not enough income. But they’re still regularly in Europe, and they’re still, at least in my eyes, fighting to be one of the top six or seven clubs in the land.”
Aston Villa have made good use of the loan market in recent times to bring in high-profile players such as Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio for Emery, but neither short-term move ended up becoming permanent – not that it affected the Spaniard too much.
“He doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind. He wants the structure, the system, the process to get the best out of them as soon as possible,” admitted Balague. “And then, if they go, they go. They tried to keep Asensio, but it’s 20% taxes in Turkey and with the kind of money that he demanded, it just didn’t work out.
“But also I guess there was a discussion within the coaching staff, perhaps the number 10 role should be given to Morgan Rogers and then build a team around him. In any case, with Marcus Rashford, everybody knew he wanted to go to Barcelona from day one. But there were great conversations had and I’ve been privy to the content of them between Marcus Rashford and Unai Emery.
“Emery found a guy, a player, that was almost like an Under-18 just saying, like, ‘I’m so excited about doing this. I know what you can do. I’ve spoken to my England colleagues. Yeah, I’m coming in with a lot of hunger’. You could see that he was growing.”
After Asensio and Rashord returned to PSG and Manchester United respectively before securing moves elsewhere, Villa completed a late-window loan swoop to sign Jadon Sancho from Old Trafford – again on loan – as Emery looked to add some extra X-Factor to his attack, as Balague explains:
“They were saying, ‘can we get somebody with a similar profile with these needs that we’ve got for the team?’ It doesn’t always work, and Jadon Sancho is going to be a challenge, but an interesting challenge, because that’s how they all see it,” says Balague. “They were like ‘all right, how can we get this guy to be the Jadon Sancho that we saw in the past?’ And let’s see, so far so good.”
Emery Tried to Trademark ‘Good Ebening’ Catchphrase
During his time at Arsenal, Emery became renowned for his ‘good ebening’ catchphrase and Balague told GIVEMESPORT that he actually wanted to trademark it.
“If people think he’s just the ‘Good ebening’ man and whatever else, which he wanted to copyright, by the way, which was quite funny.”
One of the biggest talking points during Emery’s time at the Emirates was his relationship with Mesut Ozil, which became frosty when the German was omitted from first-team involvement due to his attitude and commitment.
Balague said: “Sometimes when it gets toxic, like it did at Arsenal, it hurts because it means that he cannot explain at that point what he’s doing, or what he would like to do, and there were things inside the camp, namely [Mesut] Ozil, that were conspiring against him. So there was a lot of things to fight, and not enough people to fight it with.
“He was more annoyed at the fact that he was on his own, the fact that people thought whatever they thought of him, and unfinished business for him was to return to the Premier League and say, ‘I can do it with my way of doing it’, which is proven to be the case.”
After a slow start to the season, Emery and Villa have now won four matches in a row in all competitions as the Spaniard looks to win the Europa League for a fifth time. He remains a manager who is going places, and the Midlands club will hope he can deliver that major trophy for them this term.
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