Unai Emery

[Monty]

I really don't care. He could go into every single pre-match press conference and recite the Spanish translation of Beckett's 'Molloy' until everybody leaves, as long as he has the win record he does I'd barely notice.

[Stu]

Interview with Unai in the Times, good read this: https://archive.ph/782dR

[Risso]

Unai Emery: I told Villa players I am not here to waste my time
Aston Villa manager tells Jonathan Northcroft how a meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson changed the trajectory of a career that has come a long way since his ill-fated stint at Arsenal
October 21 2023, The Sunday Times
When Unai Emery addressed Aston Villa’s squad after his appointment a year ago his first words were, “I am not happy to be here.” He asked if anyone knew why. One player took a guess. League position? Villa were a point outside the bottom three. No, Emery told them.
“I’m not happy because a coach [Steven Gerrard] was sacked and, as a coach, I suffer too when that happens. And you are responsible. So, I’m going to try to increase the level, be ambitious, be demanding. I’m not going to stop, every day, trying to get better than yesterday. And I’m not here to waste my time.”
Emery relives that meeting with an intensity that drills into the listener, speaking like he’s back facing those players. It’s raining outside and I’m in work clothes, and middle-aged, but am fighting the urge to jump through the window, race on to the pitches and start sprinting for this guy.
It is this Unai Emery who has transformed Villa — not the misunderstood character who was not given time in the impossible job of succeeding Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. It is this hurricane of Basque football passion who tears through 80 minutes of conversation in the boardroom at Villa’s training ground, filling his first UK newspaper interview with stories and powerful expressions of his drive.
If he seems clenched in press conferences and post-match interviews, it is because there is not enough space in those to unpack what every Villa player says defines his coaching: detail. This Emery, with room to expound, is captivating.
He is so infectiously convinced about Villa’s journey that he doesn’t sound outlandish when he targets silverware. “It’s difficult but I prefer to set an ambitious objective then try to reach it,” he says. “And I want to play in Europe. My dream is to play Champions League, to win the Champions League. And I’m going to fight for my dreams. Always.”
During the international break he returned to his home town, Hondarribia, on the western edge of the Basque country, where he dined with friends and enjoyed a big lunch with his family. Food is important to him — he owns a restaurant in Valencia — and family is where his obsession with football was nourished. His father and grandfather were goalkeepers and granddad has a place in Spanish football history: he conceded the first goal ever scored in the Spanish league, playing for Real Unión — the pioneering Basque club Emery now owns — against Espanyol in 1929.
“I’m one of four brothers but only I played professionally,” Emery says. “I had potential but suffered an injury to my knee. I recovered but not 100 per cent and my mentality comes from having to be a fighter. I played in the second division, as a winger and left back, but never with a strong feeling of, ‘I can do it.’ I was never feeling better than the opponent, able to impose myself. My problem meant I was always suffering.”
“When I started as a coach I was clear in my mind, ‘I have to work hard, I have to be a fighter.’ I still think the same. I think, ‘I have to win on Sunday’. But also, how do we win? Everyone wants to win but saying ‘How?’ is the most important. And the answer is always the process: to work, to build, to demand.”
His first management job was with Lorca Deportiva, a tiny club from Murcia that no longer exists, and he drove them from the third tier very nearly to La Liga. He had been part of their squad when invited to take over as coach. “I knew the players, their power and their weaknesses — their tricks as well,” he grins.
Next, he took Almería into La Liga for the very first time — and incredibly finished eighth. Then he brought Valencia back to life, lifting them from the mid-table financially troubled doldrums to three consecutive Champions League qualifications. A meeting with Manchester United in the 2010-11 Champions League proved pivotal.
Emery’s close friend and personal assistant, Damian Vidagany — now Villa’s director of football — was with him at Valencia and helps to tell the story. “Sir Alex Ferguson was very kind. I was young, starting in Europe, and after the matches he was speaking to me, trying to help me,” Emery says. “We were with him for more than one hour,” Vidagany interjects.
United beat Valencia 1-0 at the Mestalla, with Wayne Rooney a surprise omission. “I didn’t speak good enough English at that moment, Damian was translating, but I asked, ‘Sir Alex, eh, one question: why was Rooney not playing?’ There was no news in the media about any problem,” Emery recalls.
“And Sir Alex told me: ‘He has to know who is the boss.’ For me it was inspirational. Authority. Discipline. Always, they have to know who is boss. After that, I started reading books about him and watching everything I could about him. His life in Scotland, how life was hard for his family, how it wasn’t easy for him at the start in Manchester, disciplining the players, the egos. For me, Ferguson is an example.”
After stellar years with Sevilla, where he won three consecutive Europa Leagues, and two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, where he won every domestic honour but couldn’t deliver the Champions League success he and the club craved, came Arsenal. “It was a very good challenge but when I finished after one year and six months, in November [2019] I was really frustrated. The first year [where he reached the Europa League final] was good, the second year started a bit so-so and then it was over.”
His efforts to refresh Arsenal’s culture and style were compromised by communication. “When I came back from Arsenal my English improved but not enough and I was determined to continue learning so I was watching lots of series and movies. I watched All Or Nothing with every team [that the documentary series featured]. I watched American football, the All Blacks, The Last Dance [the Netflix series about Michael Jordan]. On YouTube, a movie about Kobe Bryant.
“And this is the puzzle I made in my mind. What is the way? Practise, practise, practise. Kobe Bryant’s message is that. Michael Jordan’s message is that. Practise, be demanding, then get confidence into the players. How do you do that? Before, I was always saying to them ‘play confident’ but what does that mean? You have to feel confident. Confidence is not something you can buy in the shop, you have to build it and the only way is to practise, be demanding and think football, football.”
He has a rule: “70 per cent of your life, every day, every week, every month, every year — has to be football. You’re practising, you’re at home resting, you’re with family, even if you’re at a party or on holiday at the beach — you still have to be thinking football.”
He drills the following thought into his Villa players’ minds. Who you would rather play with? “I want to ask, ‘Hey ’keeper, who do you want as centre backs?’ They’re going to choose the players who they know will fight. Centre backs, who do you want in midfield? They’ll choose the players who fight. They don’t want one player who is not thinking football, who’s thinking, ‘I’m going to go out later, enjoy the life.’ ”
He showed the squad a video about Bryant’s winning mentality and last season, when Villa lost three consecutive games in February, he staged an inquest. “Man City 3-1, Arsenal 2-4, Leicester 2-4. Two matches at home. We conceded 11 goals. Very painful defeats. So I met with the players: ‘No, no, no, this way is not possible.’ Most got the message.”
Villa went unbeaten in the next ten games, winning eight, and clinched European qualification with seven points from tough final fixtures against Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Brighton & Hove Albion. Since Emery’s first game, a 3-1 win against United last November, only City, Arsenal and Liverpool have won more points.
It is remarkable and the key has not been transfers but extracting significantly more from the players there when Emery arrived. Part of that work is collective, with greater emphasis on structure and possession, and part involves bespoke, one-to-one stuff. It’s not unusual for four of Emery’s staff to work, at the same time, with an individual player.
Emery leads training himself and is so painstaking in his preparation that even during the hour before kick-off he will be on his laptop making final adjustments to his tactical plan. “My characteristic as a coach is a lot of video work with players,” he says, reminiscing fondly about the early days at Lorca when he created his own presentations by splicing video clips from DVDs. “I had an old recorder and stood before the players with two controls. Play, stop, back, play, stop, ahead!”
In March, Ollie Watkins told me how Emery’s clarity was making such a difference to his game. Emery wants him in the box. “He says it as bluntly as that: ‘Don’t go, stay there.’ It makes me laugh but it works,” Watkins said.
Emery shrugs. “My method is not a mystery. Firstly, Ollie always scored goals and when a player’s level is there you have to make them feel comfortable and play within their best characteristics. I met an old player of mine from Villarreal casually and he’d been watching Ollie. He told me, “Watkins, he’s a good player, I see him scoring goals but when he’s not scoring I see him doing his work.’ ”
When Watkins suffered a mini-drought, Emery told him about his former player’s observation. “I said, ‘Ollie, the goal is coming. Calm. You have my respect but not just that, you have the respect of the team and why? Because even when you’re not scoring you’re doing your work.’ I can tell Ollie details but most importantly he is very, very professional. He has the mentality I want: 70 per cent football.”
After that 4-2 defeat to Arsenal, Emery upbraided Emiliano Martínez for charging into the opposition box to try to score with Villa 3-2 down in the final minute. Arsenal counterattacked and scored a fourth. Emery’s post-match interviews were strident. He said he was “embarrassed” and quoted stats to suggest Martínez had chosen a poor percentage play.
Was this a message to the whole team, that in every moment he wants Villa to be serious and stick to plans? “Yes! Serious. Organised,” he says. “Emi is special, strong in his mentality. He reminds me sometimes when a goalkeeper is scoring goals. With Lazio [whose goalkeeper scored in the Champions League last month], he told me, ‘Hey, look boss!’ But I tell him, ‘Once a year Emi. Once a year’. Maybe one match I can tell him, ‘OK, go to the box and score’ — but really the statistics are very poor.
“I want to be a serious team, disciplined, tactical. With power, playing in our structure. Every team is organised but to be extremely organised is to be the winner. Man City, Arsenal: extremely organised. Always my message is: football is very difficult. We’re lucky men. Lucky to be workers in football because it’s big business and we have good salaries. But it is extremely hard, you have to sacrifice a lot of things.”
It is surprising to hear he did not watch a single minute of international football last week. Then again he did find time, during Villa’s hiatus from playing, to watch, in their entirety, Arsenal v Manchester City and Brighton v Liverpool — games that really intrigued him. He studied videos of West Ham, Sunday’s opponents, too. But the trip back to Hondarribia was about reconnecting with the ‘other 30 per cent’ — his non-football life.
He talks affectionately about lockdown, during which there was time for reading, spending time with his son and a bit of travel. For relaxation, he likes walking in the mountains, to the beach in summer, and cycling (which he took up after his knee became too bad for tennis). Three or four times a week, he works out in the gym — albeit usually with a screen in sight so he can watch a game.
At Villarreal, whom he joined after leaving Arsenal, Emery broke a club record for matches unbeaten, went to the Champions League semi-finals and won another Europa League. Why give all that up, when Villa called?
“I’m very demanding of myself and always controlling my ambition,” he says. “I thought ‘Unai, you have to try again in the Premier League.’ [Villa] were very convincing and very committed to try and get to another level and invest. And I am very happy because everything they said they would do the first time I met with them, they are doing.”
This includes allowing Emery to reshape the entire football operation and his coup in attracting Monchi to join as president of football operations was shown by Villa’s smart summer recruitment, especially the brilliant acquisition of Moussa Diaby.
I observe that people in England seem to ‘get’ him now and appreciate the charisma that lies in his quirky competitiveness in a way they did not when he was at Arsenal. But he does not seem too bothered. “I enjoyed Arsenal as well,” he says. “Arsenal was difficult to arrive at after Wenger. What was needed was a process. The supporters respected me a lot and I was frustrated because I was thinking, ‘I can do it, but I need time.’
“But I understand always football. I understand always my position as a coach. You have to win. You convince by winning. The work [Mikel] Arteta is doing there now is brilliant and he’s doing more or less everything I was thinking needed to be done there. And now history is different. I am here. I have my challenge here. And Aston Villa is an amazing club.”
 

[purpletrousers]

Thank you Risso.  What a great read. What a great man.

Seeing pics of Peter Withe back at Bodymoor today somehow led me to watching some clips of Highbury 81, I talk of that day relatively often.
I guess that and Rotterdam are the defining moments of my childhood.
Thanks as ever to my dear Dad.

My point though was seeing Saunders interviews just after and about wining the League.
The drive, charisma (in different ways) the personality of these managers, their uncompromising natures.

I love the determination.
I have love for Unai.

[Brazilian Villain]

Interview with Unai in the Times, good read this: https://archive.ph/782dR

He's alright, I suppose.

[thick_mike]

What a man ❤️

[Ian.]

Thanks Risso, that’s a great read. What a man.

[Flamingo Lane]

I wonder where and what is the restaurant he owns in Valencia. May pay it a visit next time I'm in that splendid city.

[Drummond]

It's reassuring to note that our owners are also doing exactly what they say they will. For all the moaning about shit service etc. at the ground (and it's bizarre that we have to) that everything is going so well on the football side is really what we care about most.

Emery could be building a dynasty here.

[AV82EC]

If you didn’t love him enough already, reading that makes me even more committed to him. I’ve waited years for us to appoint a man as good as this.

[jwarry]

Just don’t fuck it up Villa!

[RamboandBruno]

All massively positive, love him and love that he’s at our club. Just hope he’s here for more than three years.

[Mister E]

Would someone be a good sort and post the text of the Times interview here, please.

[Risso]

Would someone be a good sort and post the text of the Times interview here, please.

I literally did just that about 5 posts up!

[Stu]

Would someone be a good sort and post the text of the Times interview here, please.

The link I posted is on an archive page so not behind a paywall.