Unai Emery is a lesson Aston Villa can learn to bring back the European glory years.

Some are calling it Istanbul. It is also a part of Villa Teriya. And no, although Unai Emery has flagged it,

Aston Villa has progressed to the quarter-finals of three different European competitions in as many seasons. But after winning the Europa League with Sevilla and Villarreal, he can now do the same with Villa as they face Freiburg in Istanbul.

A fifth Europa League crown would cement Emery’s status as the competition’s Carlo Ancelotti. Only Giovanni Trapattoni has won it more than twice, but that was in a different era when, with a solitary club per country automatically qualifying for the European Cup, the UEFA Cup was the hardest to claim. Emery’s first four victories came at a time when teams were knocked out of the Champions League – Sevilla among them in 2015-16 – to tighten competition in the secondary competition.

Emery could win as an underdog – the knockout stage in 2021, apart from his Villarreal, featured Arsenal, Tottenham, AC Milan, Roma, Ajax and runners-up Manchester United – and now does so as favourites.

But when this season’s Europa League kicked off, Villa looked the clear winners. This is partly due to Emery’s pedigree, but also because the team reached the last eight of the Champions League months ago and has Premier League income, without the prospect of the superpowers dropping into the Europa League after Christmas.

And yet an apparent success may still be a remarkable success. Emery has the potential to make history. March brought the 30th anniversary of Villa’s last major silverware. Their fifth and final League Cup was won by names from the second era: a young Gareth Southgate and a 36-year-old Paul McGrath. Dwight Yorke was one of the goalscorers; Andy Townsend was the captain.

Since then, Villa have lost four finals; they have suffered because the trophies have tended to be won by the same five clubs in Manchester, Merseyside and London. Emery also disrupted their monopoly by qualifying for the Champions League twice. Europe has offered an opportunity for silverware, bringing Tottenham’s first trophy in 17 years and West Ham’s first in 43 years.

For clubs hungry for it, the opportunity has added meaning. It can be tempting to look at Europa League victories through the prosaic prism of reaching the Champions League, but Villa have already done it in emphatic, spirited fashion, with Friday’s demolition of Liverpool.

And for a club with seven major honours in the 19th century, Europe is part of their identity. In fact, they have beaten foreign opponents on their way to glory long before UEFA was formed. Villa’s first trophy was in 1887; their route to the FA Cup included defeats to Wednesbury Old Athletic, Derby Midland, Horncastle, Darwin and Rangers. Those who were more observant could see that a Scottish club was competing in an English competition.

But the most appropriate comparison would be to 1982. As if they need some reminding, they beat Bayern Munich in the European Cup final 44 years ago. Now it’s Freiburg.

They beat Bayern once again in last season’s Champions League. Emery has never suited the super clubs, as his time at Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal suggests, but he can beat them. Freiburg is a different proposition: indeed, Emery has similarities with some employers, provincial clubs that are performing better than expected. They finished seventh in the Bundesliga and seventh in the Europa League group stage. They had never reached the continental quarter-finals before.

So all the evidence points to a Villa win. The motivation is clear. Captain John McGinn said they would become “legends” with victory in Istanbul. His own trip was decisive in the play-off final in 2019, knocking Villa out of the championship. He could be bracketed with Dennis Mortimer, the midfielder who won the European Cup 44 years ago.

It has been a remarkable rise, but Emery has been a revolutionary who has maintained some consistency amid the change. Steve Bruce, Dan Smith, or Steven Gerrard signed seven of the starting 11. One of Villa’s curiosities is that most of their transfer business under Emery has produced little return: of many signings this season, the only success so far has been the free transfer of Viktor Lindelof, who is set to become a makeshift midfielder again in Istanbul.

Lindelof also played in Emery’s fourth Europa League win: completing 120 minutes for United against Villarreal, scoring his 10th penalty in the shootout before David De Gea missed his 11th. Pau Torres scored Villarreal’s 10th spot-kick in Gdansk, and he has been reunited with Emery in the Midlands.

Two of his four Europa League appearances have come on penalties and the other two show the resilience required to compile such a record after going behind in the final. The Villa faithful had to be resilient even in the wilderness years. But now 2026 can be bracketed with 1982 in their history as the European glory years.