Heavy fog had meant planes unable to land in Faroes
Thursday’s match was subsequently postponed to Friday
Poland’s champions Lech Poznan will play their Europa League second leg against the Faroese champions KÍ Klaksvík, originally scheduled for Thursday, a day later after their travel to the Faroe Islands was severely disrupted by heavy fog.
Lech won 1-0 in the first leg in Poznan thanks to a late goal from Ivorian striker Yannick Agnero, but on Thursday they were locked in a chaotic race against time to reach the islands for kick-off.
With the Arsenal Fun Boat having finally docked at its destination on Tuesday after a 22-year voyage, attention on Wednesday turned to Aston Villa’s Crazy Train as its passengers alighted in Istanbul. Having passed away last summer, Ozzy Osbourne, whose famous anthem serves as Villa’s walk-on music, was not present to see his team lift Bigger Vase but the ease with which they strolled to victory would certainly have met with his approval. In spanking three goals without reply past Freiberg, Unai Emery’s side ended a trophy drought that stretched back 30 years and for their Spanish manager it marked a fifth success in the competition with three different teams. It is a state of affairs rendered all the more remarkable by the weird quirk that each of them has ‘villa’ in their names.
Regarding songs to play during VAR decisions (Football Daily letters passim) how about Rise by Public Image Ltd, featuring the oft repeated line: ‘I could be wrong I could be right’?” – Adrian Bradshaw.
Why stop with VAR music to fill dead spots in games? Imagine, the next time a player goes down, hearing that memorable opening line from Johnny Cash, “I hear the trainer coming!” What? Oh” – John Nielsen-Gammon.
A doff of the cap to the great Unai Emery, who won the Uefa Emery League yet again last night but also achieved a rare, unprecedented double this season as he also got promotion to Primera Federación, the third tier of Spanish football, in April with Real Union, which he has been the owner of since 2021 (his father and grandfather used to play for them)” – Noble Francis
Re Steve McClaren and his new role at Rotherham (Football Daily passim, full email edition), do you think he thought it was Rotterdam and he got confused by the accent?” – Dan J Levy.
Europa League glory kicked off scenes of royal ribbing, ski goggles on the team bus and knee slides with nephews
It was 1.43am in Istanbul when Aston Villa’s players began to make tracks for their hotel, over the road from the rubber ring-like Besiktas Park. Matty Cash walked into a windowless basement at the stadium, bottle of Efes in hand, and toasted a Europa League victory that will be etched in history, the club’s first trophy in three decades. “The king set the gameplan out for us,” he said of Unai Emery, who, if he was not there already, now has a god-like status among the fans.
Moments earlier, John McGinn joked that Prince William, who joined the players for beers amid the dressing-room celebrations, might “get his credit card out” and stump up for a free bar. Villa’s billionaire co-owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, were also in attendance, the former delighted that Emery had delivered on his promise to put another piece of silverware in a trophy cabinet that had been gathering dust. “It means a lot,” Sawiris said, wearing a Villa scarf. “I can’t express myself with words. Amazing. Very special. An eight-year ride and we saw today what hard work can do with Unai’s effort and the whole team.” Asked what’s next, there came a reminder of Villa’s ambition. “The sky’s the limit,” he replied.
Unai Emery has reconfirmed his status as master of the competition, but will now want to set his sights higher
There are two ways to win a final. You can win it by the odd goal, amid a frenzy of anxiety so the final whistle comes as a relief. Or you can win it as a procession, flexing your superiority, so the final whistle is almost resented for spoiling the fun. For Aston Villa, this was very much the latter. If their fans had dreamed the previous night of how they might win the game, they could barely have come up with something so satisfying and emphatic.
It’s true that Villa have a budget around 2.8 times that of Freiburg, and that they have been strong favourites in almost every game in the Europa League this season. But then in the Premier League they’re often fighting against sides with far greater resources. The poles of European and domestic football may have flipped, but that is not their fault nor, at least for now, their concern. They have not been a successful enough club – at least in the past 100 years – to decline to fully celebrate any trophy that comes their way. A second European success, 44 years after the first, is history.
Manager relishes ‘challenge’ of Champions League return
Emi Martínez reveals he played game with broken finger
For Aston Villa, the Europa League must only be the beginning, Unai Emery insisted after winning the trophy for a fifth time. Beating Freiburg 3-0 on Wednesday evening brought Villa’s first major piece silverware since the League Cup in 1996, but Emery is determined this should not be the summit of their achievements. He again rejected the tag of “king of the Europa League”, preferring to focus on “now” and, by implication, the future.
“Next year we will play in Champions League and this is the challenge,” the Aston Villa manager said. “The best teams in the world are there and it will challenge us a lot. The Premier League is the most difficult league in the world. To be fighting top seven, top five, top four is something very difficult. Hopefully we can be close with teams like City and Arsenal.
Where would you like your statue, Mr Emery? Even before this emphatic Europa League triumph, Aston Villa supporters could hardly have held their manager in greater esteem. But now Emery, in winning the competition for a record fifth time, has delivered the thing he always wanted, a trophy to show for his transformative body of work.
Those who were not around for Rotterdam in 1982 will always cherish Istanbul in 2026. Thomas Tuchel had it right a few years ago when he suggested Uefa might as well rename the Europa League the Unai Emery trophy.
Departures of club legend and star players have not stopped modest German side reaching showpiece with Aston Villa
It’s about the journey, perhaps even more than the destination. That is the feeling of SC Freiburg before the biggest match in their history. Regardless of the result in Wednesday’s Europa League final against Aston Villa in Istanbul, the club will be present at a reception in the city on their Thursday return to acknowledge the moment and the compelling season that has taken them there.
There are many extraordinary elements to a club that have never won a major trophy – the closest they came was losing on penalties to RB Leipzig in the 2022 DFB Pokal final – arriving at such a showpiece, but for most in Germany the true wonder is that they have managed it without Christian Streich. The longest-serving coach in the Bundesliga stood down in 2024 having served Freiburg continuously in several roles for almost three decades, including as the first team’s head coach for the final 12 and a half.
John McGinn will lead out team in final against Freiburg seven years after helping them win promotion with club chasing a first major European trophy since 1982
As Aston Villa arrived at Besiktas Park on the banks of the Bosphorus, for one last training session before the real thing, it was impossible not to consider the journey to the Europa League final. John McGinn, who will lead Villa out as captain in Istanbul, was in the side promoted from the Championship via the playoff final seven years ago. Tyrone Mings also started that day at Wembley and across the course of the following 12 months Villa built a spine that will be central to their hopes of winning their first major European trophy since 1982.
It is why McGinn’s mind goes back to a 3-0 league defeat at Wigan and a midweek trip to Rotherham in the season they clinched promotion, averting a likely financial disaster. Tammy Abraham, then on loan from Chelsea, also began the playoff final victory over Derby. “If we lose that match, are Aston Villa here at the minute?” McGinn says. “Probably not. For us, tomorrow night, it will be nice to see the supporters who were there at Rotherham away, Wigan away, nights like that on a Tuesday evening when it’s very easy to stay at home. They deserve it just as much as the players do and hopefully we can give them something to remember.”
Aston Villa and Crystal Palace’s runs to European finals are historic achievements, but symptomatic of a worrying trend
There will be no doubting Unai Emery’s supremacy in the Europa League if he is reacquainted with the trophy in Istanbul this month. A fifth title would add to the Aston Villa manager’s legend and it would show he can do it with an English club. The latter achievement, though, may be diminished in value. A greater concern lies in the way that Premier League clubs, gradually but discernibly, are dominating Europe’s smaller competitions in a way Uefa surely could never have intended.
Villa will be the eighth English finalists from the last 22 teams to reach the Europa League’s showpiece. Should they win, it would be the first time since the first two years of the Uefa Cup, its predecessor with the same trophy, that sides from England have won the secondary tournament in consecutive seasons. They would build on Tottenham’s haphazard triumph of last May and while neither consistency nor relative excellence should be sniffed at their progress contributes to a concerning broader trend.
Der SC Freiburg schafft gegen Sporting Braga verdient den vielumjubelten Einzug ins Europa-League-Finale und genießt die Feierlichkeiten nach allen Regeln der Kunst.
In the end, it was a rout, Aston Villa sailing into their first European final since 1982. There were fist pumps from Prince William high in the Trinity Road Stand after Emiliano Buendía’s penalty approaching the hour put Villa in command of the tie and then pure delirium as John McGinn buried two near-identical first-time finishes inside three minutes to kill the game. In between serenading Unai Emery, who is hunting a record fifth Europa League title, and drinking in the celebrations, Villa supporters could think about booking flights to Istanbul, where Villa will face Freiburg in search of their first trophy since lifting the League Cup in 1996.
As Vítor Pereira had acknowledged, Emery is the undisputed king of the Europa League and Villa will be heavy favourites in Turkey against a team seventh in the Bundesliga. “You can start packing your bags, start looking for your tickets,” was the message from the giddy stadium announcer on what descended into a rather surreal night, an emotional McGinn wearing a look disbelief as he charged off after adding Villa’s third, the cue for the stewards to line the pitch. McGinn’s second and Villa’s fourth prompted the away end to empty.
John McGinn’s two goals confirmed Villa’s comeback win as they overpowered Forest to reach the final in Istanbul
We’re still in the dark over where Lindelof will play. Unai Emery was curt with TNT: “McGinn, he is important like every player, he is the captian, his connection with the supporters is massive.We must get out best collectively and best individually, John McGinn is very important in this message.”
More Pereira: “Enjoy the game, compete first minute to last minute, be brave, to try to force our game and in the end we will see.He [Gibbs-White] is here to help us, we will see what happens in the game. They need to be ready, this is a moment of the season we need to help the team, I have confidence in everyone, we can change the players but we keep the spirit.In our mind we come here to compete to win the game.”
Villa manager says Watkins’ ankle could have been broken
Vítor Pereira hails ‘the spirit of this team’ as Forest win 1-0
Unai Emery raged at the video assistant referee for failing to flag Elliot Anderson’s dangerous first-half tackle on Ollie Watkins in defeat at Nottingham Forest and claimed the England striker was fortunate to avoid a broken ankle. Villa’s manager said the Portuguese VAR, Tiago Martins, made a “huge mistake” by not alerting the referee, João Pinheiro, to the incident.
Forest prevailed 1-0 in the Europa League first leg at the City Ground courtesy of a 71st-minute Chris Wood penalty, awarded after a VAR review ruled the ball was in play when Lucas Digne handled Omari Hutchinson’s cross inside the box, but Villa were left incandescent about Anderson’s challenge. The referee waved play on when Anderson caught Watkins on his ankle before claiming the ball and the VAR did not intervene. Emery admitted he did not realise the seriousness of the incident until reviewing footage of the tackle after the match.
Der Sportclub Freiburg kassiert ein spätes Gegentor und verliert auswärts mit 1:2 (1:1) gegen Sporting Braga. Im Rückspiel geht es nun um den Einzug ins Finale der Europa League.
An affirming feature of Cup competitions is getting to enjoy clubs, players, managers and supporters enjoying and detesting their biggest game in generations. But what is much rarer is to have two teams, from neighbouring regions, competing against each other in a contest which means that much to both, and is vitally important in its own right.
The specific dynamics of our match this evening are also special. Villa are the superior team, fifth in the league having spent much of the campaign higher – there was, briefly, talk of a title challenge – but they’ve struggled in recent months and arrive at this evening in spotty form. Forest, meanwhile, are the inferior team, 16th in the league having spent much of the campaign lower – there is, still, talk of a relegation battle – but they’ve improved in recent weeks and arrive at this evening in top form.
Liverpool boss Arne Slot has been speaking ahead of Sunday’s Merseyside derby. Here he is on Hugo Ekitike’s Achilles tendon injury which has ruled the Frenchman out for the rest of the season and this summer’s World Cup.
He hasn’t been operated on yet. Devastating for him coming to a new club having so much impact straight away. Playing against your former club in the Champions League quarter-final with so much to come for him in the summer.
My first thoughts are with him being out for such a long time, missing out on so many special moments. But it is not the first and not the last player who experienced something like this at the start of their career, and there are so many examples of players coming back even stronger.
The final whistle brought a second of relief before the celebrations truly kicked in after Nottingham Forest secured a place in the Europa League semi-finals. It should have been easier but nothing is simple at the City Ground as they made hard work of overcoming Porto, who played almost the entire match with 10 men.
Morgan Gibbs-White settled the match, to set up an all-English clash with Aston Villa for a place in the final. His goal came in the aftermath of Jan Bednarek’s early sending off and should have laid the foundations for more but Forest’s finishing was poor, forcing them to grind out the victory by surviving Porto hitting the crossbar twice. Even so, the ultimate jubilation was reminiscent of those great nights of the 1980s under Brian Clough when the club last reached this stage in Europe.
Ollie Watkins kickstarted Aston Villa’s perfect evening as his 100th goal for the club enabled Unai Emery’s side to cruise into an all-English Europa League semi-final against Nottingham Forest.
The England striker, seeking a late recall into Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad, tapped home in the 16th minute before goals from Emiliano Buendía and Morgan Rogers, making amends for a spurned penalty, put the tie to bed by half-time.
Morgan Gibbs-White scored the only goal against a resilient ten-man Porto, as Forest reached their first European semi-final for 42 years
4 min: Sangare releases Gibbs-White down the right. Promising for Forest … until the whistle goes, Sangare having come through the back of Alberto Costa on the touchline. The correct decision, if annoyingly belated from a Forest point of view, everyone all excited for a second.
2 min: It’s an absolutely belting atmosphere, both sets of fans giving it plenty. But Porto nearly quieten the home fans in short order, Moffi latching onto a prod down the inside-right channel and attempting to flick past Ortega. The Forest keeper swipes away. The rebound falls to William Gomes, who blazes over. Yikes.
Ollie Watkins’s 100th Aston Villa goal set up a dominant victory as Unai Emery’s side teed up a semi-final with Nottingham Forest
3 mins: A few Villa players are a yellow card away from suspension: Cash, Rogers, McGinn, Digne and substitute Victor Lindelof. Bookings are wiped out for the semi-finals, but suspensions aren’t, so all five must tread carefully.
2 mins: Emi Buendia tries to bend one on target from the edge of the area, but sees his shot blocked.
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