The Villarreal faces for the eighth time in its history the quarterfinals of a European competition, six of them in the Europa League and two in the Champions, with the aim of being able to take advantage of the Emery effect, since his coach is a specialist in the second continental competition, in which he has accumulated three titles.
The challenge for the team led by Unai Emery is reach a European final for the first time in its history, for what you need to overcome Dinamo de Zagreb in the quarterfinals and later in the semifinals to the winner of the Arsenal-Slavia Prague tie. So far, the Castellón team has reached a continental semifinal four times, but never they surpassed it when they lost against Valencia (2004), Arsenal (2006 in the Champions League), Porto (2011) and Liverpool (2016).
After all these disappointments, Villarreal once again has your dream within reach with the favorable factor of having the most awarded coach in the Europa League, since Emery has won the tournament three times with Sevilla FC and lost a final with Arsenal. These records make him the coach who knows best the way to lift a title like this, since nobody has won it so many times As the.
To this, the experience of Villarreal is added, since it is the team that has played the most matches and qualifying rounds in this competition. So far the Emery-Villarreal tandem has worked perfectly in Europe. The yellows signed an immaculate group stage with five victories and a draw, although one of their triumphs was obtained, against Qarabag from Azerbaijan, in the offices but when Villarreal had already secured their classification.
The team was superior not only to the Azerbaijani team, but also to the Maccabi Tel Aviv Israeli and al Sivasspor Turkish, to later leave in the account to Red Bull Salzburg Austrian, whom he won in both of the round of 32 games. The last rival surpassed has been the Dynamo Kiev Ukrainian, also with victories in the two matches of the round of 16.
Villarreal is one of the few that reaches this final stretch of the season with such good numbers, what fuels the optimism, since even when the team added a streak of eight league games without winning, they were never short of victories in Europe, which allowed them reactivate in moments of crisis.
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