The Europa Conference League’s quarter-finals did not disappoint, with three of the four ties going to extra time and two decided on penalties. Only four sides remain, all of whom now have the trophy in Athens in their sights.
Semi-Final 1: Aston Villa FC – Olympiakos SFP
Olympiakos, based in Piraeus, are located just 10 miles from the final venue – the new home of their bitter rivals, AEK. Aston Villa will likewise be able to see it when they fly into the Greek capital next week. For now though, both sides will have to content themselves with a balmy spring evening in Birmingham. Olympiakos’ owner, the volcanic-tempered “shipping magnate” Evangelos Marinakis, can even pop into Nottingham Forest (which he also owns) on his way to Villa Park. For the Red-Whites, the Conference League offers the prospect of their first European silverware since the 1963 Balkan Cup, their only previous continental triumph. It also offers a distraction from their domestic campaign – Olympiakos are, in their 99th year, still mathematically in the Greek Super League title race, five points behind AEK with a game in hand, but do not look likely to overhaul that gap. Aston Villa, by contrast, are running on fumes but are currently set to mark their 150th anniversary with a return to the Champions League for the first time in 40 years. The Conference League would represent their first European trophy since they won the European Cup (as it was then known) in 1981-82 and the 1982 Super Cup.
The Managers
Both sides in this tie are managed by Basques, a testament to that region’s gradual but accelerating takeover of the entire sport. Unai Emery hardly needs an introduction, the Europa League’s greatest-ever manager aiming to win a fifth European trophy and first Conference League title. He has revolutionised Aston Villa, taking over a side lumbered with Steven Gerrard’s dour negativity and facing relegation, and leading them back into Europe despite a seemingly never-ending wave of injuries and suspensions.
José Luis Mendilibar, his counterpart in the Olympiakos dugout, was born a decade before and 50 miles away from Emery, and has had to wait a little longer for his time in the limelight. He is perhaps best-known for his two spells with Eibar, the second of which saw him keep the Basque minnows and their (8,000-seater stadium) in LaLiga for five consecutive seasons from 2015-16 onwards, before footballing gravity finally caught up with them at the end of the 2020-21 season. He was a slightly unexpected appointment at Sevilla, drafted in amid the wreckage of Jorge Sampaoli’s disastrous tenure last March. He duly humiliated Manchester United in the Europa League, won that competition (his first major trophy) and was sacked last October, for one of the more remarkable five-month tenures in recent hisrory. Appointed by Marinakis as Olympiakos’ fourth(!) manager this season, the smart money is not on a long stay on the shores of the Aegean, but Mendilibar may yet give Piraeus something to remember him by.
The Teams
Olympiakos have lined up in the same basic 4-2-3-1 formation under each of the three managers (Diego Martínez, Carlos Carvalhal, Mendilibar) to have led them out in European competition this season. Mendilibar has placed a stronger emphasis on an aggressive press since his takeover (you can read more in this excellent briefing by Petros Kariatoglou here), but they remain an erratic side that were a little fortunate to scrape past an equally erratic Fenerbahçe outfit in their quarter-final tie.
Emery’s Villa, by contrast, are a little more flexible, a combination of the míster‘s own proclivities and a wretched injury list across the campaign. Emery’s preference is for a 4-4-2 out of possession, with the second forward drifting in space behind and around the focal point of Ollie Watkins. This often sees one fullback (typically Lucas Digne at present) push up in possession while the other tucks in to form a back three. More on their approach can be found here. Villa’s biggest weakness this season has been their tendency to buckle when asked to sit on a lead (to the delight of Emery’s delusional enemies everywhere), which was also on show in their quarter-final against Lille. Villa were nevertheless able to persevere thanks to…
The Key Players
…Emi Martínez has enjoyed a meteroic rise to prominence since his unexpected spell in the first team at Arsenal, and is now one of the Premier League’s (and the world’s) most prominent and capable goalkeepers. He is, however, suspended for the first leg of this tie courtesy of his antics in northern France, and so the onus will be on Pau Torres and Ezri Konsa to lead a capable defensive screen in front of Robin Olsen. Ollie Watkins has truly emerged as a world-class centre-forward this season, and could be the difference-maker in this tie, ably supported by some combination of Leon Bailey and Moussa Diaby behind and around him.
Olympiakos have less in the way of star power, but can at least count on the return of former Leverkusen centre-back Panagiotis Retsos from suspension. Given the likelihood that they will concede at some point in this tie, Olympiakos are even more dependent than usual on Ayoub El Kaabi to continue his prolific campaign up front. At 6’0, the Moroccan number 9 will pose a serious test for Villa’s defence and has hit the ground running in the Conference League, with five goals and one assist in six appearances alongside 17 goals in 28 in the Greek Super League. Daniel Podence has never quite hit the heights hoped for when he moved to Wolves four years ago but, back on loan in Greece, offers trickery and invention from the left flank. Can Villa exploit his occasional indiscipline in the press and turn Olympiakos’ main creative outlet against them?
Semi-Final 2: ACF Fiorentina – Club Brugge KV
The competition’s two remaining unbeaten sides face off in the second semi-final, in a tie which has an agreeably vintage feel to it – both sides have one European Cup and one UEFA Cup final apiece, although neither side won either of their finals. (Fiorentina did win the 1960-61 Cup Winners’ Cup, the sole European constituent of the 10 major trophy wins in their history.) Both are bidding to reach the final amid disappointing domestic seasons. Club Brugge sacked Ronny Deila as the price for a stuttering league campaign that left them 19 points adrift of Union Saint-Gilloise by the close of the regular season – although thanks to the quirks of the Belgian league, where teams in the championship round start from a base of half their regular-season points total, Club Brugge are now joint-top with four games remaining. Fiorentina, by contrast, have no such sudden title excitement to look forward to, instead clinging on to eighth place a (and the prospect of a third consecutive Conference League campaign) after a meek Coppa Italia semi-final exit away to Atalanta. Both sides hail from immensely historic cities; Club Brugge’s stadium is named after Jan Breydel, a man who legend (perhaps spuriously) assigns a key role in the fourteenth century Battle of the Golden Spurs, where French heavy cavalry were slaughtered by a Flemish force composed of ordinary but well-trained urban militiamen. Florence is of course a historic commercial and proto-industrial centre of rare distinction. Can Club Brugge channel the spirit of the men of Kortrijk away in Tuscany tonight?
The Managers
Nicky Hayen, Club Brugge’s interim manager after the dismissal of Ronny Deila, was the first and currently only Belgian ever to manage in the Welsh top flight, courtesy of a six-month stint at Clwb Pêl-droed Sir Hwllffordd (or “”Haverfordwest County AFC”” in the tongue of the Saxons) which was sufficiently impressive to secure him the role of manager of Club Brugge’s academy side. It is in that capacity that he is currently serving as the senior side’s caretaker manager, although he would be very hard to overlook as a permanent appointment should he get Club Brugge to the Conference League final or win the Belgian Pro League (let alone both). Aside from his Welsh jaunt, and a brief and ultimately ill-fated spell as current Cameroon manager Marc Brys’ assistant at Najran and al-Raed in Saudi Arabia, Hayen has spent his entire managerial career in Belgium.
Vincenzo Italiano (an Italian born in Germany whose surname means “Italian” in Italian – not to be confused with Domenico Tedesco, a German-Italian born in Italy whose surname means “German” in Italian) has enjoyed a similarly meteoric rise to prominence. Six years ago he was managing FC Arzignano Valchiampo in the Italian Serie D, but has now successively managed in Serie C, B and A courtesy of tactical acumen paired with astute career choices. He has, like Hayen, never won a major trophy, although his Fiorentina side were beaten finalists in both the Conference League and the Coppa Italia last season, as well as finishing eighth in the league. They are lucky to be here – Fiorentina only qualified for Europe again this season because of Juventus’ one-year ban from European football for financial fraud.
The Teams
Italiano loves changing his lineups – he went 141 consecutive games without naming the same starting XI prior to this March. His tactical vision has, however, been comparatively consistent over the course of that long and winding road, with a relatively orthodox 4-2-3-1 his go-to. In the build-up they, like Villa and an increasing number of other sides, tend to favour one fullback stepping up into midfield (or beyond) while the other forms a sort of back three in buildup. You can read more into their style under Italiano this season here. They have not been especially free-scoring this season, with last weekend’s 5-1 demolition of relegation-bound Sassuolo featuring 10% of all the goals they have scored in the league this season, and are also remarkably prone to draws – five of their 10 Conference League fixtures this season have ended in a stalemate. They are nevertheless the clear favourites in this tie.
That will not necessarily bother Club Brugge too much – the Belgian side have hit a rich vein of form at just the right time, with their 3-0 aggregate quarter-final victory over an impressive PAOK side easily the most comfortable of the four semi-finalists’. They tend towards a 4-3-3, although the benching of Hugo Vetlesen for tonight’s game suggests that a departure to a 4-4-1-1 with Hans Vanaken in a deeper role behind Thiago is more likely. Club Brugge can be quite direct under Hayen when doing so is deemed useful – it will be interesting to see how this contrasts with Fiorentina’s more patient build-up. (More on Hayen’s approach, and that of Club Brugge more generally this season, here.)
The Key Players
Fans of English and Italian football may remember Arthur Melo as a kind of walking punchline, traded from Barcelona to Juventus as part of an accounting scam and the subject of a tragicomic loan to Liverpool last season. He has nevertheless been reborn at Fiorentina, playing comfortably more minutes than in any season since 2018/19 and playing an important role at the base of I Viola‘s midfield. Ahead of him the evergreen Giacomo “Jack” Bonaventura offers creativity and the particular wisdom of experience, while Nicolás González is the closest thing this often inconsistent and frustrating Fiorentina side have to a consistent goal threat. Andrea Belotti has had a poor season, his spell on loan at Fiorentina doing little to improve on his wretched time at Roma, but found Europe a far happier hunting ground than Serie A during his time with the Giallorossi.
Tasked with subduing that wily midfield is Raphael Onyedika, one of Club Brugge’s big beneficiaries from Hayen’s appointment – he was recently voted the Pro League’s player of the month for April, and has begun to attract the customary glances from Premier League sides. Ahead of him, the statuesque club captain and legend Hans Vanaken has been talismanic for Club Brugge in the Conference this season, his four goals a key factor in Blauw-Zwart topping their group. The striker Igor Thiago‘s brief love affair with Club Brugge will conclude this summer – he will be Brentford’s club-record signing, having only signed for Club Brugge from Ludogorets last season – but it has yielded an impressive 28 goals in all competitions so far this campaign. He has yet to score in the Conference knockouts, though – will he make the step up tonight?
