Europa League Final Preview

 

The Europa League Final is set to take place at the Stadion Miejskal in the city of Gdansk, Poland on Wednesday, May 26th. It is the first of two European finals which will cap off the 2020/2021 European season with the Champions League Final coming on May 29th. Villarreal will face Manchester United to see who will win Europe's secondary competition. A chance of European glory for Villarreal or concluding a good season with a trophy for Manchester United?

Villarreal

For Villarreal, they have made history. This will be their first ever major European final. They have won the UEFA Intertoto Cup twice in 2003 and 2004 but their best major performance in a major European competition was in the 2006 UEFA Champions League where they reached the semifinals, losing to Arsenal. They appointed Unai Emery, who has won the competition three times with Sevilla over last summer having the likes of Dani Parejo, Gerard Moreno and Samuel Chukwueze. They finished seventh in La Liga but the story of their season has been in the Europa League. They topped their group with sixteen points and beat the likes of Red Bull Salzburg, Dynamo Kyiv, Dynamo Zagreb and Arsenal. A number of their players are not household names outside of Spain and despite being outsiders for this game, having a manager like Emery, who has won this competition will give the players belief. Unfortunately, they could be without Chukwueze, who sustained an injury in the semifinals against Arsenal. They still have striker Gerard Moreno, who has scored 30 goals this season with six in the Europa League. Going to the Final as underdogs might help the Yellow Submarine, especially if they score first and if they can pull it off, it would be a great night for them in Gdansk. 

Manchester United

Manchester United are in the Europa League Final for the first time in four years, when they won in 2017 against Ajax at the Friends Arena in Stockholm. The Red Devils were unable to build on since then with Mourinho getting the sack in December 2018 with former United striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer taking over the helm since then. Despite the doubts and criticism over the Norwegian, he has steadied the ship (or the bus) at Old Trafford and has improved the likes of Marcus Rashford, Luke Shaw and Paul Pogba with the stardust that is Bruno Fernandes. They will be disappointed that they were knocked out in the group stages of the Champions League this season even though they had a great advantage of going through. Nevertheless, they were in the knockout stages of the Europa League and did not look back. They scored 18 goals over eight games in the knockout stages beating Real Sociedad, Granada, AC Milan and AS Roma, who conceded six goals at Old Trafford. Finishing second in the Premier League with 74 points shows the process Solskjaer and United have made but winning the Europa League Final can show pundits and United fans alive that they can challenge for top honours. United have not won a trophy since 2017 and have seen their main rivals dominate English and European football since then. It will be a big deal for Solskjaer as this is his first European Final as a manager and his first as Manchester United boss. Whats helped United is the experience the players have in winning silverware. Paul Pogba is a World Cup winner, Edinson Cavani was a serial winner at PSG and some players in the United squad won the Europa League back in 2017, so they will not be fazed by the occasion. The potential for United to be back amongst Europe's elite is there but winning the Europa League Final could be a sign of things to come.