Unai Emery Reveals Why Aston Villa Suffered 4-2 Defeat Against Olympiakos

Unai Emery said his team, Aston Villa, lost control of their Europa Conference League semi-final match against Olympiakos on Thursday night, May 2.

On the said date, Olympiakos visited Villa Park for the first leg of the Europa Conference League semi-finals and Aston Villa who have been enjoying superb form in the competition were expected to win. But that didn’t happen as the visitors ran riot in the game.

Before the 29th minute of the encounter, Olympiakos had scored two goals through the boots of Ayoub El Kaabi. Before the first half ended, Ollie Watkins got a goal back for the home team.

In the second half, Moussa Diaby scored the equalizer in the 52nd minute but four minutes after, El Kaabi completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot.

When coach Unai Emery and his boys thought they could score the equalizer before the game ended, Santiago Hezze sealed the 4-2 win for Olympiakos.

This means that Aston Villa are condemned to beat the Greek club 3-0 in the second leg at the Georgios Karaiskakis Football Stadium on Thursday, May 9.

In the post-game interview after the 4-2 defeat against the Greek club, Unai Emery said, “We are frustrated and disappointed, we didn’t play well.

“This is the summary I can do at the beginning. We didn’t have control of the game. We were playing so fast.

“In a lot of moments we needed to stop them getting good positions and get into their box with more passes than one, two or three. And they were attacking, playing so open. Our plan was completely different.

“Congratulations, they deserve to win the first leg. We will try to come back but, of course, they are now favourites. We will play there and try to show something different tonight.”