Aston Villa Chase Europa League Glory, Freiburg’s Fairytale Final, and Mourinho Returns to Real Madrid: Euro Nights 05/19/26

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0:43Roger Bennett:And there are tons of team color combos and frame styles so you can find a pair that matches your club and your vibe for all your spring and summer plans. I can wear these out to coffee with my friends on my big trips to New York and then straight to the Gotham game after to cheer them on. If you're ready to upgrade your eyewear, head to gooder.com slash MIB to claim$10 off your first order when you sign up with your email. That's G-O-O-D-R dot com slash MIB for$10 off your first order. You're listening to the Men in Blazers media network suboptimal radio three European finals three English clubs will we see a clean sweep three English wins?

1:23No. Unai Emery won four Europa League titles will a fifth load with Aston Villa? Yes. And Villa's German of Pohmich Freiburg a modest club living well within their means how did it get so good? You've answered the question

1:36Roger Bennett:yourself Rog it's through sensible management and it's really sexy.

1:44Ready for some football for football. We'll go deep on sexy, sensible management. It's Rog, it's Rory, it's European Knights, Europa League Final Edition. Next week, we Champions League, we Conference League Final, but for now, Aston Villa in a real-life European final for the first time in 44 years. who's counting against Freiburg, possibly the most modest pragmatic club in Germany, a nation who essentially invented pragmatism. First European final ever for them in Istanbul, Turkey. Give us a quick vibe check on the scale from prehistoric fish frozen in ice for a few millennia to the fire of a thousand suns.

2:29What's the emotional tenor heading into this one?

2:31Roger Bennett:I think for Villa it's enormous. It's their first major European final for two generations. It's restoring the club to the stage on which it feels it belongs. And it is Unai Emery on his home turf in the Europa League. It feels like a really kind of significant day for Aston Villa and for Freiburg, first ever major European final. I think only the second major final in their history. It's a huge day for them as well. Want to give huge thanks to Bank of America, official Bank of US Soccer and the FIFA World Cup 2026 for supporting the men in blazes media network. Discover what's possible in sports and in life.

3:03What would you like the power to do? But let's go deeper. because we got real life silverware on offer. Wednesday, 3pm Eastern, Aston Villa. They've been here before. It's a historic club founded, as Adam John pointed out on Twitter, before clusters last and European champions in 1982. We've talked about their 1-0 win over Bayern Munich in Rotterdam many times in this very show. One of the grandees of English football based in Birmingham, your second largest city in the UK. And despite being a largely working class and proud team, they count real royalty amongst their fans. Prince William. Yeah, but also my real king, Tom Hanks.

3:44Prince William first. He had a caretaker as a child, didn't we all? But one of his was a Villa fan who took him to the FA Cup semi-final against Bolton in 2000. Sealed to love. Tom Hanks, I **** you not, jet-lagged. He thought Aston Villa sounded like a vacation paradise. went and watched them, but has stuck with them loyally ever after. That's the most American thing that ever Americaned. William was actually at the second leg of the 4-1 aggregate win over Forest, fist bumping around, and it was beautiful to watch. He'd need to celebrate with the players in the locker room. Raw, Birmingham, massive city, commercial-based villa can draw from, but the club have largely lived life out of the radar of major European moments.

4:27Yeah, they won the 1996 League Cup. They're not really challenged for the league properly since the 1990s. This season, down the stretch, all the tensions turn to the possibility of a first continental trophy in 44 long years. Point into context for us, Aston Villa, what their role is in the footballing landscape in England and really what a first trophy in 30 years could do in terms of resetting that.

4:51Roger Bennett:Well, as someone born in 1982, Roger, I'll have less of the 44 long years. Thank you very much. 44 years is just a beat of the eye. is nothing more than that. Villa are one of England's historic giants, founder members of the league, one of the early superpowers in English football and kind of a consistent force, if never a dominant force for 100 years or so really until the 1990s when they did have that flourish around 1996, a couple of sort of semi-title challenges and then after that they faded away. Martin O 'Neill led them to sixth place about 10 years in a row in the first decade of this century.

5:29Roger Bennett:But they fell into a trap, I think, where they were never quite big enough to be one of the kind of established elite that we see sort of dominating the Premier League now. And they also weren't in London, which meant they didn't get that kind of boost of being in the capital, of having all the kind of the glamour attached to them. But to anyone with a kind of grasp of English history, Villa are one of the traditional giants. They were one of the great names of English football. And what we've seen in the last five years, particularly under Unai Emery, is a restoration to kind of a modern version of that.

5:58Roger Bennett:So it's two years out of three in the Champions League, a run deep in Europe. It's the reassertion of Villa's traditional identity, really. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about Unai Emery because talking about him is really just an alternative way of talking about the story of the Europa League itself, in a way, this stat is astounding. Unai Emery has been in 46 % of all the Europa League finals since 2014. It's flabbergasting. Six finals, four clubs in 13 years. Fair warning to Freiburg, he's won every single time. He's been employed by a club that has the word Villa in their name. Sevilla, Villarreal, and now Aston Villa.

6:39His only loss in a final, and I'm just saying facts Arsenal fans came in 2019. This is the company that Unai's in. Only Italian manager and legend Giovanni Trapattoni with seven has reached more European finals. But at the same time, Ru, every time he's in the Champions League, it kind of always falls flat for him. He underwhelmed with PSG, underwhelmed with Arsenal, made the semis with Villarreal in 2022. But this is a gent who comes alive for the Europa League and the Europa League only in a way. His trophy cabinet honestly looks like Steve from Blue's Clues Closet. He's got one style and he's going to keep playing it.

7:15The question is, why is he so good at the Europa League, but not so good at the Champions League? How is he good at the second tier competition, but never translates beyond? He's almost got a silverware ceiling.

7:26Roger Bennett:I'm going to have to give you the really boring answer, Rog. I'm really sorry. I think it's to do with the teams he's at, effectively. In the Europa League, he is in charge of teams that are among the favourites, and he is tactically astute and motivationally excellent, and he gets the best out of his players. I think in the Champions League, other than at Paris Saint-Germain, where he was in charge to an extent of a basket case, that wasn't the PSG that we have come to know now. he's not been at teams that can compete in those final stages he's always been at a slight disadvantage so I think what you see with Emery is a manager who can help teams overperform which is why he's so good at the Europa League but in the Champions League the teams he's competing against are of such a high level that even he can't kind of transcend it There's another detail about Emery I want to quickly touch upon he comes from Ondaribia in Basque Country initially came through the Real Sociedad U system never made it higher than the second division as a player But he's one of six managers across four European finals this year to hail from that region of northern Spain.

8:24It's incredible. It means three quarters of the managers in the Champions League, Europa League, Conference League and the Women's Champions League. All of them come from within essentially quite a long bike ride of each other, probably a way of phrasing it. And we've talked about this before. Basque Country, Sands of San Sebastian and the connection between it and the greatest tactical minds of our age. Mikel Arteta, Xabi Alonso, Emery, Andoni Arola. We can throw David Moyes in, yeah? How all of those in a region, that little area caught between France and Spain and the sea, how they travel better, how they translate their ideas better.

8:58But why now, why suddenly does it seem like every In Vogue manager in the world comes from just a tiny parcel of the globe all at the same time?

9:06Roger Bennett:I think a lot of it's to do with what you just said, that the Basts have always been kind of outward looking. They've always been willing to travel. There's a brilliant book called The Bast History of the World by a guy called Mark Kolanski that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn about the Basques more broadly than just the football managers. I think in a football sense, we've talked about this before, that the Basque country has kind of twin influences. Part of it is the kind of the tiki-taka of Spain, the technical style, the desire to dominate possession. But Basque football itself is much more about industry and hard work and energy and grit.

9:35Roger Bennett:And I think that combination, that kind of gives you what you need as a football culture to thrive basically anywhere. there is an element of coincidence about it I don't think it means that in 30 years time we'll only have Basque managers and there's probably a little bit of fashion as well but ultimately Xabi Alonso, Mikel Arteta, Emery the other Basque coaches out there they have made the idea of a Basque coach quite fashionable and football is nothing if not fashionable ultimately what's really impressive is that most of them live up to the hype that's unusual and it may well be like a self-fulfilling cycle that the more Basque coaches succeed, the more people go and look for Basque coaches.

10:19You're telling me it's like the equivalent of Dubai chocolate? Unai Emery is a labubu.

10:23Roger Bennett:That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think that's what you just said. Just Basque managers, Dubai chocolate, labubus. But hang on a minute. Breaking news. That's simple. We'll have an opponent on Wednesday.

10:40Oh, you're undoubtedly already singing along at home, but I am contractually obliged to tell you, you are being serenaded by the club anthem of Freiburg. Forwards, SC Freiburg. Forwards again and again. Oh, Freiburg, capital of the Black Forest, home of the oldest inn in Germany, Hotel Bern. They know and live out the light truth that patience is a virtue at Freiburg. started with Hakim Stoker club president for 37 long years until his death in 2019 he built the culture modest sensible club that lives within its means as our friend and Bayern Munich manager von Sonnkamp put it in a quote it's a small club that's built everything using its own resources it's a philosophy a vision now Stoker's longevity gave the club incredible stability manager Volker Finca reigned for 16 long years from 1991 to 2007.

11:35He's the one that led the club to the Bundesliga in 1993 where they added floodlights and solar panels finally to the stadium. Been four quick dips back to the second division since. Most recently, 2016. But a couple of years after Finca, club turned to a former player who'd already spent 16 years coaching the youth teams and as an assistant, soaking up the culture of the place. Christian Stryker, he only lasted a dozen years from 2011 to 2024. I mean, this is a club that has not updated their crest since 1958. They still use the same kind of drunken sketch of a griffin. Ro, we're living in an increasingly impatient world where managers just fired at whim, some clubs plough through, you know, four in a season, I'm not naming any names.

12:20How have Freiburg just found such a value and stability?

12:23Roger Bennett:Part of it, I think, Roger, is because of where they are. As you say, it's in the Black Forest, but it's not a big place, Freiburg. It's a sleepy town. It's not a high-pressure, big urban environment where there's lots of media demanding immediate success. And it means that the club have been able to be patient, to take pleasure and to take glory in small wins, and to build carefully, judiciously, and sustainably, ultimately. I think that's really important. But the other thing that maybe makes them stand out, even in Germany, where football isn't quite as reactive as it's become in, for example, West London, is they have this culture of stability.

13:01Roger Bennett:It's written into the club because of Finca and particularly, I think, because of Strike. This idea that you have a manager and the manager sticks around. The manager oversees the development of the club. That the manager isn't judged necessarily on how they've done at the weekend or this month or even this season, but in their body of work much more largely. They take the social side of it much more seriously as well, I think. The idea that the manager is representative of a civic institution that has to feel part of the city it calls home. that's vitally important at Freiburg there's a moral dimension to what Freiburg do.

13:33Roger Bennett:Streich emerged during Covid during the height of the pandemic as the conscience of German football which you'll remember was the first league to return. Streich was the person who kind of would wrestle in public with that subject with desire to play but also to kind of acknowledge the public health risks. He talked openly about his dislike a lot of modern football particularly like gambling sponsorships and stuff and would then say but I'm aware that I'm paid well because of those sponsorships no one else does that but at frybird it's part of the conversation and it always has been that idea that you do have a social responsibility and i think those two things have created this culture where the fan base will give the team time they will they understand that maybe there's a tough season maybe there's a good season but if you look at it in the round that the line the trajectory is always going up so you get to where they are now i love that the yeah maybe a good season maybe a bad season but there's always verse there's always beer that's what life I think is ultimately about.

14:27Second verse of the club hymn continues, beer from the Black Forest, wine from Baden, cathedral and furs. This is our home. And it is a remarkably singular place, trade and manufacturing town, thriving music scene that kind of predates Berlin. On one side, you've got the lush Black Forest. On the other, you've got terrace vineyards. I mean, it is beautiful, 12 miles all the way to the French border. It's about an hour from the Swiss border also. so you've got a lot of cross-pollination of nationalities and idea. The club, founded in 1904, then called FC Mars for three years, started in 1905, kept most of his existence in the lower leagues.

15:07The American folk hero you may remember, old fans, Paul Caligiuri. He had a season there, 1991-92. Froeburg's most famous player, World Cup winning manager, an expert nose picker, Jurgi Love. Three stints there as a player, 70s and 80s. His breadth of his career made over 250 appearances, set the club's then scoring record too. But they have been, as you say, slowly building and building, raising the ceiling, raising the sense of what success is all while living within their means. 2021, moved into a new stadium, 34 ,700 capacity Europa Park Stadion, which features the biggest solar roof of any football stadium in the world.

15:466 ,200 solar panels generating 2.4 megawatts taking advantage of German's sunniest city which is amazing made it into extra time the German Cup semi-finals this season and now face quote their most important match in the club's history the Europa League will be if they win the first silverware aside from some second division title tchotchkes so Raw how did this humble club come to this European spotlight how are they growing so much to this level what's behind this burst of quasi-success?

16:20Roger Bennett:Consistency, I think. So Streich steps down in 2024 and as you say, he was appointed after coaching for more than a decade in the club, in the youth system, then as an assistant. And rather than kind of tearing up the blueprint, Freiburg just do it again. Julian Schuster, the manager, had been club captain. I think he'd played hundreds of games in midfield. He was working towards his coaching badges. And the Freiburg model is you look internally, you just build from where you are. And I think that consistency is struck through in terms of the types of players they sign, the type of football they play, the managers they have particularly.

16:51Roger Bennett:And they know that it works. They have the evidence now, I guess, over the last 15, 20 years that as long as you kind of believe in your model and stick with it. We talk about this all the time, Rog. We talk about this with Bodo Glimt in Norway, that teams who have a clear sense of themselves tend to succeed. And I think Freiburg are another great example of that. They've needed a little bit of good fortune on this Europa League run. There's always an element of chance when you are overperforming your budget, your economic reality. But this has been coming for Freiburg. They have been in European contention more and more frequently.

17:22Roger Bennett:They made the German Cup final under Christian Streich in 2021. That was their first major final. They didn't win. They lost to RB Leipzig. They have been becoming more and more relevant at the top end of German football. And I guess the natural end state is that they are in Europe more and more frequently. And what we see across European football is the more you're in Europe, the better you are at it. Freiburg's all-time top scorer the Italian stallion Vincenzo Grifo was scoring banger free kicks even before Dominic Sobberslay invented them nine goal involvements in just the Europa League so far on the other side look we know Aston Villa for goals they have Oli Watkins the highest scoring Englishman this year not named Harry Kane 19 all comps not even a bandage over his eye can unsight him from the best backside in football since Eden Hazard club captain John McGinn, who's got five in Europe this year, including two goals, 156 seconds apart in the semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

18:19As a fan sang, 4-0 on your big day out. McGinn called it the best performance he's seen from Villa in a long time. Talked about embracing now, becoming legends like the 82 side that won the predecessor of the Champions League. Quote, we need to make sure we are not the nearly men. Then there's always Emi Martinez, hung from the crossbar as Sweet Caroline played at full-time against Forrest, your World Cup winner, your banter in chief, at it again against Forrest, shoving his opposite number, Stefano Tiga, as Forrest tried to gather before the game and then standing inside the Forrest huddle like some kind of Argentine Paul Tierney.

18:58Roar, what kind of game will we see and what will the scoreline be?

19:02Roger Bennett:I mean, I think Villa ultimately will have too much for Freiburg, but there will be no shortage of spirit and I think they'll have to work for it. The way this game has been presented in England borders on the patronising, I would say, that there is an expectation that Villa, in getting through Forest, have kind of overcome the real obstacle on their way to winning the trophy and that Freiburg, the Black Forest, are not anything to worry about. I don't think that's true. I think they've got enough experience and enough talent to give Villa a problem. Matisse Dinter, who you mentioned, the club captain, Freiburg-Born, World Cup winner.

19:32Roger Bennett:You know, this isn't a team of amateurs and part-timers who are just happy to be there. They will be going to Istanbul to win. But I think ultimately Villa, they found an extra gear against Forest. They didn't really need it against Liverpool, but it was there if they had. And I suspect they probably take this relatively comfortably in the end, but with a couple of scares on the way. So I'm going to say 3-1 Villa.

19:56Ginter, really a symbol of everything that is Froeberg, came to the Youth Academy there, now leading the team. As Schuster said, quote, I believe the most important thing is to know who you are. That is football. That is life. Freyberg know exactly who they are. Modest, careful, on the verge of their first big trophy. To find out who will be Europa League champions, tune in Wednesday, 3pm Eastern. Rory, two quick questions before we go. As we speak, you are sitting there in Yorkshire, in the north of England. I do think of you as a representative of the entire nation. If we face America footballing-wise, it is a wild time for English football.

20:35Three finalists in three European finals. Arsenal, Champions League, Villa, Europa League. Oh, Crystal Palace in our beloved Conference League. This is a first for England. Italy did it in 2023, managed to lose every single final. Though, to be fair, they did win all three in 1990. So long ago that we still had the Cup Winners' Cup in action. Before the Conference League was even a trademark application in the UEFA lawyers' desk drawer. Spain also reached all three finals back in 1986. That was four decades ago. The benefits are massive. England will have at least eight teams in Europe next season, maybe up to nine, given some crazy permutations.