Why Villarreal’s key to victory is drawing Liverpool into a tactical game of chess

Unai Emery’s side won’t try and take the game to Liverpool – they’ll try to bring them down a level

Unai Emery leads Villarreal training ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final (AFP via Getty Images)

As Jurgen Klopp talks about “needing the atmosphere” of Liverpool’s last Champions League semi-final, that famous night against Barcelona in 2019, the opposition are enjoying an excitement unique to Villarreal.

It is that rare thrill that can only come with rare appearances in a fixture like this. There’s nothing like it. It’s what the Champions League should really be about, that sense of something really special rather than routine.

And then the game will start. The strong likelihood is that, if Liverpool don’t blow Villarreal away, they will be drawn into a methodical tactical matrix. It could well be a tedious game, far removed from the rampaging drama of recent Champions League semi-finals. This is what Unai Emery does, and does so well, to the frustration of so many European opponents. Klopp knows it well from the 2016 Europa League final against Seville.

“Unai is a detail-obsessed manager who prepares for all situations in the game and that is what his team executes,” the German said. “Different ways to build up and react.”

React, however, is the key word. Everything Villarreal do will be based around how Liverpool play. Emery’s team won’t be taking the game to Liverpool. They’ll be trying to take them down to their level.

It is canny, of course, but it’s not exactly exhilarating. And it’s at that point that so much talk about the town’s small population and the ambition of president Fernando Roig will suddenly hold that bit less allure. Many people fairly wishing greater competitive variety for the competition might well be guiltily lamenting the loss of a giant in Bayern Munich.

It is why this tie does say something about the nature of upsets and upstarts in the modern Champions League. Let’s be realistic here, after all. One of the most exhilarating elements of football is when a less fashionable side causes a surprise, but does so because they are a properly good side, able to play. Dynamo Kyiv 1998-99, even more poignantly given recent events, remain a last great example of this.

They were one of the last clubs outside the western European elite – and, increasingly, England – to keep a core of quality players together long enough to do something special, to capture the imagination.

The only truly similar side since has been Ajax 2019, but they were almost completely asset-stripped within months. The team’s two totems, Frenkie De Jong and Matthijs De Ligt, were the first out with the departure of Erik ten Hag now closing an era. It was far quicker than what happened to Kyiv in 1999, the immediate transfer of Andriy Shevchenko to AC Milan notwithstanding, and Porto 2004.

A quarter-century of Champions League semi-final surprises

• Lyon 2020
• Leipzig 2020
• Ajax 2019
• Tottenham Hotspur 2019
• Monaco 2017
• Atletico Madrid 2014
• Borussia Dortmund 2013
• Schalke 2011
• Villarreal 2006
• PSV Eindhoven 2005
• Porto 2004
• Leeds United 2001
• Dynamo Kyiv 1999

There is nevertheless an irony there because the nature of the modern Champions League means, if there is to be a surprise, you actually have to do something different. The tactical evolution of the sport has been speeding towards a place where high intensity and high pressing dominate, something that is counter-intuitively better suited to teams without stars. They don’t have the same hang-ups or demands, meaning they can be pressed more – but then they don’t have the same prime quality. Hence the impact of Leipzig in 2020, and Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund before that.

Since the big western European clubs have the wealth to solve any problems through expenditure, deeper innovation must come elsewhere.

It just tends to get appropriated by the big clubs – as has pretty much happened with Liverpool and Klopp. It happens now more quickly than ever.

It all means that, as he tries to slow a game down, Emery is an even greater outlier.

Villarreal celebrate knocking out Juventus in the round of 16 (EPA)

There is little doubt his pragmatic approach is beginning to disappear from the game. You only have to look at how few sides now play this way, or even the ongoing debate over Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid. The persistent question is whether the Argentine is at this point maximising the level of one of Spain’s wealthiest clubs.

This in itself points to the almost unique place Emery occupies in continental football. Last season’s Europa League, and this season’s progress, has provoked criticism of Arsenal and their own speed in getting rid of him. It shouldn’t. Emery was just never right for the club.

He is one of those rare managers who is superb at raising a lower-tier club to a higher level, but who can’t but use the same tactics at top sides, curiously bringing them down to the same level.

This is not to take away from his brilliance. There has been superb tactical acumen on show from Emery throughout this run. There has also been superb transfer acumen from Villarreal, given the impact of so many players discarded by bigger clubs, from Etienne Capoue to Giovani Lo Celso.

That has only added to the sense of redemption and defiance about it all, right up to Roig using the moment of victory against Juventus – a 3-0 away victory at that – to pointedly tell Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli what it said about the idea of the European Super League. That it was rubbish.

There can even be real excitement about Villarreal suddenly going on the break against a bigger side. It’s just that, on Wednesday, all this might need to be remembered amid some forgettable passages of play.