Unai Emery opens a chess app on his phone and plays three-minute games against strangers — under his own name. It is one of many habits that define a man who has just claimed his fifth UEFA Europa League title, guiding Aston Villa to a 3-0 victory over Freiburg on Wednesday for the club's first piece of silverware in 30 years.

The 54-year-old Spaniard previously won the competition three consecutive times with Sevilla — in 2014, 2015, and 2016 — before adding a fourth triumph with Villarreal in 2021. That haul now places him level with Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho, and Giovanni Trapattoni on five major European trophies, the most by any manager in the game's history.

Late nights and unlikely study material

Chess is far from Emery's only unconventional ritual. He regularly watches academic lectures — sometimes at 2am — gravitating toward scientists and thinkers who offer fresh ways of understanding the world. Sleep, it seems, is negotiable.

When he is not studying lectures, he turns on his iPad and watches football at whatever level is available. Racing Santander, freshly promoted to Spain's top flight, have featured on his screen. Not because they are rivals or Champions League contenders, but because Emery believes no match is without something to learn.

He has described this restlessness not as obsession but as relaxation — his way of unwinding.

From 16th place to European champions

The scale of Emery's transformation at Aston Villa is difficult to overstate. When he arrived on 1 November 2022, Villa sat 16th in the Premier League, one point above the relegation zone. He proceeded to win 15 of his first 25 league matches, finishing the campaign in seventh place and returning the club to European competition for the first time since 2010–11.

In his first full season, he secured Champions League qualification for the club for the first time since 1982–83, while also orchestrating 15 consecutive home league victories — the most in Villa's 151-year history. This season, he has delivered a European trophy to Villa Park for the first time since 1982.

A five-match winless run at the start of this campaign tested belief, but Emery never wavered. He told his players at the outset that Champions League football was achievable regardless of budget. He delivered on that promise too.

Ignoring the noise

When Villa were criticised for fielding a weakened side in a home defeat to Tottenham Hotspur ahead of the Europa League semi-final second leg against Nottingham Forest, Emery absorbed the criticism without reaction. He had already calculated where the points needed for Champions League qualification would come from. He was correct.

Emery says nobody works harder than him — not as a boast, but as a statement of method. He demands players commit 70 percent of their focus to football, attends to physical details and body shape in training, and credits his parents with instilling in him a deep sense of personal responsibility.