Unai Emery has added his name to an elite group of managers to have taken charge of four or more teams in a Champions League knockout match.
Emery has led Aston Villa to the round of 16 in their first ever Champions League season after a top-eight finish in the competition's league phase. Standing between them and a quarter-final spot is Club Brugge, who have already beaten them once this season.
The Spanish manager previously took charge of Valencia, Villarreal and Paris Saint-Germain in the competition. However, he never led Arsenal out in a Champions League game of any kind, while his Sevilla side fell in the group stage in 2015-16 before going on to win that season's Europa League.
The highlight of Emery's previous Champions League campaigns came in the 2021-22 season, when his Villarreal team made it all the way to the semi-finals. He also oversaw a memorable 4-0 first-leg win over Barcelona with PSG in 2016, only for the Catalan club to mount a remarkable second-leg comeback.
England manager Thomas Tuchel is the other manager with four campaigns with different clubs to his name. Tuchel won the competition with Chelsea in 2021, having reached the final with Paris Saint-Germain the previous year, and also took charge of Bundesliga sides Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich in the knockout rounds.
Another former Chelsea boss has done it five times. Claudio Ranieri led the Blues to the semi-finals in 2003-04, and also took charge of knockout games with Leicester City, Juventus, Roma and Inter Milan.
There are two managers to lead six different teams out in Champions League knockout games, and - sure enough - both of them have also managed Chelsea. The top two are Jose Mourinho (Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) and Carlo Ancelotti (Juventus, AC Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich).
“We are feeling strong and consistent at home, but we are not feeling consistent away," Emery said ahead of the first leg in Belgium. "In this competition, we won at Young Boys, we lost at Brugge, we won at Leipzig and lost at Monaco – two and two. It’s enough balance for the competition.
“We got to be in the top eight, but tomorrow we have to do something better away than we did. We have to be stronger in our consistency than we did before here in Brugge and in Monaco as well."
Just one goal was enough to settle the league phase meeting between the sides. It came from the penalty spot, with Hans Vanaken netting after a bizarre handball from Villa defender Tyrone Mings.