Sport points out that Emery will return to Camp Nou this Tuesday with unfinished business. The Aston Villa manager will celebrate his 55th birthday on the day of the match, and Barcelona have been his nemesis. The statistics are stark: in 30 meetings, he has 3 wins, 6 draws and 21 defeats. His win rate against Barcelona is only 10%, and no other team has beaten him as many times in his career.
Emery has never had much luck against Barcelona, especially at Camp Nou.
The goal difference offers little comfort to the Basque coach either. His teams have scored 34 goals and conceded 76, an average of more than 2.5 conceded per game, for a goal difference of -42. The numbers at Camp Nou are even starker. Emery has taken six different teams to Barcelona's home ground on 15 occasions: Almería, Valencia, Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, Paris Saint-Germain and Villarreal. He has won only once and lost 14 times, with no draws. His teams have scored 12 goals there and conceded 46, an average of more than 3 conceded per game.
This bad run began in October 2007, when he led Almería to a 2-0 defeat. That loss was only the start of a long winless run: Emery needed 21 meetings to record his first win against Barcelona. In the first 20, he had 6 draws and 14 defeats.
The first exception came in October 2015, when Sevilla beat Barcelona 2-1 at the Sánchez-Pizjuán with goals from Krohn-Dehli and Iborra. It was Emery's first victory over Barcelona after eight years of trying. The second win was even more dramatic, but it became one of his most bitter memories. In February 2017, his Paris Saint-Germain side thrashed Barcelona 4-0 at the Parc des Princes, with Di María scoring twice and Draxler and Cavani adding one each. Qualification seemed certain, but three weeks later Luis Enrique's team pulled off a historic 6-1 comeback at Camp Nou, with Sergi Roberto scoring the decisive goal in stoppage time.
The third and most recent victory came in May 2022. Emery was in charge of Villarreal, who won 2-0 at Camp Nou with goals from Pedraza and Moi Gómez. That result ended a run of 13 consecutive defeats at Barcelona's home ground. The last meeting between the two was in October 2022, and it ended in defeat again: Barcelona won 3-0 at Camp Nou, with Lewandowski scoring twice and Fati adding another.
Four years later, Emery faces his nemesis once again, this time with Aston Villa in the Champions League. He has a chance to improve a record that does not match his coaching reputation or his European achievements. The birthday present Emery wants is a fourth win against Barcelona in 31 attempts.