Aston Villa’s Unai Emery: Formed by a place of history, struggle and principle

Watching on from the balconies above, Unai Emery will return here, to Hondarribia, whenever his schedule allows.

Every September, provided Aston Villa do not have a game, he will celebrate his hometown’s biggest fiesta, Hondarribia’s Alarde (‘parade’).

Emery is intensely private and has a small circle of friends. Former colleagues, who had worked with him for several years, admit they know little about his personal life, with interactions geared towards total dedication on the pitch.

Emery is a football obsessive. Staff at Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training ground describe him as friendly and affable with a work ethic that reaches unparalleled levels. The 53-year-old will open doors for staff, even if they are some distance away and require him to wait, allowing them to go through first and will always say hello.

“I’m sure he does, but I’ve never seen him go home,” says one Villa worker, who, like others in this piece, spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships. “He’s always there.”

“He was a bit in his own world,” adds one former colleague. “He likes to talk strategy, work strategy and all of that — he is all about strategy, but he has a group of coaches around him that were like a safety net. He’s not a guy that could sit down and chat for hours with and find out about his private life. It’s all football.”

There have been tales of former staff at Sevilla joking that Emery would spend so long at the training ground that he would have breakfast, lunch and dinner there.

“I was born like this. The day I go and play golf, somebody should come and take me away because I’ll be good for nothing any more,” he once told reporters.

Emery’s life motto is unsurprising: “Con talento y sin talante no llegamos, pero con talante y sin talento tampoco,” which translates to, ‘With talent but not the will, we won’t get anywhere, but neither will we with the will and no talent’.

Sacrifice and commitment have driven Emery to become one of football’s most eminent coaches. Yet his character and approach to his profession were defined in the place he was raised.

It is why he will allow himself a brief return to watch the Alarde.

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The Emerys are fiercely proud of their place of birth, situated in the Basque Country. “Born in Hondarribia” is the first sentence on Unai’s Instagram bio and he was close to tears when he received the town’s “gold badge” from the local council in November 2022 to commemorate his achievements in management.

Dancers dressed in traditional green and white colours welcomed him into a packed town hall, where family members — including his brother, Igor, who made a speech — watched him collect the honour. 

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“When we recognise high-level merit, the ability to improve and innovate. Leadership, excellence and success. Unai Emery owns all of these characteristics,” said Hondarribia mayor Txomin Sagarzazu.

Hondarribia, a coastal town with circa 17,000 residents as of 2021, offers an insight into Emery, the man. In football and life, Emery has held himself to a core set of principles, be it tactical structure on the pitch or integrity off it.

His Basque roots are because of Hondarribia, located in the Municipality of Gipuzkoa, and its bloody history. September’s fiesta is in gratitude to soldiers who resisted a siege on the town by French soldiers over the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, ensuring the region remained a Basque community.

The annual festival reveres the Virgin of Guadalupe, Hondarribia’s patron saint and every year, vows to celebrate her victory against the French in 1638. Friends have told various media outlets that Emery comes to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe to pray.

The shrine looks out to Hondarribia’s fishing port, with boats resting on the sea, which connects to a marina.

Men are out trying to catch fish, relying on traditional techniques and accompanied by their dogs. If you were to look at a map, they would be situated precisely on the French-Spanish border.

There are the flags of both countries against a mountainous backdrop and stunning views from the apartments on top of the hills looking out to the French border of Hendaye, which can be accessed by a bridge or a small crossing boat.

Villa help Emery organise a regular charter flight from Birmingham that he books and pays for himself whenever he wants to take a trip home.

Walking along the coast and football pitches come into view. The Hondarribia Turbo Elkatea stadium is home to the town’s local side and its academy, which happens to be playing when The Athletic visits.

Four decades earlier and Emery, albeit within less modern facilities, was playing here before joining Real Sociedad as a young, budding footballer. 

A few hundred yards into the town is the Plaza de Armas, a meeting point, and the place Emery has been pictured watching from a balcony above. The plaza is where locals celebrate “Alarde de Armas” (‘weapons display’) in tribute to their trained militants.

Emery is the son of a Basque father, Juan, and an Andalusian mother, Amelia, who had three other sons: Koldo, Igor and Andoni.

They are proud Basques, growing up on the edge of the region, where the fighting took place hundreds of years before. The importance of the Alarde is not lost on them.

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At its core, the town is brick and stone, decorated with many religious symbols on historic, medieval walls. There is vegetation growing on its outskirts, with chickens in coops on the sides of roads, paintings for sale in windows and on some streets, shops are exclusively for artists.

It is sufficiently quiet with so few cars that every dog can be let off lead.

It is not a tourist hotspot, nor does it intend to be. The language is predominantly Basque or Spanish, with few speaking English. The way of life is unchanging and methodical; the seafood and Basque restaurants do not open until 12.30pm and serve shrimps, grilled mussels, prawns and octopus a few hundred yards from the beaches. They then retire three hours later for a siesta.

Streets are lined with pollarded trees, with youngsters using them as goalposts. It is the weekend, yet the prevailing sound is wind. The old town is cheap, two euros can buy a coffee; a couple more euros is enough for seafood. It offers a serenity that can settle anyone, especially an obsessive such as Emery.

Still, there is enough to do.

Three kilometres east and intersected by San Sebastien airport is Irun. The neighbouring town is where Emery and his brothers watched football and their family club, Real Union, though it is a generally slower way of life compared to Hondarribia, which has better aesthetics and activities that kept the siblings occupied.

Stadium Gal hosts Real Union matches and is located on the left bank of the Bidasoa River and roughly a 10-minute drive from where Emery grew up. The club is in the family bloodline, with brother, Andoni, chief groundsman for the past two years and, Igor, the president. 

“The reason we are here is because of those years,” Igor tells The Athletic. In June 2021, the siblings acquired a controlling stake in the third-division side. “We have family in the history of the club. My father (Juan), uncle (Roman) and grandfather (Antonio) played here. This is our home.

“I couldn’t see my father playing, because I was born in 1980 and even my brother, Unai (born nine years earlier), couldn’t. Our father died in 2015, but we know all about what he did at the club because of all the things he told me and my three brothers. We would come and watch Real Union all the time.”

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Elsewhere in Hondarribia, there are basketball courts — the Emerys and his staff at Villa are enthusiasts, having had hoops installed at the training ground — with small-sided futsal and tennis courts, as well as padel, another of Emery’s favourite pastimes.

The hilly terrain can be sapping, but Emery developed a passion for long walks and bike rides to clear his thoughts.

Puerta de Santa Maria forms the main entrance to Hondarribia’s cobbled streets and through to the market square and, beyond, its beaches. The coat of arms above serves as the door for the ‘most noble, most loyal, most valiant and always loyal’.

Go through and there are medieval walls on either side of the uphill street, with wooden balconies and the 16th-century Iglesia del Manzano catholic church at the far end.

The church is quiet but vast and impressive. There is a smattering of locals sitting to pray, with candles lit and striking stained-glass.

Religion has formed a strand of Emery’s character. ‘Unai’ is among the most popular male names in the Basque Country and directly translates to ‘the Good Shepherd’.

“I believe in God,” he said previously. “He is with me every day: in my life, in my work, with my family, with my friends, with the people I love.”

Outside, a teenager on his bike whizzes past with a Real Sociedad shirt on. Hondarribia is along the coast from the city of San Sebastian, where La Liga side Real Sociedad is based. It was the team Emery identified with and would play for.

Juan and Antonio were both goalkeepers, with the latter conceding La Liga’s first goal in February 1929 while playing for Real Union against Espanyol. Coming from a line of footballers threatened to bring pressure to Emery and his brothers.

Growing up, Unai preferred Spanish cartoons and reading but played in midfield alongside his brother, in some ways breaking family goalkeeping tradition. Emery’s son, Lander, has restored the goalkeeping continuity and plays for Villa’s under-21s.

Emery was an industrious left midfielder or full-back, not blessed with innate technical quality but, to little surprise considering what he would achieve as a manager, enriched with a high work rate and an accomplished left foot. He made five appearances for Real Sociedad between 1995 and 1996 and scored once, yet largely lurched around Spain’s second and third divisions.

“I left home at 24 — Hondarribia, San Sebastian, Real Sociedad — and opened myself up to the world of football: carrying my suitcase, facing many difficult moments, leaving my comfort zone,” Emery told the Guardian in 2022.

He took short-term contracts at Leganes, Lorca Deportiva and Racing Ferrol until acknowledging, at 34, that coaching brought far greater enjoyment and purpose. Emery was fascinated by former Real Sociedad striker Roberto Lopez Ufarte, analysing the specific movements and craftsmanship in his game.

“I wasn’t born a coach; I made myself one,” Emery would later say. “I wasn’t born with a surname to allow me to play at the elite level, so I had to win for myself. Your credibility comes from results, cemented in the dedication I’ve transmitted. If I’ve got better and been successful, it’s because I’ve had a group determined to work as hard as me, and they feel the need to go harder when we fail.”

Emery began taking his badges but realised that to create change within a team, a coach must be able to resonate with players. As a youngster in Real Sociedad’s academy, he never forgot the advice of former manager John Toshack: to be a good coach, you must be the opposite of what you were as a player.

In Emery’s mind, he was a diligent, studious player, but could never quite reach the next level. He reasoned that “none of my managers could overcome my deficiencies as a player” or had the burning obsession to individually maximise his talents.

When he decided to go into coaching, he did so all in.

“My brother is a top manager,” Igor says. “I don’t say that because of the trophies he’s won but because of how he gets them: how he manages, the way he works and because he’s invested 200 per cent. He tries all the time to improve and to learn from other people. This may be the key thing. Everybody can say, ‘I would like to learn from him’, but he tries to learn from others because he really thinks he can keep on improving.”

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Throughout his playing career, Emery battled with doubts. He would lean on his avid reading side, which increased as he became a coach.

“My doubts and fears helped me learn how to manage the pressures of being a manager and my work with the players,” he said, in an excerpt taken from the authorised biography, Unai Emery: El Maestro. “I’ve also relied a great deal on books about self-confidence and personal development.”

Books provide Emery with a certain equilibrium, and he has been known to give books to his players.

The Basque Country shares a remarkable array of elite football coaches, such as Emery, Mikel Arteta, Andoni Iraola and Xabi Alonso. They are products of their backgrounds, which have all meaningfully contributed to the men and managers they are.

Hondarribia is a place entrenched with history, struggle and principle. It has formed who Emery is.

(Top photo: Emery and his hometown of Hondarribia. Getty Images/Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)

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