Emery admits his side can make history and qualify for their first-ever Champions League final if they are perfect on the day.
Villarreal will face Liverpool in the semi-finals of the second leg of the Champions League in Spain. despite trailing 2-0 to Liverpool at Anfield, Unai Emery believes his side can shock Liverpool at Estadio de la Cerám to book their place in the final.
What did Unai Emery say?
Speaking in their pre-match press conference, He said: I didn’t want to hear those details but I did.’’
“It is a difficult task but we are working on the game.
“We need to play a perfect game. We need to find our excellence in certain things and maybe achieve something no one has achieved, which is this kind of comeback.
“We will try to find some weak spots, something that no one has done this season.”
Liverpool Midfielder dominated the game in the first leg with Tiago Alcantara and Fabinho bossing the Midfield.
Emery realizes they can’t let that happen again.
“They played a tremendous game at Liverpool,” he said of the Reds’ midfield.
“Thiago was a man of the match, Fabinho has been fantastic at Liverpool.
“They are two players who can play really good football but they have the work rate and intensity and they were at a world-class level at Liverpool (last week).
“If the player of the match is again a Liverpool player we will be out for sure but if it is one of ours we can be there.”
Emery received some good news when attacker Gerard Moreno returned from injury after missing the first game, however he will be without former Bournemouth winger Arnaut Danjuma, who is unwell.
“Gerard trained with the rest of the group today,” said the Villarreal boss.
“I don’t know to what extent he will be fit for contention. We will not take any risks.
Paul Torres has also sent Villarreal a warning to Liverpool ahead of the Tuesday game.
Torres has urged the El Madrigal supporters to get involved when the two clubs meet for the second time in six years in a European semi-final tie.
The defender said: We are aware of what is at stake.
I think Villarreal is a better Villarreal than we were last week. We are aware of the kind of work we need to do. We know what we need to do.
“We have the fans behind us. We’ve seen a very strong Villarreal in our stadium this season in very important games and we are aware of what we need to do.
“Liverpool didn’t surprise us. We knew the way they played. Yes they did manage to deactivate our offense but we were comfortable we could stop them in the first half but they overcame us in the second half. A tie is always 180 minutes and nothing is decided.
“This is the biggest game we’ve seen in the history of the club. We will give 100 percent on the pitch and we know they will be backing us. I’d tell them to enjoy the game tomorrow.
“There is no ideal script, there is only one objective. It doesn’t matter how you get it done, whether you score in the first minute or the 60th minute. We are aware a goal would put us right back into the tie.
“That game could be an example as we also played against a rival who was favorites and we managed to beat them. They are favorites again, we play at our stadium again.
“[The manager] wants us to be ourselves, play our game. We have our ideas, we know if we do the same game plan and do what the coach wanted us to do in the previous ties we managed to beat teams who were superior on paper. If we do that we are pretty confident in our chances.”
