Unai Emery has advised his Aston Villa players to handle the pressure of playing in a Europa League final in a positive way.

Villa face Bundesliga outfit Freiburg at Tupras Stadyumu on Wednesday as the two teams battle it out for European silverware.

This is the first-ever meeting between Freiburg and Villa – it is the first time a Europa League final will be competed between two teams meeting for the first time since 2019-20, when Sevilla won 3-2 against Inter.

Villa are featuring in just their second major European final, winning 1-0 against Bayern Munich in the 1982 European Cup final. Only Manchester City have ever had a longer gap between their first two finals (1970 – 2021).

Emery, meanwhile, has managed in five previous major European finals, all in the Europa League, winning four (2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 with Sevilla, 2020-21 with Villarreal) and losing one (2018-19 with Arsenal).

With this his sixth, he goes level with Carlo Ancelotti, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho for major finals and behind only Giovanni Trapattoni (seven), while a victory would see him go level with Trapattoni, Ancelotti and Mourinho for major European final wins (five).

After also reaching the latter stages of the FA Cup and Conference League in recent seasons, Emery has encouraged his side to use that experience to their advantage.

"Now is a new experience that we will have, and it is important in our structure how we are managing our emotions. We have played a lot of matches and had a lot of emotions," said Emery.

"The pressure is here as well, but we must try to understand the pressure as something positive not negative and the pressure is when you are playing for something important.

"We have experience here, Emi [Martinez], John [McGinn], we have a lot of experience. Our experiences here are the most important.

"We are here together. We are doing it this way. Understanding how difficult it was to get here.

"We have to play with personality, with confidence and to do that we have to play with intensity."

Since the start of 2023-24, no side has won more matches in major European competition than Villa (26) and only Arsenal (19) have kept more clean sheets in that time than the Villans (16).

Villa faced German teams twice in last season's Champions League, beating both Bayern (1-0) and RB Leipzig (3-2). They were last beaten by German opponents in 2008-09 in the UEFA Cup, losing 3-1 to Hamburg.