Freiburg v Aston Villa: Europa League final – live
⚽️ Europa League final updates from the 8pm BST kick-off
⚽️ Freiburg lowdown | The Europa League king | Mail Scott
This is the first time Aston Villa and Freiburg have met. Precedent enthusiasts must therefore look to previous matches against teams from the opponents’ country. Villa have won their last two meetings against teams from Germany, having beaten Bayern Munich and Leipzig during the group phase of last season’s Champions League. And of course they’ll always have Rotterdam, where they saw off Bayern in the 1982 final. As for Freiburg, they’ve played four matches against English opposition … and all of them were against West Ham in the 2023-24 Europa League! They went down 1-2 and 0-2 in the groups, won the first leg of a round-of-16 tie 1-0, then lost the second leg 0-5. So it’s advantage Villa.
… so that’s the same Villa XI that started the second-leg win over Nottingham Forest, and last Friday’s evisceration of Liverpool. Not a huge surprise: Villa scored four goals in both of those matches. Viktor Lindelof keeps his place in midfield, and that keeps Amadou Onana on the bench.
