Article by Daniel Grigore – Published on Thursday, 21 May 2026, 07:48 / Updated on Thursday, 21 May 2026 07:55
Coach Julian Schuster (41) and two important Freiburg footballers, Vicenzo Grifo and Igor Matanovic, commented on the failure in Europa League final, 0-3 with Aston Villa.
It was a successful season for Freiburg: 7th place in the championship and, implicitly, qualification for the next season of the Conference League, a good run in the Cup, ending in the semi-finals after a fierce battle with Stuttgart, plus this European final, the first in the club's history.
In the last act of the Europa League season, the team from south-west Germany was outclassed by Aston Villa, trained by the most successful coach in the history of the competition, Unai Emery.
How did Freiburg coach Julian Schuster react after this 0-3?
Defeated by Unai Emery in the Europa League final, Freiburg's coach wants to “steal” the job
“Congratulations to Aston Villa, they've been great all season. Both teams fought hard from the start and apart from one chance from Morgan Rogers, neither team created much.
We knew set phases could make the difference and we had the first one, but then we saw ourselves being led after a perfectly executed phase. In such situations you have to stay calm, but the 2nd goal came and we started to struggle. One became two, two became three,” said Schuster, according to uefa.com.
The young German coach did not shy away from admitting that he will try to “steal” the job from Unai Emery:
“I congratulate him. I hope to meet him later and question him about his approach and ideas. If you have a good plan and your team can execute it, then you have the ingredients for success. When you face a team with so much quality, it's inevitable that there will be times when they will make you suffer, and that's OK.”
“The atmosphere was incredible today. I'm very grateful to the fans and the way they helped introduce Freiburg to Europe. In situations like this, the fans show their face and ours stuck with us even though things didn't go our way,” added the Freiburg coach.
What Vicenzo Grifo and Igor Matanovic said after the Europa League final
We have to be honest and admit that Aston Villa were the better team. Unfortunately, we were unable to trouble them today. They were very efficient and it showed in everything they did that they had experience. We didn't manage to press at all and for that reason I think Aston Villa deserved the win.
– Vicenzo Grifo, winger and Freiburg captain
Yes, it definitely hurts. We came to this match to win, we really wanted the trophy and I think we would have deserved it after the beautiful course and the last matches played. We played a very good tournament, but today we have to be honest, we played a good game maybe only up to 0-2. Then we weren't at 100%, we lost the ball a bit, we weren't 100% focused and we deserved to lose.
I had a very, very good season, it was a very nice experience, but at the same time it is also the worst possible experience to lose a final.
– Igor Matanovic, Freiburg forward
