In the early morning of May 27, Beijing time, Villarreal defeated Manchester City through penalties and successfully won this season's Europa League championship! Villarreal became the least populous European champion team with a population of only 50,000 people, which is a small town team.
Emery became the most-won manager in the Europa League (Sevilla 2014-2016; Villarreal 2021), the first manager to lead two different teams to the Europa League. If Sevilla is the team that is best at playing in the Europa League, then Emery is the manager who is the best at playing in the Europa League.
Villarreal became the seventh La Liga team to win the European trophy after Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, Atletico and Zaragoza. Villarreal is also the seventh team to win the Europa League unbeaten record.
Founded in 1923, Villarreal spent the first three-quarters of its history in the lower divisions. In the 1960s, when the Beatles' masterpiece "Yellow Submarine" swept Europe, Villarreal fans sang "Yellow Submarine" when they watched the ball at home. For Villarreal, who has never had an official team song, this popular piece of music has quietly become the team's "quasi-team song", plus Villarreal's home jersey is a brilliant yellow, so "yellow submarine" has become the nickname of the team.
At the end of the last century, with the support and sponsorship of businessman Roig, the team was promoted continuously, and finally in 1998, it was first promoted to La Liga. Excited fans spontaneously created a team song to replace "Yellow Submarine", but this heroic nickname has been retained. Villarreal even designed a robot with a miniature submarine as its head as the team's mascot.
At the Santiago Bernabeu on 31 August 1998, Villarreal played the first La Liga match in the club's history with the star-studded Real Madrid. In that historic season, although the team had a fantastic start, the whole season was not ideal. The Yellow Submarine lost the relegation play-off after the season and was relegated back to La Liga, but this trip to La Liga was only a short year. In the trans-century season, the team achieved a third place in La Liga and successfully returned to La Liga. The following year Villarell unbelievably ended the season with a 7th place in La Liga. But for the next two seasons, the team was only ranked 15th, on the verge of relegation.
Perhaps the turning point in the story was the 2003 International Toto Cup, where Villarreal beat Eredivisie side Heerenveen to win the trophy, a fantastic victory that brought the team into the UEFA Cup for the first time. Since then, the team's performance has shocked the world again, the yellow submarine has reached the semi-final of the UEFA Cup, and the whole of Europe has felt the powerful energy emanating from this small town team on the Mediterranean side. At the same time, the yellow submarines' league performance is also improving, with them finishing 8th in La Liga in 2003-04 and 3rd in La Liga with an incredible 65 points in 2004-05, only behind the two giants Barcelona and Real Madrid. This incredible achievement stemmed from the team's accumulated team spirit and the phenomenal goalscoring machine – The strong addition of Fran. That season's 25 goals earned the Uruguayan striker the European Golden Boot.
The 2005–06 season was the highest peak in villarreal team history. In the Champions League group stage, they qualified first in the group with Manchester United, Benfica and Lille. In the knockout match against Glasgow Rangers, the two sides fought 3-3 in two legs, and the yellow submarine advanced with a goal difference advantage. Then met inter in the quarter-finals, the first leg Huang Qian lost 1:2 away from home, and the second leg love song stadium waited for the greatest game in the history of the team. In the 58th minute, Riquelme fired a direct free-kick and the unguarded Aruja Baruna scored after a header in front of the goal, the aggregate score was 2:2, and Villarreal once again relied on the advantage of away goals to advance! Although Villarreal was eliminated by Arsenal in the semi-finals, the Record of the Champions League Final Four was enough to make Villarreal fans proud for a lifetime!
After 15 years, Villarreal has once again shocked the world, this time they have tasted the taste of a Europa League title! In the past 15 years, they have been dormant several times, and finally they have once again made the world envious! In 2 years, it will be the centenary of Villarreal, and I hope that they will be even stronger at that time!