3 first-time finalists! Villa & Freiburg flourish, Rayo & Palace overpower | Europa & Conference League, Semifinals, 2nd Leg

The final European Thursday of the season has come and gone, and we have two pairs of finalists to show for it! We express our excitement at the spectacle, as 3 of our 4 winners qualified for their first ever major European final (and the 4th, Aston Villa, returns to one after 44 years). First we tackle the Europa League, where Villa dismantled a shoddy and somewhat short-handed Nottingham Forest. Can anyone beat Villa when they're their best? And is Emery just inevitable in this competition? We then discuss how Freiburg handled 10-men Braga, thanks in part to an early red card and the young Swiss #10 Manzambi. In the Conference League, Palace punished a vibrant but naive Shakhtar with ruthless counter-attacking and an experience Rayo Vallecano pressed the life out of the youthful Strasbourg. We explore how both Rayo and Palace controlled their respective games without the ball, each in very different ways, and look ahead to how these styles might clash in the final. Finally, we make our tentative predictions for the showdowns in Istanbul and Wrocław. Cheers to Iñigo Pérez! Timecodes: 00:50 – the start, clubs rotating players ahead of semifinals 7:28 – Aston Villa-Nottingham Forest 21:15 – Freiburg-Braga 34:47 – Quick UEL final thoughts 38:06 – Crystal Palace-Shakhtar Donetsk 50:47 – RC Strasbourg-Rayo Vallecano 01:12:13 – Quick UECL final thoughts 01:16:28 – Are we at risk of English clubs dominating the UEL & UECL?