When will Aston Villa play their Europa Conference League play-off? Unai Emery’s path to more glory faces early hurdle

Aston Villa will play European football for the first time in 13 years after qualifying for the Europa Conference League.

The Villans were one of the best sides during 2023 under Unai Emery’s stewardship and have a potential European journey ahead if they can win their play-off match.

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Emery is a master in Europe, winning the Europa League four times as a manager, so he must fancy his chances of adding another major trophy to his name while ending Villa’s silverware drought.

But these play-off games are notoriously tricky and many British sides have fallen foul in the past.

When is Aston Villa’s Europa Conference League play-off?

Every team that qualifies for the Europa Conference League has to participate in at least one two-legged play-off round.

The sides are split into two pots, seeded and unseeded, and each team’s place is based on their UEFA coefficient ranking.

Villa avoid having to feature in the early rounds and will enter the competition at the final play-off stage before the group draw.

But Villa face a nervous wait to see if they will be seeded or not.

Should just one of Club Brugge, PAOK, Basel, Gent, Fenerbahce, Midtjylland, CFR Cluj, Maccabi Tel Aviv or Viktoria Plzen crash out in the upcoming round, the Villans will become seeded.

But if those sides make it through, Villa would be left as an unseeded side and could face a tough encounter.

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Seeded teams that have qualified for the final play-off stage include Juventus, Lille and Eintracht Frankfurt.

So Villa might have to face a European giant if they remain unseeded.

Once the final teams have been decided, the draw will take place on Monday, August 7.

The matches are then scheduled for Thursday, August 24 and August 31.

This would see Villa face a tough end to August with Burnley away and Liverpool at home sandwiched between the Europa Conference League play-offs.