Category: FA Cup

Thousands turned out on the wet streets of south London to catch a glimpse of the club’s first major trophy

Crystal Palace supporters had waited a lifetime for this moment. When the two buses carrying Oliver Glasner and his FA Cup winners rounded the corner of Holmesdale Road, red and blue smoke from flares filled the air as thousands of south Londoners showed their appreciation, with several shedding tears again.

In the days since Eberechi Eze’s winner against Manchester City clinched Palace’s first trophy, a sense of disbelief has been the overwhelming feeling for fans who are excitedly contemplating a foray into Europe next season.

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• Manager ‘100% here’ despite Tottenham links
• Palace without Wharton and Guéhi for visit of Wolves

Oliver Glasner believes that Crystal Palace can avoid becoming a “one-hit wonder” after winning the FA Cup by continuing to make steady progress and not doing “crazy things”.

Palace’s victory against Manchester City secured the club’s first major trophy and entry into the Europa League. Glasner revealed he had left the post-match celebrations at Wembley before the club chair, Steve Parish, was captured on video performing karaoke at a local bar and that he had missed Austria’s Eurovision song contest victory on the same evening because he was with family. “It must be a great song,” he said.

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Eberechi Eze is too good for Palace, Morgan Gibbs-White is pushing for a call-up and is 2025 the year of the underdog?

Why would your fan-favourite player, scorer of That Historic Wembley Goal, in peak form under an excellent manager want to leave? Why would anyone be OK with it? How is this logical? Crystal Palace are now good enough to have Eberechi Eze in the team. Eberechi Eze is also too good to stay at Crystal Palace. Both of these things seem to be true. Oliver Glasner-era Palace are a seriously potent, organised and attractive team. But Eze’s progress is something else. At times during his early Palace career there was a sense of a slightly loose late-developer. His skill level was always exceptional. His use of it now is next-level, his finishing cold and his physique buffed up. Eze does not really have a ceiling. He could play for any team in Europe. But he is also 26 years old with two years left on his contract, and Palace have a model based on development with the likes of Romain Esse ready for a shot. There does not always have to be downside. Selling the man who made the thing happen can still be best for everyone. Barney Ronay

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• Co-owner Steve Parish fends off interest from rival clubs
• Marc Guéhi out of hospital after checks on eye injury

Steve Parish has made it clear that his FA Cup-winning manager, Oliver Glasner, will be at Crystal Palace next season. Tottenham are prominent among Glasner’s admirers and they will put him on their shortlist if they decide to part company with Ange Postecoglou at the end of the season. Bayer Leverkusen and RB Leipzig are also interested in the man who led Palace past Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday to the club’s first major trophy.

Parish, the Palace chair and co-owner, said he wanted to extend Glasner’s contract, which is scheduled to expire in June 2026. As Parish continued to savour the cup win that will bring Europa League football to Selhurst Park next season, materially changing his club as a proposition, he essentially told those who might try to lure Glasner away that they were wasting their time.

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There was a sense of disbelief at Wembley as the team I support ended a wait of almost 120 years to win a major trophy

When Marc Guéhi and Joel Ward went up to collect the FA Cup, we were there. Although it still seems like a dream. The sense of disbelief Crystal Palace supporters felt when the full-time whistle at Wembley ended their wait to win a major trophy will probably take a few more days to fade away given it’s taken almost 120 years to become a reality. But with most of the 30,000 wearing red and blue having travelled from south London in hope rather than expectation, finally, it was our moment.

After an agonising 10 minutes of stoppage time that seemed to take an eternity, the emotions of defeat in Palace’s two previous FA Cup finals came pouring out. Everywhere you looked there were grown men – including me and the former Guardian stalwart Dominic Fifield – moved to tears. The comedian Mark Steel just kept shaking his head, unable to comprehend what had just transpired. It even spread to the royal box, where the chair, Steve Parish, who had been pictured with his head in his hands moments earlier, was greeted with a bear hug from Palace’s largest shareholder, John Textor.

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Eberechi Eze scored a fine winner and Dean Henderson – who might have been sent off earlier – saved a penalty on a famous day for Palace

Oliver Glasner’s pre-match thoughts

It’s a special moment for all of us and we’re really looking forward to the game.

We expect City to have more of the ball, as they do against most teams, especially as they have picked a very attacking line-up. It’s a little bit similar to how Villa played, with lots of attacking players, but that gives you space for transitions. That’s what we need to wait for. We have to be very efficient when we get chances.

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• All the buildup to the FA Cup final, 4.30pm kick-off
• Share your thoughts with matchday live or post BTL

Chat over. Will Hughes strolls across the car park to get some photographs taken. As it happens, the man emerging from the gym at that very moment is the Crystal Palace midfield partner whose praises Hughes has just been lavishly exalting.

“Just added about £20m to your fee in that interview,” Hughes shouts at Adam Wharton as they pass. “You can have half,” Wharton retorts. All delivered with a knowing smile, for this is the Palace of Oliver Glasner, where – as Hughes puts it – “there’s egos, but good egos”. No arrogance, none of the blame culture he sees elsewhere. “You watch other teams and hands are in the air, there’s moaning,” he says. “But I honestly don’t see any of that here.”

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Crystal Palace midfielder on the hype in his early career, ‘shit’ VAR and embarrassment of the 2019 FA Cup final

Chat over. Will Hughes strolls across the car park to get some photographs taken. As it happens, the man emerging from the gym at that very moment is the Crystal Palace midfield-partner whose praises Hughes has just been lavishly exalting.

“Just added about £20m to your fee in that interview,” Hughes shouts at Adam Wharton as they pass. “You can have half,” Wharton retorts. All delivered with a knowing smile, for this is the Palace of Oliver Glasner, where – as Hughes puts it – “there’s egos, but good egos”. No arrogance, none of the blame culture he sees elsewhere. “You watch other teams and hands are in the air, there’s moaning,” he says. “But I honestly don’t see any of that here.”
It’s the week of the FA Cup final and there’s a frisson in the air. But Hughes is happy to talk about anything and everything: the good, the bad, the ridiculous. What the first trophy of his career would mean. How a wispy teenage No 10 turned into one of the Premier League’s toughest, most reliable midfielders. Why VAR is “shit”. Whether he was ever as good as everyone said he was. Why he doesn’t really watch football.

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The Crystal Palace manager cut his teeth in the Austrian and German Bundesligas, while a health scare helped form his approach to life

Siegmund Gruber didn’t take long to decide Oliver Glasner was his man. “We were convinced from the moment we met him,” says the chief executive of the Austrian club Lask. “Oliver started his presentation and it was like that scene in Jerry Maguire: ‘You had me at hello.’”

It was the summer of 2015 and the future Crystal Palace manager had been persuaded to leave SV Ried, where he had made more than 500 appearances and been named player of the century before taking over as manager the previous year, for their main rivals. What made things worse was that Lask, after going bankrupt under the previous owners and losing their stadium, had just been promoted from the third division, while Ried had finished mid-table in the Austrian Bundesliga.

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Collapse of their league title defence and an early European exit mean Manchester City’s season rests on beating Palace

The measure of Manchester City’s class is that they have a chance of claiming the FA Cup in Saturday’s Wembley showpiece despite a troubled campaign featuring serial injury, an insipid title defence, Champions League playoff stage elimination by Real Madrid and the mid-season departure of the captain, Kyle Walker, on loan.

Oliver Glasner’s in-form Crystal Palace, who have lost two of their past 14 games, are in their way but Pep Guardiola’s garlanded team are favourites, the wounded deposed champions intent on not ending empty-handed for the first time since the Catalan’s opening 2016-17 term.

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• Striker puts focus on FA Cup final against Crystal Palace
• ‘We need to finish well and get a trophy,’ he says

Erling Haaland has described Manchester City’s season as “horrific” and “boring” owing to the champions losing so many games, and said that makes winning Saturday’s FA Cup final against Crystal Palace even more vital.

City, the Premier League title winners in the past four seasons, are fourth, 18 points behind the champions, Liverpool, having lost nine times. They were eliminated by Real Madrid in the Champions League playoff stage and by Tottenham in the last 16 of the Carabao Cup.

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