Category: Football (Soccer)

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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