Prophetic words: the tifo organised so brilliantly by the Holmesdale Fanatics group, with the message – ‘Wembley will shake and it will be beautiful’
2025 FA CUP FINAL: Inside Croydon’s PETER GILLMAN was among the accredited media at Wembley for a historic day which captured the imagination of the nation and fulfilled the dreams of football romantics around the world
Dreams fulfilled: Palace boss Oliver Glasner and Jean-Philippe Mateta (right) with their cup-winners’ medals
Yessss!!! We aced it! We nailed it! Finally, we did it!
At around 6.30pm yesterday, the intermittent agony of being a Palace supporter became unbridled ecstasy. Goalkeeper Dean Henderson launched a goal kick, the ball landed in the Manchester City half, referee Stuart Attwell looked at his watch and blew his whistle. As Palace players embraced or sank to their knees out on the Wembley turf, the 30,000 or so Eagles fans in the stands became a human tsunami of cheering, jumping, embracing, laughing and crying.
For those of us who had seen Palace’s Cup final defeats by Manchester United in 1990 and 2016 – lasting, enduring, bitter disappointments both – this was pure redemption.
Palace manager Oliver Glasner said it so perfectly: “The biggest success we can have is not winning the trophy. It’s that we could give thousands of fans a moment for their lives.”
The build-up began impressively early. By 10am, more than six hours before kick-off, The George, the Wetherspoons pub on George Street in Croydon town centre, was already rammed. Fans wearing Palace shirts were spotted at London train stations heading for the city centre, many going to the rendezvous in Covent Garden.
Impressive build-up: Palace fans’ ‘takeover’ saw the party begin at Covent Garden five hours before kick-off
There was optimism in the Inside Croydon reporting team: me, first Palace match 1957; son Seth, 1971; grandson Blake, 1997. Seth and I had been behind the goal at the old Wembley in 1990 when in the dying minutes Mark Hughes chipped the ball past Nigel Martyn to take the final to the replay, which Palace lost. We attended that together, as well as the 2016 defeat.
Impressive performance: off the pitch, Palace won praise, too, as fans organised a clear-up of the Covent Garden piazza
But this time… We felt that if we could match our dominant Cup displays in the quarter- and semi-finals against Fulham and Villa, we had every chance.
Apparently, in a studio high above the stadium somewhere, our hopes were being backed by three of the four BBC pundits, who tipped Palace to win. They also predicted a high-scoring match.
Down on the pitch with the ITV Sport cameras and Palace hero Ian Wright, Roy Keane was telling the nation that if Palace were to win, “the goalkeeper will need to be man of the match”. Prophetic punditry.
Most of our friends, many of them supporters of other clubs, told us they were backing us.
Surprising support: even some Brighton fans seemed to want Palace to win
There was even support of Palace’s cause from arch-rivals Brighton – unheard of before. City were seen as an oligarch’s team: owned by oil sheikdom Abu Dhabi, paying hundreds of millions to buy the best players on the planet, employing some of the world’s most expensive lawyers to ward off legal challenges. Under their manager Pep Guardiola, City had won trophy after trophy, bringing an air of entitlement among team and fans alike.
Palace were locally owned, making the most of a modest budget in the transfer market, reaching elevated levels through a gifted manager. We had never won a major trophy in 120 years of existence (the Zenith Data System Cup does not count as a major trophy).
We arrived at the ground in a mix of hope and anxiety. As a Palace supporter you can always dream: would this time our dream come true? Once at the ground we divided: me to the press area mid-way up between the two supporters’ sections, Seth to a seat in the Palace section close to the pitch, Blake to a Palace seat high in an upper tier.
The Palace section, already packed, erupted as the teams walked out, unfurling the Holmesdale Fanatics’ triumphant slogan “Wembley will shake and it will be beautiful”.
Prophetic words II: comic Mark Steel got it right – Palace were like Ali when he used ‘Rope-a-dope’ to regain his world title
The City display at the other end of the stadium seemed tame by comparison. Palace won the shout-out hands down.
When play began, our hopes soon faded. The first 14 minutes were all City, running the midfield, already bringing crucial saves from Henderson. Glasner was gesticulating to his players and I was feeling sick.
Then came a moment of utter magic. A City move ended with an attempted cross floating out for a goal-kick. After three short passes in the penalty area, a long, lofted pass from centre back Chris Richards found our forward Jean-Philippe Mateta near the halfway line with his back to the City goal. He exchanged passes with Daichi Kamada and then sent Daniel Munoz away on the right. Munoz hared towards the penalty area then hit a fast, low cross into the City box, where Eberechi Eze, who made space away from his marker, arrowed the ball past City keeper Stefan Ortega.
1-0.
It was the perfect goal. The Palace half of the ground went berserk. Seth was in tears. In the comfy seats of the press box, I broke protocol by leaping up and cheering. A few others in the press seats turned and smiled, sympathetically.
Prayers answered: Eze and his Palace team mates celebrate a perfectly executed sucker punch against City
The puzzle was that Guardiola, supposedly all-wise, must have known that this was exactly how Palace would threaten to score. It was a repeat of a semi-final goal against Villa and another at the Etihad Stadium in April, the league game which Palace lost to City 5-2.
Yet here we were at Wembley, and Palace had pulled off the trick again. Could they do it again?
Five minutes later, our chance came when Eze found Munoz, lurking on the right again. Munoz crossed to Ismaila Sarr but his flick hit Ortega when a foot either side would have brought a goal.
Out-thought and out-fought: Pep Guardiola was left to contemplate a rare trophy-less season, as Palace fans celebrate after the final whistle
The game returned to its former pattern, City dominating and mounting wave after wave of attack.
Henderson had already made a couple of terrific saves to keep Palace on level terms before Eze’s goal.
Now came two massive incidents. City resorted to the long ball, and Erling Haaland chased it towards the Palace penalty area. Henderson was at the edge of his box, knocking the ball away with his hand as Haaland closed in.
The massive Wembley screen showed that Henderson was being checked by VAR for a red card. Replays showed that Henderson’s contact with the ball was outside his box, but the officials ruled that he had not denied Haaland an obvious goal-scoring opportunity. Henderson was exonerated.
It was just as well. We were going to need him.
Eight minutes later, full-back Tyrick Mitchell brought down Bernardo Silva as he headed towards the byline in the Palace penalty area. Attwell pointed to the spot. I thought Mitchell had touched the ball but the referee, and this time VAR, disagreed.
There was strange interplay among the City players as they gathered for the kick, as Haaland first hugged the ball but then handed it to Omar Marmoush, whose shot to the left corner was brilliantly saved by Henderson. Henderson said later that he was relieved to see Marmoush step up, as he did not know which side of the goal Haaland would aim for. Henderson knew that Marmoush would shoot for the left.
We reached half-time with our lead intact, still scarcely daring to hope.
The second half continued in the same vein, only more so. The Palace defenders were magnificent, Richards above all, as he seemingly rose to head away every cross.
Palace hero: Dean Henderson’s penalty save was among the defining moments of the final
Then, in a rare breakaway, Palace scored again, or so we thought. A shot by Munoz hit Sarr and rolled towards the goal. Munoz reached the ball first and smacked it in. In the press box I hugged a steward who had confided he grew up in Croydon, but he was supposed to remain neutral at Wembley. Then it dawned on us that another VAR check was running – and the goal was disallowed as Sarr had been offside when he was hit by Munoz’s first shot.
With 30 minutes still to go, I presumed that was the fateful juncture when our dreams were to be dashed, just as they had been in 1990 and again in 2016.
City’s onslaught continued, Kevin de Bruyne, City’s veteran midfield master, was involved in the game even more, sending crosses and passes into the danger zone, but none of his teammates could make them pay.
Henderson and his defenders defied City’s onslaught, making a string of saves and blocks and surviving City players’ increasingly desperate appeals for handball.
Things were getting tetchy in the technical area, too, ex-player and now coach Paddy McCarthy going eyeball-to-eyeball with one of Pep’s backroom staff. That seemed to calm down quickly enough.
Behind the scenes: Palace players gather before climbing the Wembley steps to collect their medals and the FA Cup
Palace had two chances to settle it, Munoz and Kamada firing shots which flew inches wide.
City brought on more of their stars, Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden coming on as subs.
Yet all the noise and encouragement still came from the Palace end, urging the team on with seemingly endless singing, while the noise from the City end seemed muted, as mild and pale as the blue of their flags.
The clock-watch was agony: 75 minutes gone, then 80, then 85, crucial landmarks that took us nearer to the fulfilment of our dreams.
The City players were becoming disgruntled and de Bruyne was booked for a cynical foul on Eze. On 88 minutes, I was tipped off that there would be 10 minutes of added time. 10!? I had hoped for six or seven, but once again fate seemed to be decreeing that City would be given time to equalise.
Those minutes passed as slowly as a glacier. The biggest scare came when de Bruyne curled a shot just wide of the post, with Henderson, for once, possibly beaten.
As that 10th added minute arrived, Blake started to record the fans around him. City attacked once more but Jeremy Doku’s shot went safely wide. Henderson took his goal kick, the match ended, Palace supporters were in ecstasy, and their jubilation captured forever in Blake’s video.
The dream becomes a reality: the Palace players lift the FA Cup for the first time in their club’s 120-year history history
As football history was engraved with a new name, all the familiar rituals were ours at last. In the press area, I was beside the stairs inside the stands where the players waited before collecting their medals. City players came first, one by one, low and disconsolate. Two soldiers carried the cup and the winners’ medals up the stairs. The Palace players arrived, Mateta first, high-fiving with all around him, including me, and recording it all with a phone on a selfie stick. The other players gathered in an exuberant group before climbing the final stairs to the presentation gallery.
The Cup was handed over by Prince William, to be raised by club captain Joel Ward, in one of his last acts after 13 years as a Palace player, and held aloft by each player in turn.
The Manchester end of the stadium was by now barren of supporters, who had left to contemplate the unusual prospect, for them, of a season, one season, with no trophies at all. Apart from the Charity Shield…
In 2025, Crystal Palace will return to Wembley again, to contest the Charity Shield, another first for the club. As is the prospect of European football next season.
In the vast, but half-empty, stadium on a sun-dappled evening yesterday, Palace’s supporters and players alike wanted their moment to last as long as possible. Forever, really.
Classy touch: the club allowed Joel Ward, in his last days as a Palace player, to raise the FA Cup
In Wembley’s large press conference room, Guardiola was asked about supposed Palace time-wasting, for which Henderson was booked. For sure, he said, but the referee added 10 minutes. That was not why City lost.
Then it was Glasner’s turn, delivering his tribute to the supporters, showing that he understood perfectly what such a victory could mean for them. Palace, he added, could give them “great times”.
Glasner said, “Maybe they have some problems, we can give them hours and days they can forget all this, just being happy.”
We headed home, bathed in continuing disbelief. In 1990 and 2016, I had left a bottle of fizz in the fridge ready for the triumphant return, only for it to go undrunk.
This time I had not chilled it, believing that to do so would summon the Manchester curse.
Even unchilled, it tasted all the finer. Out in the pubs of Croydon, the singing and celebration continued beyond midnight. They will undoubtedly be resumed when Palace play Wolves at Selhurst Park on Tuesday evening.
We will be there, of course. We had dreamed of this moment for years. The dream is real.
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