Record-breaker: Crystal Palace’s Ismaila Sarr scored after just 21sec against Shakhtar Donetsk in the first leg of the UEFA Conference League semi-final. The second leg is at Selhurst tomorrow night
Twelve months after the biggest game in the club’s history, comes the biggest game in the club’s history, with a European semi-final at Selhurst Park tomorrow night. PETER GILLMAN gets off the Eagles’ fans’ emotional rollercoaster to talk about the ride they’ve been on
Here we go again.
Less than 12 months after their greatest match, the FA Cup final win at Wembley on May 17 last year, Crystal Palace have another massive final in their sights. That is the European Conference League final, to be played at Leipzig on May 27. Palace will be there if they achieve the right result in their semi-final against Shakhtar Donetsk at Selhurst Park tomorrow night – an occasion already hailed by The Guardian as the most momentous in the ground’s 102-year history.
Even after last year’s Wembley triumph, all this remains hard to believe if, like me, you have followed Crystal Palace for the best part of 70 years, though an era which brought a switchback of emotions when Palace hovered on the brink of extinction more than once, yet culminating in the Wembley ecstasy that can never be surpassed.
Palace’s European campaign began with a battle not on the pitch but in the law courts.
Courtesy of their FA Cup win, Palace should have qualified for Europe’s second-tier contest, the Europa League. But the club was denied that reward due to the barrack-room machinations of the grotesque figure of Evangelos Marinakis, the Greek owner of Nottingham Forest and two other clubs, who contended that Palace had violated UEFA’s regulations concerning… dual ownership of clubs.
Unimpressed by UEFA: Palace fans at their first European tie at Selhurst make their views clear
In vain did supporters protest that this was rich coming from a man currently on trial in Athens on charges of instigating football violence and supporting a criminal organisation. Palace lost the legal battle and were dropped into the third-tier Conference League, to be replaced in the Europa League by… Nottingham Forest.
Palace duly began their Conference campaign back in August with a pre-tournament play-off against Norway’s Fredrikstad, squeezing into the next round by a narrow 1-0 victory over the two matches.
The format of the Conference league now became fiendishly complicated. Palace were one of 36 teams, out of an original 164, who were competing in the new phase. To qualify automatically for the final phase, Palace had to finish in the top eight.
Perhaps fatally, Palace were deemed one of the favourites to qualify, but failed to live up to those expectations. They edged some matches but suffered crucial defeats in others, most agonisingly against Strasbourg in France in November. Palace were 1-0 up when their No7, Ismaila Sarr, shot at an open goal. The ball ricocheted off one post on to the other before bouncing back into play. Strasbourg went on to win 2-1.
Having failed to reach the top eight, Palace faced yet another play-off match to reach the final stages.
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The competition was having a calamitous effect on the domestic season with Palace’s already stretched squad. The European games took place on a Thursday evening, allowing Palace less than 72 hours to recover before their next Premiership match. From September onwards, Palace failed to win a single one of those matches and the biggest disaster came in January when, as FA Cup-holders, they lost to lower-league Macclesfield in their first game defending the trophy.
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Manager Oliver Glasner seemed at a loss and, in a twist in the plot, attacked Palace’s directors for selling Palace’s best players Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi. In turn, the Palace supporters rounded on Glasner, who announced that he would be leaving the club in the summer. Palace looked to be in a doom spiral from which there was no escape.
Then Palace began to turn things around. They notched their first win in 14 matches by beating rivals Brighton, a 1-0 away victory that gave them an ideal launchpad for the ensuing two-leg knockout matches that could lead to Leipzig.
After drawing 1-1 with Zrinjski Mostar in Bosnia, Palace secured a convincing 2-0 win at Selhurst Park. Palace next faced AEK Larnaca from Cyprus, who had won 1-0 at Selhurst Park in the qualifying stages. Larnaca had a watertight defence and we feared the worst when Palace could only draw 0-0 in the home leg.
At the end of 90 minutes in the second leg the sides were level, 1-1, but Sarr secured the winner in extra time, rendering Palace supporters delirious.
That took Palace to a quarter-final with Fiorentina, past Conference League finalists and one of this season’s favourites. At Selhurst, Palace won 3-0, the potentially decisive third goal, scored once again by Sarr, coming moments from the end and sending Eagles fans, myself included, home on a high.
Winning bet?: former Racing Post editor Bruce Millington could be quids in…
In Florence Palace were 2-1 down with half an hour to go but the defence was resolute and Palace went through 4-2.
This series of painfully tight victories was followed by Palace’s best result so far. They travelled to Poland to play the exiled Ukraine team Shakhtar Donetsk. Sarr (again) put Palace ahead after just 21 seconds, the fastest-ever goal in the Conference.
With no fewer than seven Brazilian players, Shakhtar dominated play and equalised early in the second half. Shakhtar continued to press but Palace scored two sublime breakaway goals to give them a 3-1 lead to take into Thursday’s match.
Palace’s supporters have been in full voice throughout the tournament. They have developed some purpose-built chants, including one about Forest’s Marinakis that is too profane to be repeated on a family news site.
Another that is printable begins: “We’re on our way, We’re on our way to Leipzig.”
The fans have followed the team wherever the schedule took them, relishing the novel pleasure of watching their heroes play across Europe – “From Dublin to Lublin”. More than 2,000 went to that preliminary round game in Norway and the numbers have increased by the match since.
For the tie in Florence, a large number went even though they did not have match tickets, content to savour the atmosphere and watch the match in bars in the Italian city instead.
Now the crucial semi-final is just over 24 hours away. Such is their faith in the Palace that one season-ticket holder I know bought his non-refundable air ticket to Berlin (the nearest airport for Leipzig) before Palace played Shakhtar in the first leg.
Star Sarr: Palace’s No7 has been in the right place most of the time on the Eagles’ fly through Europe
Bruce Millington, an Eagles fan and the former editor of The Racing Post, might have landed his greatest ante-post bet by booking his flight tickets in September for £120. Air ticket prices now are closer to £1,000.
My son Seth, who sits next to me in the Holmesdale Upper, has had a (refundable) hotel room booked in Leipzig since September. He’s been looking at options to travel to Berlin by train, too. But he’s also hoping CPFC will organise some transport once the final place is confirmed – perhaps a charter flight with the club’s new airline partners?
Even with Palace’s two-goal lead, though, nothing can ever be taken for granted. But if they do win through to the Leipzig final, the excitement could even come close to that magic day at Wembley last May.
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