{"id":945398,"date":"2026-05-08T05:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/945398\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T05:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:35:14","slug":"crystal-palace-eagles-on-verge-of-unbelievable-glory-after-reaching-conference-league-final-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/945398\/","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Palace: Eagles on verge of ‘unbelievable’ glory after reaching Conference League final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crystal Palace<\/b><\/a> desperately did not want to be in the Conference League – now they are one game from winning it and creating more club history.<\/b><\/p>\n

On one of the greatest nights the club has known at a passionate and raucous Selhurst Park, the Eagles beat Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk 2-1<\/a> to seal a 5-2 aggregate success in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n

Having won the FA Cup and Community Shield in 2025 at Wembley, their remarkable European journey started in a Swiss courtroom, unsuccessfully appealing against demotion into the Conference League from the second-tier Europa League.<\/p>\n

But since then, Palace have not looked back.<\/p>\n

They have travelled to Norway, Poland, France, Republic of Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Italy and back to Poland, with one last stop to come – the final in Germany.<\/p>\n

And should Palace lift the trophy on Wednesday, 27 May, in Leipzig against Spanish side Rayo Vallecano, who defeated Gary O’Neil’s Strasbourg 2-0 on aggregate in their semi-final, it would complete an unprecedented phase of success for the club.<\/p>\n

Boss Oliver Glasner, who will leave in the summer having only been appointed in February 2024, is on the verge of a third trophy in a remarkable period.<\/p>\n

Even the 51-year-old could not believe what has been achieved.<\/p>\n

“I spoke to the chairman before the match, he always comes into my office,” said Glasner afterwards.<\/p>\n

“I said, ‘do you ever think we would be playing in the semi-final of a European competition?’ He said ‘no’.<\/p>\n

“I said, ‘when we talked for the first time three years ago, I didn’t think about it’. This is what you achieve if you work hard and stick together in tough moments – and we have had a few. When you stick together in difficult moments, you get the reward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crystal Palace desperately did not want to be in the Conference League – now they are one game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-945398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116537335957415800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}