May 27 : It was the tournament they never wanted to be in.Yet Crystal Palace were celebrating wildly on Wednesday after beating Rayo Vallecano to lift Europe's Conference League trophy in one of the greatest days of their history and a perfect farewell to Austrian coach Oliver Glasner.The London club had been due to play in the more prestigious Europa League - but dropped to the continent's third-tier club tournament due to multi-club ownership rules. Now their 1-0 win against the Spanish LaLiga team in Leipzig, thanks to a goal from Jean-Philippe Mateta, puts them in the coveted Europa League for next season.
"This is justice," said former England player and pundit Glenn Hoddle. "They should have been in the Europa League and now they have qualified for it next year."Palace fans wept, danced and sang in the Red Bull Arena, with thousands more partying on the streets of Leipzig and others at Selhurst Park in south London watching on a screen."I feel fantastic," said goalscorer Mateta, shouting and jumping for joy on the pitch. "We did it. First time in Europe. We did it. Now I just want to celebrate. I just want to party. It's incredible. We did everything."THIRD TROPHY UNDER GLASNERPalace's first European triumph - in their first European campaign - added to two domestic triumphs, the FA Cup and the Community Shield, won last year during Glasner's remarkable tenure since taking charge in February 2024.Wednesday's final was the 51-year-old's final game at the helm and his players paid tribute to him for the joy he had brought. "It's something that you dream of but you don't think is reality," left-back Tyrick Mitchell, a Crystal Palace academy graduate, told broadcaster TNT. "I'm just proud of everyone, past and present, that helped us get to this point ... It's amazing, it's the same feeling that we had when we won the FA Cup, it's just pure delight, pure emotions and we're just happy that we were able to get over the line." (Writing by Andrew Cawthorne, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
