After everything Steve Parish has been through over the past 12 months, he was just about able to compose himself. The man who fell in love with Crystal Palace as an 11-year-old schoolboy when they reached the FA Cup semi-final for the first time in 1976 from the old Third Division and stepped in to save his club from administration in 2010 reflected with pride on the journey that has taken them to three trophies under the shrewd management of Oliver Glasner.
“It’s incredible,” said Parish after Jean-Philippe Mateta’s goal against Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig sealed their triumph in the Conference League. “An amazing achievement. All the ups and downs … To get to the Europa League, where we deserve to be. It just shows you: sometimes the good guys win. When I bought the club I wasn’t sure we’d ever play in Europe, let alone win a trophy. It’s a dream come true.”
The irony of the captain, Dean Henderson, being handed the trophy by Aleksander Ceferin – the Uefa president on whose watch Palace were demoted from the Europa League after winning the FA Cup last year – was not lost on Parish or the thousands of fans who made the trip from south London to Saxony. Last August, Parish described the ruling as “the biggest injustice in the history of football” and the “Fuck Uefa” chant that references John Textor and the Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, has become the soundtrack of Palace’s first European campaign. They can now look forward to taking up their rightful place in the second-tier competition after a topsy-turvy season ended in glory.
“We have got a taste for it now, we want to keep it going,” Parish said. “We have gone up a level and we have got to try to stay there. We will have a week to celebrate and then work hard in the summer.”
If Palace are to stay there he must ensure lessons have been learned. Parish’s relationship with Glasner soured at the start of the manager’s first full season after he waited until the last moment to bring in players in the 2024 summer transfer window. Although Glasner guided the club to their first major trophy the following May by beating Manchester City in the Cup final, things then deteriorated after Eberechi Eze was sold to Arsenal and Palace did not heed the Austrian’s pleas for more reinforcements as they prepared for Europe. The Marc Guéhi saga in August when Glasner threatened to walk out if the England defender was sold to Liverpool brought matters to a head and he informed Palace in October that he would not extend his contract.
After Palace were dumped out of the FA Cup by Macclesfield, the situation exploded again in January after Guéhi joined Manchester City and Glasner made public his decision to leave this summer, much to the surprise of the hierarchy. A summit over dinner at the Ham Yard restaurant around the corner from Parish’s office in Soho appeared to have smoothed things over, only for Glasner to accuse the club of abandoning his team after defeat by Sunderland the following day.
It is understood that Palace considered putting the assistant manager Paddy McCarthy in temporary charge but Parish resisted the temptation and sanctioned the club-record signings of Brennan Johnson and Jørgen Strand Larsen – neither of whom started in Leipzig. That was far too late for Glasner to reconsider his future but he and Parish managed to put aside their differences for the common cause.
Now a new era begins for Palace without Glasner, , who celebrated Wednesday’s victory with the pitch dive first seen when his Eintracht Frankfurt side beat Barcelona at the Camp Nou in 2022. Parish is expecting a response from Andoni Iraola in the next couple of days after offering the outgoing Bournemouth manager a lucrative deal, and has Coventry’s Frank Lampard and Pierre Sage, who led Lens to second in Ligue 1 this season, among the alternatives.
Whoever is appointed will face a challenge keeping together a team that has made history, with Maxence Lacroix, Daniel Muñoz, Adam Wharton – man of the match against Rayo with a swaggering performance despite not being 100% fit – and Ismaïla Sarr, the Conference League’s top scorer, expected to be coveted by bigger clubs.
Replacing any of those players and expanding the squad to make sure it can properly cope with the demands of the Europa League will not be easy. Reports last week said that Bovis, the company contracted to build the new main stand at Selhurst Park first proposed in September 2016, is no longer working on the project and the repeated delays have not helped Parish’s plans to progress.
Woody Johnson bought Textor’s 43% stake last year after the Uefa ruling and the billionaire owner of the NFL’s New York Jets is understood to have helped fund the purchases of Stand Larsen and Johnson. His backing will be crucial if Parish, who is among the Premier League’s best-paid executives, is to build on the firm foundations left by Glasner.
