Oliver Glasner, Crystal Palace, and the remarkable road to the UEFA Conference League final - from Fredrikstad to Florence, via a Swiss court

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In 2010, Crystal Palace were rescued from administration by a consortium of four local businessmen. Their immediate aim was survival, the long-term ambition was Premier League promotion, and the dream was top-flight stability. An FA Cup win felt outlandish; a European final, impossible.

Highlights: Palace reach Conference League final with famous win over Shakhtar

Video credit: TNT Sports

Steve Parish has remained chairman ever since, and his stewardship has turned Palace into a Premier League mainstay, now established after 13 straight seasons.

But while Parish has realised Palace fans’ early ambitions, manager Oliver Glasner has made the impossible possible.

On Wednesday, May 27, Palace will take on La Liga side Rayo Vallecano in the UEFA Conference League final, live on TNT Sports and HBO Max.

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It’s a bonkers story: Palace’s long and winding road to Leipzig via Fredrikstad, Florence and a Swiss court.

At its core lies a tension between the old Palace - unfashionable, and often marked by misfortune - and the new Palace - Glasner’s side, a team with silverware that dares to dream.

For the past two years, both identities have existed in tandem. Which one prevails in Leipzig could have massive consequences for the future.

The Glasner revolution

In 2024, Glasner arrived at Palace amid an identity crisis. Factions had formed within the fanbase, with some content with mid-table stability - once the dream in itself - and others demanding greater ambition from the board.

Glasner’s predecessor, Roy Hodgson, had steadied Palace, but also alienated sections of the fanbase by famously telling disgruntled supporters to "be careful what they wish for".

The discontent was made clear by a banner being raised in the away end during a 5-0 defeat at Arsenal in January 2024 that read: "Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards."

Crystal Palace fans hold up a banner away to Arsenal in January 2024

Image credit: Getty Images

Hodgson stepped down, Glasner came in and, after some initial growing pains, Palace began to flex their muscles.

The Austrian's ‘we can beat anyone’ mentality - which yielded six wins and a draw in their final seven games of the 2023/24 campaign - captured the heart of south London. They had not seen anything yet.

The following season, Palace recorded the double over rivals Brighton & Hove Albion, finished the campaign with a club-record Premier League points tally, and, for the first time in their history, won the FA Cup.

The 1-0 final victory against Manchester City is the club’s greatest-ever day - full-time wasn't marked by celebratory ‘limbs’ but a more disbelieving, teary, hazy, joy; 30,000 Palace fans at the home of football, touching paradise.

If that was not enough, the triumph at Wembley also guaranteed a place in the UEFA Europa League. Or did it?

Glasner 'proud' to give fans 'moment for life' with FA Cup victory

Video credit: TNT Sports

Palace's day in court

Palace fans spent the summer dreaming of once-in-a-lifetime trips to Porto, Istanbul and Rome, but the joy of a historic few months soon turned to ash.

The club were unceremoniously ejected from the Europa League for breaching UEFA's multi-club ownership rules and demoted to the less prestigious Conference League. It was a charge Palace strongly denied, but one held up by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Typical Palace. The only English club to have been expelled under this rule. It was the version of themselves that felt most familiar to their south London faithful.

Even in the face of Glasner’s revolution - his defiant disregard for football’s natural order, his unshakeable belief that Palace could and would win things - the old Palace still prevailed.

Goodbye Rome, hello Fredrikstad.

The wheels fall off

The misfortune continued that summer. Beyond their demotion, FA Cup hero Eberechi Eze was sold to Arsenal, while captain Marc Guehi was heavily linked with Liverpool until the transfer window closed.

Palace held it together on the pitch, beating Liverpool to win the FA Community Shield, taking 12 points from a possible 18 during an unbeaten start to their Premier League campaign and kicking off their maiden European adventure with an aggregate win over Fredrikstad and victory over Dynamo Kyiv.

But the season soon unravelled. Palace’s league form collapsed, while the Conference League was marked by stodgy, attritional encounters - a draw with Kuopion Palloseura and defeats to AEK Larnaca and Strasbourg.

The Christmas and New Year period then brought defeats to Tottenham Hotspur and Leeds United before Palace suffered FA Cup humiliation at the hands of non-league Macclesfield.

Ranked 117 places below Palace in the football pyramid, Macclesfield produced the biggest upset in FA Cup history by league-position disparity.

Highlights: Macclesfield SHOCK holders Crystal Palace in cupset for the ages

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Glasner then detonated publicly - announcing Guehi would be moving to Manchester City, confirming his own impending departure, and accusing the board of leaving him "completely abandoned".

Palace's poor form and Glasner's public insubordination prompted growing calls from supporters for the Austrian to go.

It felt like an inevitable breakup - extinguished as quickly as a passionate holiday romance, somewhere between landing and an overcast Stansted arrival.

Palace's renaissance

But Glasner stayed and turned the tide, first by beating Brighton.

Palace then laboured through their Conference League tie with HSK Zrinjski Mostar before edging past Larnaca 2-1 on aggregate in the round of 16 - the Cypriot side proving the peskiest of underdogs.

A league win over Spurs all but secured Premier League survival, before a 4-2 aggregate victory against Fiorentina put Palace back on track.

But victory in Florence, and a subsequent 5-2 aggregate win over Arda Turan's Shaktar Donetsk, has brought a Leipzig final - and history - into view.

Palace now have a chance of doing the most un-Palace thing imaginable - winning a European trophy - in the most typically Palace way.

Glasner hails ‘electric’ Selhurst atmosphere after Crystal Palace reach UEFA Conference League final

Video credit: SNTV

The future is unwritten

An apocryphal quote often attributed to Michelangelo upon carving the Statue of David reads: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

For much of their Conference League campaign, Palace looked like a side blindly chipping away at stone.

But despite everything, Palace are in the Conference League final - one of the biggest games in the club's history, not only for the prospect of European silverware, but for what it means for their future trajectory.

Will Palace carve away the final fragment of stone and reveal David in all his glory, or botch the final blow and knock off his head?

A win against Rayo Vallecano would provide a poetic end to the greatest era in the club's history - the Glasner era - while giving Palace the best chance of extending that success beyond it.

Another trophy, and another season of European football, would reshape perceptions of what Palace are at their core - the club that wins trophies rather than the one that loses FA Cup ties to Macclesfield. It would also give the club its best chance of securing a worthy successor to Glasner.

A defeat, though, would likely mean the Glasner years are not the start of something, but the peak of it. The glory years - the apogee of Palace's 121-year history - but not a foundation. The party ends, and the club is left to confront a sobering regression to the mean.

How to watch the UEFA Conference League final

The UEFA Conference League final, which kicks off at 20:00 UK time, will be live on TNT Sports and HBO Max.

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