Crystal Palace will face Rayo Vallecano in the Conference League final in Leipzig on Wednesday at 21:00, with the match shown live on Canal+. For Oliver Glasner, it is another night that could turn a fine season into something bigger still.
The 51-year-old has taken Palace to the final after a strong rise over the past two years under his management, a spell that already brought the club the FA Cup and the Community Shield. This is Glasner’s fifth final as a coach, and he has lost only one of his previous four. That defeat came in 2023, when his Eintracht Frankfurt side lost the DFB-Pokal final 0:2 to RB Leipzig. A second European title would put him level with Ernst Happel, who won the European Cup with Feyenoord in 1970 and with HSV in 1983.
Glasner said ending the more than two-year journey with another title, and with the first European trophy in Crystal Palace history, would be incredible. The club has already shown it can handle the biggest one-off matches, beating Manchester City in the FA Cup and Liverpool in the Community Shield when few outside south London expected much from them. Those were Palace’s two winning finals, and they offered the first clear proof that Glasner’s team could finish the job when the stakes were highest.
Rayo arrive with reasons of their own to believe. The Spanish side finished the league season in eighth place and reached the final by beating Racing Strasbourg with two 1:0 wins, a route that underlines how tightly this tie has been handled on both sides. Their connection to Austrian football also runs through Toni Polster, who played for the club in the 1992/93 season and scored 14 goals in 34 matches.
Palace’s current surge sits in sharp contrast with the uncertainty that defined much of the club before Glasner arrived, when stability was harder to find and relegation battles were a regular part of life in the Premier League. That is why Wednesday matters beyond the trophy itself: it is a chance to show that the past two years were not a burst of form but the start of something more lasting.
There is also the question of what comes after. Several clubs are interested in Glasner, and his name has been linked with AC Milan since Tuesday, while he has also indicated in interviews that he wants time away from football after the season and a return to Austria with his family. For Palace, that leaves the final carrying more than one meaning. It is a shot at a first European title, but it may also be the last chapter of the manager who changed the club’s ceiling.
In Leipzig, the story is straightforward enough. Palace have a chance to close their most successful spell in years with a trophy no one at the club has ever won. Glasner has been here before in finals, and he has usually found a way through. If he does it again on Wednesday, the club’s leap over the past two years will feel complete.
