Oliver Glasner is taking Crystal Palace into the biggest European match of his reign in Leipzig on Wednesday with the same habit that has shaped some of his best nights: he keeps looking back. Palace will face Rayo Vallecano in the UEFA Conference League final, but they will not train at the RB Arena before the game even though visiting teams are allowed to use the hosts’ stadium on the eve of the final.
That choice fits a manager who says he has learned to trust experience over impulse. Glasner won the Europa League final with Eintracht Frankfurt on penalties against Rangers in 2022, and since arriving at Palace he has already guided them to the FA Cup and the Community Shield in the previous 13 months. Last week, he explained that he goes back over old big-match decisions when he prepares for the next one.
“Every experience you have in life can help you,” Glasner said. “I’m always looking back.”
He said that habit goes all the way back to his early days in Austria, when he made what he now sees as a costly call. “It’s an experience I had when I was a young manager in Austria,” he said. “We played a midweek game, a cup game against a non-League team, and we had a derby at the weekend. I changed 11 players.”
The result was a lesson he has never forgotten. “It was an awful game, the cup game. We still won 2-1, but it was awful,” Glasner said. “I said I would never do it again.” The next day’s derby ended in a 2-0 defeat, and the memory of that sequence still shapes how he reads the calendar. Palace’s run has now reached eight Conference League away games, and Glasner said he checks each one against what he has already learned, including what Frankfurt did four years ago and what worked, or did not, in the build-up to major matches.
That method has been repeated this season. Palace trained on the other club’s pitch against Fredrikstad in the play-off round in August, and they did the same against AEK Larnaca in the last 16 because the longer flight duration to Cyprus made the logistics different. Across their eight Conference League away games, they have trained on the other club’s pitch only twice, a sign that the club’s preparation is being tailored rather than copied from one tie to the next.
Glasner did not describe the process as complicated. He described it as instinct built from repetition. “What did we do with Frankfurt? (Did we) train at the stadium, (or) at home and fly after?” he said. “What do we do on matchday? Where did we have a good experience or not? It’s a feeling you get.”
That feeling now has to carry Palace through a final that comes after a remarkable 13 months under the Austrian. Last May, they beat Manchester City to win the FA Cup. In August, they beat Premier League champions Liverpool on penalties to lift the Community Shield. Wednesday gives Glasner a chance to add a European trophy to a period that has already changed the club’s scale, but it also asks him to decide how much history should shape the immediate present. For Palace, the answer appears to be that the past is not a distraction. It is the guide.
