Eberechi Eze is backing his former Crystal Palace teammates to finish the job tonight in the UEFA Conference League final, even as he prepares for Arsenal’s Champions League final on Saturday. The 26-year-old sent a message of support to the Palace squad ahead of their meeting with Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig, telling them he was praying they would win and stressing that they know what it takes in finals.
TNT Sports played Eze’s message to Oliver Glasner, who responded by saying he really appreciated the words and that Eze was still aligned with the group. Glasner added that the midfielder had made a contribution to getting Palace to this point and said it made him proud. Eze, who left Palace for Arsenal in late August, has already helped his new side win the Premier League title and reach the Champions League final, keeping him in the middle of another major run of fixtures while his old club chases its own place in Europe.
The exchange carried extra weight because Eze was the man who scored the winner in last season’s FA Cup final against Manchester City, the result that sent Palace into Europe in the first place. Palace were originally due to play in the Europa League, but UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules and Nottingham Forest’s presence pushed them down into the Conference League instead. Now they have one more chance to turn that route into something bigger: victory tonight would book Palace a place in next season’s Europa League.
For Palace, that would be a reward for a season shaped by both achievement and frustration. They reached Europe through the FA Cup but spent months with the feeling that the competition they had earned had been taken from them. Winning in Leipzig would not undo that, but it would restore the sense that the club can still bend a hard season to its own ending.
Eze’s message underlined how close he still feels to the group he left behind, and Glasner’s reply suggested the bond runs both ways. Palace will have to finish the job without him, while Eze counts down to his next final in Arsenal colors. That is the sharp edge of this story: one club is trying to turn a painful demotion into a European prize, and the former player who helped put them there is watching from the next step up the ladder.
