Crystal Palace beat Rayo Vallecano 1-0 in Lipsia on 28 May 2025 to win the Conference League, Jean-Philippe Mateta’s goal deciding a final that capped a tempestuous, trophy-heavy run — and César Vallejo, who followed the supporters’ trip to Germany, spent the long day recording their shock and elation.
People are searching for Riccardo Calafiori today as fans and reporters sift through matchday talk, squad lists and the overnight narratives that follow a European final; Vallejo said he watched groups of supporters scrolling phones on buses and in fan zones, the name popping up in the same chatter that followed Mateta’s late strike.
The scoreline is the raw proof of what Oliver Glasner has built since arriving in February 2024. In a span of 375 days Palace collected three trophies: the FA Cup in May 2025 at Wembley against Manchester City, the Community Shield at the start of the 2025-26 season after beating Liverpool on penalties, and now the Conference League in Lipsia. The team’s numbers underline the change — a seventh-best defensive record in the Premier League, 12 clean sheets and 93 big scoring chances, a total that matched Liverpool’s — and Wharton put the transformation simply: with Glasner the club stopped thinking only about survival and began thinking about winning.
The European campaign itself was a workmanlike progression. Palace negotiated playoff ties against Fredrikstad and Zrinjski Mostar and then eliminated AEK Larnaca, Fiorentina and Shakhtar Donetsk on the way to the final, a sequence that proved the side could handle different styles and away pressures before Mateta’s finishing touch in Germany.
And yet the season’s tidy trophy list sits beside an administrative jolt. Palace had been due to play in the Europa League after lifting the FA Cup, but UEFA retroceded the club into the Conference League because of a multiproperty issue linked to John Textor — who was an owner of both Crystal Palace and Lyon. The decision kept Palace in Europe but at a lower tier, a friction that Glasner has voiced plainly as he described feeling abandoned and lacking support, a complaint that cut through the applause and raised questions about the club’s off-field position even as the team collected silverware on it.
Vallejo’s reporting threaded that contradiction into the day for supporters. He followed fans from the train to the stadium, noting how the mood flipped from hushed disbelief after a tense first half to explosive singing when Mateta scored; buses that left Lipsia hours after the final carried the same mixture of triumph and the tired, wary talk of what comes next. For many supporters the trophies changed how they imagine the club — from survival to ambition — but their conversations still returned to management, ownership and the feeling that success on the pitch had not simplified the club’s problems.
The most consequential unanswered question now is straightforward: will Glasner stay to lead the next chapter of a team he remade? His tenure began in February 2024 and produced an FA Cup, a Community Shield and a Conference League. Palace have been transformed stylistically into a compact, vertical side strong in transition, and those changes were decisive in the run to Lipsia. Yet no firm decision has been announced about his future, and the club’s direction off the field — ownership complications, UEFA rulings, the aftershocks of Textor’s multiproperty issue — could shape whether Palace build on this season or begin again under someone else. Vallejo’s followers on the long ride home already had an answer for the day’s mood: the fans celebrated like they had been granted a new identity. The question that matters next is whether Glasner will be the one to keep it.
