BY ANDREW MCSTEEN
Despite Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner holding a media conference on Monday afternoon – officially as a pre-match preview for the Eagles’ final Premier League home game of the season against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday – it was dominated by talk of the club’s FA Cup final victory on Saturday, against Manchester City at Wembley.
The first major silverware in club history has set off emotions amongst the fanbase they many thought they would never experience – this writer included.
On Saturday I was still in shock – had it really happened? I was in a daze. The first opportunity I had to interview Glasner about the achievement was at Wembley, but my job was the mixed zone.
So, yesterday, at Beckenham, a short walk from my house, I had another opportunity.
To be honest, the win had still not sunk when the press conference started and, writing this last night, I am not sure it has still.
I did try to be professional and objective when afforded a question by Joanne Budd, the head of media and PR at the club – and someone who has a long association with Palace herself with former assistant manager Alan Smith taking time out on Saturday after the result to share a picture of her with him and former manager Steve Coppell – the 1990 FA Cup final losing finalist management team – and praising her.
Glasner said it was too early to say he had created a legacy when asked, but I disagreed. This day had been a dream of mine for my whole life and for every Palace fan I have ever met. That is some legacy created when you are just over 450 days in the job.
Much has been made of the ‘Palace fans’ on this cup run by observers, but ‘the fans’ are not a homogenous group, all grouped into one entity, they are individuals, all with their own stories and Glasner had talked about the win being significant for the memories created for those fans.
I wanted to dive deeper and give more context from my own experience on Saturday and those emotions – strangers crying on my shoulders, messages from around the world, people contacting me who I had lost contact with or not really spoken to in nearly 30 years, thoughts about loved ones who were not there in person. These individual stories. I said to Glasner no matter what he said, he had created a legacy amongst Palace fans.
This is what he said.
“I can’t tell every single story, but this is what I mean when I talk about fans. Fans are never a ‘cloud’. When I talk about the fans, I’m always talking about every single one. It’s the same when I’m talking about the team, I’m talking about everyone, every single one who’s involved.
“I know many of these stories. I experienced it.
“The first time when we got promoted in Linz (in Austria) many years ago, the fans were running on the pitch, and there was a guy who was 75, 80 years old and said ‘thank you, thank you that you brought the club back’. There were tears in his eyes. These are the moments. It was great to give something back.
“With Eintracht Frankfurt (after winning the UEFA Europa League, formerly the UEFA Cup) in the convoy from the airport to the city there were 300,000 fans waiting, there was a parade through them, and there were really small boys and girls crying, just saying ‘please, let me touch the trophy once’ and 90-year-olds crying, kneeling in front of the convoy, saying the trophy is back after 42 years.
“So, when I’m talking about the memories, the emotions, I get goosebumps when I talk about it, because this is what stays forever. It’s not a cloud, the fans. Every single one has their own story, whatever it is. Some are sad, some are very positive, whatever it is, behind every single fan stands their own story.
“What is sure that every single one was proud to be a Palace fan on Saturday. Every single one enjoyed, I think, the last couple of weeks, the journey, and having then this huge success.
“For a few hours, minutes, days you forget all of this stuff. We speak about football players, we speak about artists, we speak about actors, I think then, we are responsible for entertainment.
“When you’re watching a great movie for one-and-a-half-hours, you forget everything around you. At Wembley, this 100 minutes, especially in the extra time, everybody forgot what was around them.
“This is what you’re here for. This is why everybody, especially in England, loves football. This is why football is sport number one in the world.
“And this (on Saturday) was a best practice example and how it should be and how it can be.”