Back in the autumn, I felt that the inevitable was likely to happen this year, the inevitable being that the Crystal Palace Football Club would finish in the bottom three in the Premier League and be relegated to the second tier, the Championship. Then they started playing better, which they've done before, and slowly climbed up the standings to the safe zone. Along the way they defeated Manchester City, but at the time, Manchester City was playing awful.
So, ho-hum, the Premier League season is nearly over, one of the big five teams (Liverpool) has won it, and Crystal Palace is comfortably 12th, four points ahead of Everton and four points behind Bournemouth. And that's unlikely to change. So it goes on, they keep playing in the Premier League, and nothing else much happens.
Except that yesterday, as I write this, they won the FA Cup. That's the historic championship fully named the Football Association Challenge Cup, a tournament dating back to 1871-72. The oldest national football championship in the world. Anybody can play, from the fifth tier up to the first tier (aka the Premier League). It's prestigious, especially in England.
So, playing mostly defense most of the time, and not having the ball most of the time, but with one dazzling goal by Eberechi Eze sixteen minutes into the game, and surviving both a penalty kick (which was saved by the heroic goalie Dean Henderson) and 10 minutes of stoppage time at the end of the second half, which included a Kevin deBruyne shot that curled wide,
Crystal Palace defeated Manchester City 1-0 to win the FA Cup.
Unlikely? Well, CP or something like it dates back to 1861, and the actual team with that name dates back to 1905. In that whole period, 164 or 120 years, this club had never won a major championship. Ever. And given that Manchester United and Manchester City play in Manchester, and Liverpool plays in Liverpool, most of the London cheers have gone to either Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur -- but Crystal Palace plays in London too. So yesterday at Wembley, with shouts of joy and tears of unbelieving rapture, the fans cheered for the valiant, victorious underdogs.
It really happened. And though I have been following them for fun ever since they had a lower-tier development team playing near here in Maryland, and I have been following them since they made it into the Premier League over a decade ago and haven't been relegated since (that too is a record), I never really expected to see something this large and notable. And it makes me feel good. I'm sure it makes their long-time devoted fans feel good too.
Bonus (but this can be a difficulty, too), they play in the Europa League next year. The problem with this honor is that it adds a lot of games to the schedule, which can lead to injuries, which can lead to losses, which can hurt a club in the long run. We shall see how well the Crystal Palace Eagles can handle it.
The highlights:
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