Crystal Palace and Rayo Vallecano meet in Leipzig for the Conference League final and a first European trophy for either side
Crystal Palace travel to Leipzig on Wednesday for the UEFA Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano, a fixture neither club has been in before. Both are in their first UEFA club competition final, and in only their second continental campaigns ever. Palace's last European game before this run was a 1998 Intertoto Cup tie. Rayo last played in Europe in the 2000/01 UEFA Cup, going out in the quarter-final to Alavés.
The final is at the Red Bull Arena (the Leipzig Stadium for UEFA branding) with a 21:00 CET kickoff. The fixture is also the last night with their club for both managers. Oliver Glasner is due to leave Palace at the end of the summer and has called it the toughest test of their European run. Iñigo Pérez, the 38-year-old who took charge of Rayo midway through the 2023-24 season after working under Andoni Iraola, is leaving after the final too.
Sarr against the supercomputer
The single biggest reason Palace are in Leipzig is Ismaïla Sarr, the Senegal winger who has nine goals in eleven Conference League starts and is the tournament's top scorer. Jean-Philippe Mateta, Palace's first-choice number nine in the league, has been the foil and has only one Conference League goal across his eleven appearances. The Opta supercomputer makes Palace 51.2 per cent favourites inside 90 minutes, which in single-match maths is barely any edge at all.
Palace's Premier League finish has been the unhelpful subplot. The league campaign closed with seven matches without a win, including a 2-1 home defeat to champions Arsenal that took Adam Wharton off with an ankle problem. Chris Richards is also out with torn ankle ligaments. Glasner has talked about expecting a sharper Palace in Leipzig, conscious of how flat the league finish looked.
Rayo's best run in 25 years
Rayo Vallecano finished eighth in La Liga and signed off on Saturday with a 2-1 win over Alavés, a curious narrative bookend given Alavés were the team that ended their previous European campaign 25 years earlier. The Vallecas side have travelled well in this competition, and the broader record from their two UEFA campaigns combined is 14 wins from 22 (three draws, five losses), a 64 per cent win rate that is the highest of any club with at least 20 matches in UEFA competitions, per Opta.
For Pérez, the night is also a personal scoreboard. He was on the losing side in the 2012 Europa League final, playing for Athletic Bilbao in their 3-0 defeat to Atlético Madrid in Bucharest. He returns to a UEFA final fourteen years later, in the technical area instead of on the pitch.
A final each side has waited a long time for
What both sides share, beyond the obvious novelty, is the suspicion that a Conference League final does not come around again easily. Glasner and Pérez both leave their clubs in the weeks after Leipzig, which gives the night a farewell shape on both touchlines. For Palace, the wait for a European trophy has lasted the full life of the club. For Rayo, qualifying for a UEFA competition has historically been a once-a-generation event. Wednesday in Leipzig will end one of those waits.
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