Glasner walks into a fourth final in five years as Crystal Palace face Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig
Oliver Glasner walks into a fourth major cup final in five seasons on Wednesday night, this one in Leipzig against Rayo Vallecano. The Crystal Palace manager has already lifted one continental trophy and one domestic trophy in his career, with a DFB-Pokal final loss in between. The Conference League would make it three winners' medals in five years and Palace's first European silverware in their history.
Kick-off at the Red Bull Arena is 20:00 BST. Both clubs are in their first European final. Both have spent the season in the shadow of larger neighbours in their own cities. And both have a manager who has done this exact week before with someone else.
What Glasner has already done
Glasner won the Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt in May 2022, beating Rangers 5-4 on penalties in Seville after a 1-1 draw across 120 minutes. That tournament run was a complete bracket: Real Betis, Barcelona, West Ham. He left Frankfurt in 2023, took the Crystal Palace job in February 2024, and last May beat Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup final at Wembley to deliver Palace their first major trophy in 120 years of existence.
One year on from the Wembley win, the route to a second piece of silverware has run through Zrinjski Mostar in the play-off round, AEK Larnaca in the round of 16, Fiorentina in the quarter-final, and Shakhtar Donetsk in the semi-final, where Palace took a 3-1 first-leg cushion in Poland and saw it out 2-1 at Selhurst Park for a 5-2 aggregate. From a London club who finished 15th in the Premier League this season, that is a clean knockout bracket.
Rayo and Iñigo Pérez are the other story
Iñigo Pérez will become the youngest Spanish manager to take a team to a major European final since Pep Guardiola in 2009, at 38 years and 129 days old. He sits one win away from Madrid's third European trophy after Atlético and Real, and he is doing it with a Vallecas squad that has spent the season outside the European places in La Liga. Rayo beat Strasbourg in the other semi-final.
Rayo's expected line-up has Batalla in goal, Rațiu, Lejeune, Ciss and Chavarría across the back, Óscar Valentín and López shielding, with Isi Palazón, García and De Frutos behind Alemão. Palace will be built around Henderson in goal, Marc Guéhi at the back, Lerma and Wharton holding, Sarr and Kamada wide, and Jean-Philippe Mateta the focal point. Guéhi is the captain Liverpool tried to take in the summer and could not.
What the trophy actually changes
The Conference League is the third-tier UEFA competition, beneath the Champions League and the Europa League. It is also the only one Crystal Palace or Rayo Vallecano have any realistic route into. Winning it does two things. It locks in Europa League football for next season, which the Premier League finish on its own does not guarantee for a 15th-placed Palace. And it gives the club an honour to put on the door for the first time.
For Glasner himself the maths is simpler. One European cup with Frankfurt. One domestic cup with Palace. A Wednesday night in Leipzig to make it two and two. The Conference League trophy stands 57.5cm tall and weighs 11 kilograms. That has been Palace's measurement for the week.
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