Best of Times, Worst of Times for Crystal Palace

All but Manchester City supporters will have greatly applauded the Crystal Palace victory over the Citizens in the FA Cup final, technically securing a spot in Europe next year with a David like performance over Goliath Manchester City in front of a supportive crowd at Wembley just over a month ago. Rather than hoisting silverware, the South London side has usually been more recognizable for its loyal and exceedingly loud fan base, its catchy “Glad All Over” anthem, the only cheerleaders in the Premier League, and the iconic Eagle which both circles Selhurst Park before matches and adorns the club’s badge.

The FA title  was the first major trophy in Crystal Palace’s long and largely mediocre existence. The club’s history dates to as early as 1861 though its formal professional beginning started in the shadows of the Crystal Palace exhibition building in 1905. Since then, there has been little notable success even though the Eagles have managed to tread water in the middle of the Premier League table for the past 12 seasons. There was concern just three years ago that relegation might come calling after the departure of iconic star Wilfred Zaha. Instead, the club’s excellent scouting and development has developed a crop of young stars which, under the guidance of Manager Oliver Glasner, delivered that first trophy.

With success and attention comes a new challenge as other clubs target Crystal Palace difference makers. Michael Olise already left for Bayern Munich last season, even before his former teammates climbed the steps for their medals at Wembley. His former running mate, Eberechi Eze, is now being targeted by Tottenham Hotspur and other suitors. Liverpool is reportedly close to signing Eagle defender Marc Guehi. Real Madrid supposedly has an interest in midfielder Adam Wharton. Even Manager Glasner was rumored to be leaving for perceived greener pastures, most notably for the Tottenham Hotspur job ultimately filled by Brentford’s Thomas Frank. Such foraging expeditions by bigger clubs are expected when a club like Crystal Palace pokes its head above its normal obscurity down the table.

The unexpected success this season, however, resulted in another, more unexpected problem. The ticket to European competition, earned on the pitch at Wembley, is in jeopardy. The reason is multi-club ownership rules which impose restrictions on clubs with common ownership competing in the same tournaments. One of the Crystal Palace ownership groups, John Textor and his Eagle Football Holdings group, has concurrent ownership in another club which qualified for the Europa League. Because of a higher table finish in their domestic League, French side Lyon technically gets the Europa League ticket. Crystal Palace cannot even trade down for the Conference League as another Eagle part owner, David Blitzer, owns the Danish club Brondby which has already qualified there and similarly has a glossier table finish than the Eagles.

Crystal Palace, of course, is not the first club to be faced with such restrictions. Manchester City, for example, is part of a multi-country, multi-club model. The difference is clubs like Manchester City expect to earn a European berth and proactively plan to circumvent such restrictions. Among the options are a reduction in individual club ownership percentages or the placement of an ownership interest into a blind trust. Such actions, however, technically need to happen before March 1st.

No one expected Crystal Palace to face such first world problems on that date, and nothing was thus done to address Textor’s 43% ownership share. The dilemma quickly began to overshadow the extended Cup celebrations. The irony was that Textor had already been talking about divestment because of his inability to exert influence in a club whose day-to-day operations are tightly managed by Chairman Steve Parrish. The chairman and other Palace stakeholders were unable to reach agreement on buying out their partner and Textor reinvigorated attempts to sell to an outsider. That attempt reached fruition this week with the news that an agreement has been reached for fellow American Woody Johnson to buy Textor’s shares for $254 million. Johnson is the principal owner of another football club. Fortunately, that club competes (if one can call it that) in American football as the New York Jets of the NFL. Johnson is not involved with another “soccer team.” Should the sale go through, however, Crystal Palace still faces two problems. Firstly, will UEFA excuse the ownership change falling outside the necessary time window to address. Longer term, will Johnson gain the voice in Crystal Palace operations that eluded Textor? If so, that could prove problematic. The New York Jets last qualified for the NFL playoffs in 2010, the longest drought of any NFL team.