Glad All Over

 There are strange coincidences that happen in this life... or maybe there's more at play in this cosmic soup than we know or care to admit, some might call it "god" and some might call it cosmic accidents, i'm squarely in the latter camp but every now and then i sit back and look at things and chuckle at how it's all shaken out.... take for example my football team (soccer to the septic tanks meaning yanks), a team i fucking love, an irrational and almost useless love that borders on what could easily be classified as mental illness... and this is a story about how i came to love that team in the most irrational way seeing as how does a guy from the Cleveland come to absolutely adore a middling to small club from South London? i'll explain... 

The year was 1997 and the place was the infamous hovel known as the 759... it was the early years of El Kono back then, piecing things together through Hippie Jack and Cocaine Mike and Pizza Joe... it was during this time that a girl moved into the upstairs apartment, she was a senior at a local university and it was her happening to move in which led me to two rather important relationships, actually three when one counts the football club i would adopt as my own.... one of those connections would be with Stiv, something well documented in the Wilderness Years, the other would be with her boyfriend, then husband, then ex-husband, who would become one of my best friends, the esteemed Mr. Gulfboot Johnson... a bit like Bubba and Forest, Gulfboot and i hit it off like peas and carrots... the word debauchery would not suffice the hi-jinks that ensued but it was here that i was first introduced to the game of football aka soccer... and it started as most things do in this post-modern shithouse, through a video game... 

My roommates at the time were big into video games and while i myself was not due to my duties of slinging weed out of the back room every now and then i'd play something to be a bit social and what not... mainly Mario Kart and not the other shit my friends played but it was one fine day when Gulfboot mentioned we should rent this soccer game and play it.... truth is i can't even remember the original game though it was the beginning or precursor to the FIFA franchise which has now been renamed again in the name of the almighty dollar... at the time the fucking Gooners were the big squad on the game, Arsenal being home to Henry, Bergkamp, Viera, Adams and of course gaffer Arsene Wenger... it was the team we usually played with due to the fact we were just starting to play the game and needed the better teams to learn with and improve as we went along... it was during these times when Gulfboot and i would talk about our teams, mine being Cleveland teams (the Browns, Cavs, Indians now Guardians) and it was during this time that we made a pact, he would support my teams and i would adopt his... the name of that club? Crystal Palace Football Club... 

And this is where the cosmic accident comes in... for those unfamiliar with the history of Cleveland sports teams let me just say this.. in 1997 we had won fuck all, in any of those sports, in fact most of the time we weren't even that good, we had a shitbag move our football team to Baltimore (though those benevolent billionaires known as NFL owners voted to give us another team, nice of them seeing as when the shitbag Art Modell moved the Browns he didn't meet any of the ten criteria for moving but they still voted to let him), the Indians now Guardians were doing well and of course the year we looked likely to win a title the season got canceled due to a strike (1994), then in 1995 we lost to the fucking Braves and 1997 the Money Marlins, a day in which if i haven't wrote about (i think i may have) i should... the Cavs at the time were in the "rebuild" mode which is a term any Cleveland sports fan is all too familiar with... in fact in 1997 the last time any Cleveland team had won a title was 1964, when the Browns led by the greatest running back to every play the game, Jim Brown, won the last of their titles... the words most often associated with Cleveland teams are hapless and hopeless with a little shit luck thrown in, as in every time we get a good team something goes horribly fucking wrong... in fact when Clevelanders bump into each other in various parts of the world the conversation will invariably turn to our beloved teams and tales of where we were when (insert crushing loss here) happened... 

Which brings me back to my club, the Eagles of Crystal Palace... what i didn't know then which i do now is that never could a guy from Cleveland lucked into supporting a more apt club than Palace, the similarities between my hometown teams and my adopted club are staggering... basically hapless, hopeless, loveable fuck-ups who know everything and anything that can go wrong most likely will... when i accepted Palace as my club Gulfboot was explaining to me that they weren't even in the Premier League and that they were a division below and though they bounce up every now and then it's usually for a season and then it's back to the Championship... didn't matter to me, a deal is a deal and so i embraced my new club wholeheartedly... in fact a few years later when the big "Soccer Boom" came to America and all the kids were picking teams i can honestly say that i was proud to have lucked into being a Palace fan... i wasn't some Manchester United bandwagon shithead, i'd rather walk alone then support Liverpool, Arsenal? nope, Chelski? hell fucking no!! City was still shite and hadn't started the sovereign wealth fund bandwagon and so i was lucky enough to support a proper club and not some soon to be corporation... 

To say i love my club would be an understatement... i am Palace for Life and have gone through the requisite ups and downs over the last 28 years... for most of the first 16 years of supporting my club we were in the First Division/Championship... in fact in those years i got to enjoy two seasons of top flight football only to be immediately relegated after one season, there was financial trouble that almost saw my club relegated to the dustbin of history as had Steve Parish and his boys not come in we would have been proper fucked... in fact it was so bad at one point that our best player at the time, Victor Moses, was told he couldn't play as he was about to be sold to Chelski for 6 million quid and that if for some reason he got hurt and the deal fell through that would be the end of the club, we needed the cash that bad... add in the fact that if not for a late Darren Ambrose equalizer on the last day of the season we would have been relegated into the third division (EFL One) and would have really been in dire straits as that was when Parish and his friends had invested in the club to save us and one wonders what they'd have thought with the team dropping even further down the leagues... of course that wasn't the only time we flirted with the third division as in 2000 we managed to finish one place above the relegation zone...

2000 is also the year of a certain eventful trip to London in which i got to attend two Palace games at the legendary Selhurst Park, the first a 1- nil loss in the league and the second a 1-1 draw in the League Cup aka Moose Cup (Carabao Cup) in which Andy Linegan's extra time equalizer was enough to send us through... we'd eventually end up in the two leg semi-final where we would famously upset the Red Scousers 2-1 at Selhurst, only to be thoroughly thrashed in the return leg at Anfield losing 5-1... (there was a famous incident our hero had with a local sports radio personality who is a big Liverpool fan where one fine Saturday morning as we watched the footie at the local pub Radio Guy kept bleating loudly about all things footie, finally after one too many Guinness and no breakfast i snapped, got up from the bar and walked over to start berating him about how my little Championship club just did his mighty Reds which quickly devolved into me talking about how i was going to kick the fucking shit out of him if he didn't shut the fuck up... luckily i was pulled away, Radio Guy immediately ran out the door and the bartenders proceeded to buy a couple beers for sheer fact i got him to leave...) 

Incredibly enough after three rather rough seasons from 2010-2013, where we flirted rather regularly with relegation, we somehow managed to start going the other direction... in 2013 we managed to finish 5th and earn a place in the Championship play-offs against our rivals Brighton... of course once again it seemed as what could go wrong would, we lost our top scorer Glenn Murray to injury in the home leg of the tie and went to Brighton for the second leg a few days later... Brighton hadn't lost at home in months and we'd won exactly one away game in eleven and now we didn't have our 30 goal striker... didn't look good but as the saying goes, you gotta believe... our dynamic duo of young wingers, Wilf Zaha and Yannick Bolassie both netted and somehow we got through to the final, 2-0 over two legs... the final saw us face Elton John's favorite club Watford and after 90 minutes it was still scoreless... into extra time with the nerves ramping up in what is known as the most valuable match in football... in fact this was the year the new television rights had been renegotiated and the winner of this game would be in for a windfall of 120 million pounds... three years before we couldn't play our best player for fear of injury and the club being dissolved and now we stood on the brink of a huge payday... and so when the kid who would become our talisman (Wilf Zaha) for roughly a decade was brought down in the box a 40yr. old pro (Kevin Phillips) who had started his career at Watford some 19 years earlier stepped up and slotted home an excellent PK to put us 1-0 up... granted we did our best to let Watford equalize but we managed to hang on and Premier League football awaited... 

Being what is called a yo-yo club, though we actually hadn't been that 15 years or so, we were just happy to be back up, survival was the goal but if we didn't at least the money had now put us on some sound financial footing and the club could build and not worry about administration (again)... after a shaky start the Palace manager carousel began with Tony Pulis helping us out of a hole and securing us safety in that first year... he'd win Manager of the Year and promptly resign due to lack of funds to sign new players... from there most gaffers would last a season or less with the all-time loser being Frank DeBoer who came in among much fanfare but lasted a mere 77 days before being sacked... his teams lost the first four league games and didn't score a goal, we went on to lose the first 8 and things were looking bleak, after four years in the PL we were the betting favorites to be relegated... enter old Roy Hodgson, he'd save us, get sacked, get hired again, save us again, get sacked but in the end the man is a legend... it wasn't the most attractive or exciting brand of football but when not backed by a sovereign wealth fund the goal is survival... in fact every year when we are mathematically safe i celebrate... yes there is no trophy other than the fact we're staying in the top league for another season, it's Palace, we don't ask for much other than the sky to not be constantly falling... yes fans and outsiders may say what fun is it to always finish between tenth and fifteenth? and i'd say the fun is staying up, and as the little Leicester team once showed us, anything is possible as long as you're in the league... 

Which brings us to the present day... after once again not winning any of our first eight games it looked like once again anything that can go wrong will go wrong... as we stumbled along drifting in and out of the relegation zone early on it was nerve wracking and frustrating seeing as how well we finished the previous season, there were calls to sack the manager even though Ollie Glasner had shown what he could do when he has his full squad (truth is even i mumbled it)... then everyone started to get healthy and things began to resemble the squad we thought we had... since the turn of the year, had the season started then, we'd be in a Champions League spot, believe third most points in the league, we ran off a stretch of six away game wins! we kept winning in the FA Cup and then dispatched an Aston Villa team tipped to go through, not only dispatched them but made it look easy... by this time we had climbed the table to our usual 11-12 position and were free and clear of the relegation zone... and we were in the Cup final against the sovereign wealth money of Man City and the guru known as Pep... 

May 17, 2025... it now joins it's place with June 19, 2016... i was tempted to go down the pub, that same one where i almost beat the shit out of Radio Guy but also knew that i had what might be termed irrationally high hopes for this match and the chance for my club to win it's first major trophy EVER... it's origin dates back 164 years and the current professional iteration back to 1905, in that time we'd won fuck all other than promotion and some shite trophy that was around for a few years, nothing tangible really... and so i decided to don my old Palace away kit from 2001-2002 (it was chosen over the 98-99 home kit and one from the early aughts sans sponsor... find any kit without a sponsor these days, it's near impossible...) i grabbed a large bottle of water, turned on the match and then buckled in for what i knew would be (at least) 90 plus tense minutes or possibly 120 or even worse penalties... 

While i won't go into the game in depth it played out like most people thought, City having the bulk of the possession while Palace sat in a low block defending and looking to spring the counter attack... and the fact is i liked our counter better than City's defense and after not getting the ball across midfield for the first 16 minutes when we finally did is was fucking textbook, it involved some our best players and one i've maligned all season (Kamada) who may finally be settling in... Mateta picked it up and played it out wide to the right to Munoz who then got towards the endline and played a low cross back towards the top of the box to see Eze glide in and hit a brilliant first touch shot into the lower left corner... Palace 1 City nil... i'm sure my neighbors heard me screaming at the top of my lungs as i celebrated like i was at Wembley... of course then next 74 plus minutes (plus the ten minutes of injury time at the end of the game) were a nail biting, hand wringing torture... it included a dubious hand ball by our keeper which easily could have seen him sent off and us down to ten men for sixty minutes, a PK that was then saved by said keeper, a goal from Palace (Munoz) ruled offside because the ball deflected off one our players and as previously mentioned ten minutes of fucking injury time that dragged on for what seemed like eternity... 

And then came the final whistle... and this fucking geezer, someone who has spent too many hours following various teams only to suffer heartbreak, who has experienced winning a title in any sport only once before, had just watched his beloved club lift it's first piece of silverware in club history... what happened next even surprised our scribe here... tears... tears rolling down my face as i watched the scenes unfold, of the players but most importantly the supporters... some of whom i knew and were at Wembley and those who i didn't but had waited their whole life for something like this... it was fucking gorgeous!!! 

It was a strange feeling and i'll be honest when i say for days afterwards i could feel my eyes well thinking about it, tears of pure joy, of emotion that was hard to process and put into words... it was brilliant listening to the pundits talk about how it meant so much more for the club and it's supporters to win the FA Cup than it did for a team like City who had won everything in the past decade, how the fans stayed longer at Wembley savoring the moment, singing and crying and hugging... a few weeks before we had gone to the Etihad, went up 2-0 on City and got blasted 5-2 in the end... afterwards our gaffer Ollie told the resident genius Pep that if his team played the same way at Wembley we'd have them sorted... we did... City looked inept and devoid of any creativity, yes they had a few chances but in the end Palace had the better ones and took one of the few we had... every time i think about it i smile... next year we'll be in Europe for the first time ever... yeah i'll still be worrying about all sorts of things when it comes to my club but the only thing i can say at the moment is... that i'm feeling glad all over!!!