Crystal Palace soared their way to another trophy at Wembley. Regardless of opinions about the Community Shield’s significance, it’s a momentous day for the Eagles. This achievement came despite a frustrating summer in many regards, controversy surrounding the UEFA Europa league qualification and failing to make any major signings so far.

The day for Palace wasn’t all that simple though, after they found themselves trailing after just four minutes. Nice link-up play between new signings Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike, the French forward guided the ball across the box into the bottom right-hand corner. 

Palace, however, weren’t behind for long as Jean-Philippe Matata smashed it home from the penalty spot after Virgil Van Dijk clumsily fouled Ismailia Sarr.

A special moment came in the 20^th minute, when applause echoed around Wembley in a tribute to the late Diego Jota and his brother Andre Silva. But the moment was interrupted quite beautifully in a sense, after Jeremy Frimpong scored a chip shot with the outside of his right boot on exactly 20 minutes and 20 seconds on the clock. Something you simply couldn’t script.

In the second half, Palace grew into the game. The midfield partnership of Adam Wharton and Will Hughes began to dictate play. With just over 10 minutes left to play, the young England international split the Liverpool defence with a precision pass to Sarr, who calmly struck the ball past Allison to make it 2-2. With no extra-time in the Community Shield, penalties would decide the champions.

After a performance unrecognisable for Mohamed Salah, his opening penalty wrote the same story, blasting the ball over the bar. After further misses from Mac Allister and Harvey, youngster Justin Devenny stepped up and blasted Crystal Palace to victory, to seal a 3-2 shootout victory.

Post-Match Reaction

Speaking to TNT Sports, Palace manager Oliver Glasner said:

“Yes, I like it- winning at Wembley (….) we came back and decided the game on Penalties. A really big performance and I think we are almost on the same level as Liverpool and won this game, so I’m really proud of the team and how they played today.

 I’m very happy with this squad because they just won this trophy, but I don’t want to complain about plenty of games this season because I see that as a reward (….) maybe adding one or two players (…) we are looking for really clear profiles, for great characters, we could see with this togetherness, the spirit in the group.”

On the other hand, Arne Slot was disappointed:

“Disappointing of course, If you’re a goal up twice and still can’t win that’s disappointing. There were moments in the game I feel we could have won it.

It’s mixed feelings, if you look at our attacking play against a team that is so compact, we looked better than last season, we only scored one goal against Palace, now we score two. But on the other hand, we conceded two goals today, which we did against Bilbao, and we conceded a couple more against Milan, that is something we need to do better.”

This victory adds another chapter to Crystal Place’s growing collection of memories and will give Oliver Glasner and the fans a boost of confidence heading into the new season. For Liverpool and Arne Slot, it was a missed opportunity on Sunday but there were positives to take from the performance. With new signings of Ekitike, Wirtz and Frimpong, they will be great additions to the reds and the Premier League.