Fiorentina 2 Crystal Palace 1 (Agg 2-4)
Crystal Palace’s players can look forward to a night out after digging deep to keep alive their hopes of winning a major trophy for a second successive season.
Palace won the first leg at a canter, and the tie looked a formality when Ismaila Sarr headed Palace into a 4-0 aggregate lead, but goals from Albert Gudmundsson and Cher Ndour, as well as injuries to Adam Wharton and Maxence Lacroix, certainly made for an uncomfortable evening for Oliver Glasner’s men.
Such was the rearguard action that Glasner was happy to take the backhanded compliment in his post-match press conference that his side played like an “Italian team” to get the job done.
Glasner has won the Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt and, asked whether there were any similarities between that team and this Palace side, he said: “What is exactly the same is that the players asked to go out tonight! I agreed a few years ago when Frankfurt won the quarter-final and I hope the story ends the same.”
Sarr has been Palace’s main source of goals this season, and he scored his seventh of the Conference League campaign with a team move of such beauty it would not look out of place alongside Michelangelo’s David, housed here in Florence.
OK, that might be a liberal use of journalistic licence, but another David, De Gea, was certainly blown over by Sarr’s 17th-minute header, from a Daniel Munoz cross following fine work by Jaydee Canvot and Yeremy Pino on the counter-attack.
De Gea denied Sarr a second straight away but Fiorentina, and certainly their fans, were not prepared to throw in the towel.
The biggest threat facing Palace was a player they turned down at the end of the summer transfer window. Manor Solomon, the wide forward on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, twice forced Dean Henderson into action, showing enough cutting edge to suggest he should be helping his parent club in their Premier League relegation battle.
Solomon gave the home side enough encouragement to keep pressing forward and they won a penalty when Canvot caught Rolando Mandragora with an attempted clearance. Gudmundsson sent Henderson the wrong way.
That is where things began to unravel for Palace. First, Wharton came off with a groin issue sustained in the lead-up to the penalty, and then they lost centre-half Lacroix, who took a heavy blow to his knee from team-mate Munoz as they combined to stop Solomon.
Glasner revealed that Wharton’s injury is the same issue that forced him to withdraw from the England camp recently, which will be a big concern for the midfielder’s hopes of going to the World Cup.
Jorgen Strand Larsen then had to replace Jean-Philippe Mateta at half-time to keep a substitution window free in the second half. Unfortunately for Palace, it was a Fiorentina sub, Ndour, who made an instant impact, striking from long range in the 53rd minute to reduce the deficit to two.
The hosts were piling on pressure, but Paolo Vanoli, the Fiorentina manager, decided to roll the dice and changed two of his front three. In truth, it backfired, and Palace, FA Cup winners last May, were able to see out the final 15 minutes, leaving the travelling support to chant “we’re on our way” to another potential final in Leipzig.
Match details
Fiorentina (4-2-3-1): De Gea 6; Comuzzo 6 (Kouadio 70), Ranieri 6, Pongracic 6, Gosens 6 (Balbo 70); Mandragora 7; Fagioli 5 (Ndouri 46); Harrison 6, Gudmundsson 7 (Fabbian 75), Solomon 7 (Fazzini 75); Picolli 6.
Booked: Comuzzo, Pongracic, Ranieir.
Goals: Gudmundsson 30 pen, Ndour 53.
Subs not used: Braschi, Christensen, Del, Kosovo, Leonardelli, Puzzoli.
Crystal Palace (3-4-2-1): Henderson 7; Richards 6, Lacroix 6 (Riad 41), Canvot 6; Munoz 7, Wharton 6 (Lerma 30), Kamada 6, Mitchell 6; Sarr 8, Pino 6 (Hughes 74); Mateta 6 (Strand Larsen 46).
Booked: Pino, Sarr.
Goal: Sarr 17.
Subs not used: Benitez, Matthews, Cardines, Clyne, Devenny, Johnson, Rodney, Sosa.
Referee: Jesus Gil Manzano (Spain).