Crystal Palace hope they have found their saviour in Oliver Glasner after the club confirmed on Monday that Roy Hodgson had stepped down as manager. The Austrian, who has replaced Hodgson, is best known to a British audience for winning the 2022 Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt, beating Rangers in a dramatic penalty shoot-out in Seville.
But after hitting those heights with Frankfurt, who like Crystal Palace are nicknamed the Eagles, Glasner’s star has waned somewhat.
He fell out with the club last season and was let go in the summer. But regardless of the misfortunes during his final year at Frankfurt, his reputation — thanks to wins over Barcelona and West Ham United en route to winning that title — makes him attractive to numerous clubs in Europe.
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It was known for quite some time that the 49-year-old harboured Premier League ambitions, intending to prove his worth there after spending four years in the German Bundesliga, where he managed Wolfsburg and Frankfurt.
Born in Salzburg, Glasner became involved with the local powerhouse Red Bull Salzburg in 2012 after his playing career was curtailed by injury. He was a moderately talented defender for SV Ried and LASK in the top two tiers in Austria, but was forced to retire after a collision with an opponent in 2011.
What first was diagnosed as a minor concussion became a subdural haematoma — bleeding between the brain and skull — after a training session that included heading exercises. Glasner underwent surgery the same day.
While he stayed at Salzburg for only 2½ years, serving in a coordinator role and as an assistant coach to Roger Schmidt, he inherited some of the classic traits of Red Bull-style football that, at the time, were refined by Ralf Rangnick, most notably the intense pressing and aptitude for transition attacks.
It became obvious during Frankfurt’s 2021-22 campaign that Glasner’s tactical approach worked much better when his team were allowed to counterattack, using Filip Kostic, a fast-paced winger, as the go-to guy on the left side.
Many saw his approach as typical underdog football, though Glasner disagreed, saying in an interview with The Times in April 2022: “I think [the fact] that we have it easier [in the Europa League] has less to do with being the underdogs and more with the fact that we can use more space. That’s how many teams feel. When the opponents keep it very, very tight and compact, then it is difficult to find gaps. Or look at it in a different way. Barcelona had a hard time finding gaps against our compact defence. And that’s why the attacking part of the game became perhaps ‘easier for us’.”
While Glasner used to be known as a calm manager, possessing the “mild smile of a prime minister”, as the German football magazine11Freunde put it, he came out of his shell during the Europa League, often gesturing to his players and the stands with a kind of intensity akin to Jürgen Klopp. His dive across the Nou Camp pitch after beating Barcelona went viral and was fanatically celebrated by the 30,000 Frankfurt supporters inside one of the most intimidating arenas in football. “The emotional reward you cannot buy for any money in the world,” Glasner said.
But things took a bad turn during the 2022-23 campaign when Frankfurt once again underwhelmed in the league and failed to repeat previous successes on the European stage. Glasner, to the surprise of some, became increasingly irritated in press conferences, where he would lash out at critics.
Frankfurt felt that they had to make a move and thus Glasner’s fate was determined weeks before the season ended. He stayed until the end, coaching Frankfurt in the German Cup final against RB Leipzig, Salzburg’s sister club, in a losing effort.
Glasner’s stock has fallen somewhat since the highs of that Europa League title, as some feel his erratic behaviour may resurface. However, Glasner has shown an aptitude for revitalising struggling sides, as he did at both Wolfsburg and Frankfurt, though in both cases he took over the team before the beginning of the season, not over halfway through it, as he is now doing.
Whether the Austrian manager can help Crystal Palace stay above the drop zone is unclear. But what is certain is that after years of employing gnarled Premier League experience in the dugout, Palace have gone for something completely different.
