Oliver Glasner reiterated Crystal Palace’s desire to win the Conference League and said, the closer his team come to winning the trophy, the more they want it. The Eagles are now just three matches away from European glory.
Oliver Glasner said that his desire to win the Conference League has only grown the further the team have gone in the competition.
The Eagles reached the semi-final stage of the competition with a 4-2 aggregate win over Fiorentina.
Before that, it was far from plain sailing in the last 16 against AEK Larnaca, or in the play-off match against Zrinjski, having failed to finish in the top eight teams.
Yet, The Eagles are in the semi-finals, despite going the difficult route and now they can almost smell the silverware once again, Glasner admitted that the closer you get to winning a trophy, the more you want to win it.
He said: “Always when you enter a competition, for me it just makes sense to try to win it. And of course, the closer you come, the more you want it.
“When you play a semi-final, it just makes sense.
“All four teams will say the same – I want to play the final – because nobody will say, ‘okay, it's fine playing the semi-final and losing.
“That’s why we are here, and this is the goal. If we can achieve it, I don't know, because I think all teams who are in the competition right now deserve to be there because they played a great group stage and always won their duels in the knockout stages - then let's see.”
While Glasner and his players are extremely focused on winning the Conference League, the one thing they try not to do too much is actually talk about winning the trophy.
It may sound a little counterproductive when that quite obviously is the goal, but Glasner insists that the way to go for the squad is not to focus on the trophy itself and on their performance.
He added: “What we really try to avoid is talking about winning something.
“We really always try to focus on what we want to do, what we have to do on the pitch to get the best possible outcome and the best possible result, and that's always the consequence of the performance.
“At the end, and this is always the message to the players: you always get what you deserve.
“I think we have huge desire. We always have the confidence and the belief that we are able to win against every single team if we perform on our best level, and that's what we will try tomorrow.”