Crystal Palace fans react at those ‘laughing or scoffing’ at their protest outside Selhurst Park on Tuesday night.
An organised protest was held against Uefa’s decision to demote the club from the Europa League to the Conference League due to breaching multi-club ownership rules.
BBC Sport report that Palace, who qualified for the Europa League by winning the FA Cup, with American businessman John Textor owns stakes in both Palace and French club Lyon, who also qualified for the Europa League.
Uefa’s rules prohibit clubs with significant shared ownership from competing in the same competition, and Palace missed a March 1st, 2025, deadline to restructure ownership.
Textor is selling his Palace stake to Woody Johnson.
Nottingham Forest will replace Palace in the Europa League. But now Palace plans to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with fans and chairman Steve Parish calling the decision an injustice and a technicality.
If you’re laughing or scoffing at Palace fans protesting outside Selhurst Park yesterday, I feel as though you’re missing the point of football fandom.
Sorry it goes on a bit, I wanted to make my point as fully as possible. 🤝 pic.twitter.com/Ea69r8qUub
— HLTCO (@HLTCO) July 16, 2025
A powerful protest by Palace fans led by @ultrascpfc against UEFA’s decision to bar them from the Europa League
“I believe we can swing it. Tonight was not the end of things, only the beginning”
Clear they won’t go without a fight #CPFC@TheAthleticFC https://t.co/wiCv8ljEXm pic.twitter.com/Xi3Yo5eu84
— Matt Woosnam (@MattWoosie) July 15, 2025
HLTCO said: “I have to say as well, if you’re looking at this situation through the prism of social media, then undeniably, and I’ve seen it, you know, there are plenty of fans from other clubs scoffing at this protest saying it’s ridiculous. What’s that going to do? Oh, yeah. I’m sure you’re away for a quaking in their boots, etc, words that affect.
“What do you actually expect Crystal Palace fans to do in this scenario? I’m asking the question more out of curiosity than anger. You know what? Look at Crystal Palace fans. Okay?
“We live in London, a footballing landscape that is dominated by Chelsea and Arsenal and Tottenham. Not to mention the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of Manchester United and Liverpool fans and Manchester City fans now. They are everywhere. Even in my little corner of technically Southwest London rather than Southeast, given the fact that I live, around the Carshalton area, There are Chelsea fans everywhere. There are Manchester United fans everywhere. There are Arsenal fans everywhere.
“If you see a Palace shirt still in 2025, it feels as though it’s a little win as though you would sort out a needle in a haystack.
“We live in an environment where constantly we are scoffed at, where we are the butt of jokes, where we are a punchline to a conversation.
“And as I’ve said many times on this podcast and on social media, generally, you do not get into supporting Crystal Palace. If you are looking for glory, you do it because you are proud of where you are from. You do it because of family ties. You do it because you represent South London.
“So for us to get through an FA Cup, win against Manchester City, having got the better of Fulham in the quarter finals away from home, beating Millwall in the round of 16, taken on Aston Villa, a Champions League knockout side at Wembley, and absolutely demolish them. There isn’t a single Aston Villa fan who would say otherwise given that semi-final performance, and then gone and beaten Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City by a goal to nil in the final.
“If we do all of that, win our first ever major trophy, and then as a supporter base through no fault with any individual fan, we end up being booted out of the Europa League, which is the right of every single FA Cup winner from as long as I can remember really because of a box tick bit of paperwork that put shares into blind trust on the March 1st via a man who is now no longer technically involved at either Crystal Palace or Lyon having formally sold his shares in our football club and never having had decisive control in the first place, what do you expect our fans to do?
“If you are honestly suggesting to me that a protest outside our stadium to make feelings known, to drum up more media interest, to make it known to UEFA and anyone else that this isn’t something we are going to take laying down, I don’t know what you think football fans are for.
“You can suggest that it won’t make a great deal of difference to UEFA’s thought process and it probably won’t, but at the same time sitting on your hands and doing nothing is the definition of apathy, no?
“We are a fan base who saw the benefit of direct action in the summer of twenty ten when the bank, Lloyds, were going to technically stop Steve Parish and the rest of CPFC 2010 from buying the ground back, thus making the entire project to try and purchase Crystal Palace and take them out of administration null and void.
“I was there at Selhurst Park. We had a protest outside the ground that day. There were thousands of people that went up to Lloyds Bank.
“And in the end, that direct action had a obvious and tangible impact on the pathway of this entire saga, which led to Steve Parish and the rest of CPFC 2010 being able to wrestle control over of Crystal Palace and set us on a pathway which saw us promoted to the Premier League in 2013, where we have remained to this day, where we have now got a category one academy, the best squad we’ve ever had, the best manager we’ve ever had. We have Premier League stability and our first ever FA Cup having reached the final, by the way, back in 2016 under the management of Alan Pardew and a semi-final against Chelsea, with Patrick Vieira in charge.
“So we, as a fan base in the last fifteen years directly, have been, you know, front row viewers to the benefit of direct action.
“Now, you can suggest, and you, as I say, would be quite right probably in assuming that UEFA will not care a jot about the fact that there has been a protest from Norwood Junction Station down to Selhurst Park last night.
“But if you as a football fan are scoffing at it, if you as a football fan are writing it off, then I would really question what you feel is the point of supporting your football club.
“You know, go back in a more mainstream sense to the European Super League breakaways. We saw protests across the country. There was a groundswell of opinion whether it was outside the Arsenal Stadium, outside Chelsea, outside Elland Road, where fans made their voices heard.
“And even though you can talk about it in isolated pockets not making much of a difference, throughout the entirety of human history, protest has been something which has been a mechanism of the masses.
“So I don’t know. I look through the prism of social media sometimes. I appreciate that the age demographic on there can be incredibly young, and people are desperate to point score, and tribalism takes over from logical thought.
“But if you honestly, in your heart of hearts, don’t understand and empathise with why Crystal Palace fans mobilised yesterday to protest against something which we see is grossly unfair and completely flying in the face of sporting integrity, having secured our first ever FA Cup in the club’s history, then I feel as though we’re on a hiding to nothing in terms of the logical arguments here.”
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