Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace Football Club is a professional football club based in Selhurst in the Borough of Croydon, South London, England, who currently compete in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. Although formally created as a professional outfit in 1905, the club's origins can be traced as far back as 1861, when an amateur Crystal Palace football team was established at the Crystal Palace Exhibition building, which has led to claims by the club that Crystal Palace should be recognised as the oldest professional football club in the world, after historians discovered a direct lineage through their ownership under the same Crystal Palace Company. Both the amateur and professional clubs played inside the grounds of the Palace, with the professional club using the FA Cup Final stadium for its home games until 1915, when they were forced to leave due to the outbreak of the First World War. In 1924, they moved to their current home at Selhurst Park.

The amateur club became one of the original founder members of the Football Association in 1863 and competed in the first ever FA Cup competition in 1871–72, reaching the semi-finals, but disappeared from historical records after the 1875–76 FA Cup. Shortly after Crystal Palace returned to existence in 1905 as a professional club, they applied for election to the Football League, but were rejected and instead played in the Southern League. Palace did eventually join the Football League in 1920, and have overall spent the majority of their league history competing in the top two tiers of English football. Since 1964, they have only dropped below the second tier once, for three seasons between 1974 and 1977. During their period in the top flight in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the club achieved their highest ever league finish of third place in the old First Division, now known as the Premier League, in the 1990–91 season. Palace were unfortunate to miss out on qualification for the UEFA Cup at the end of that season due to the limited number of

This page also has a version in other languages :  Кристал Пэлас (russian)