The Championship playoff final has been called the biggest match in football because of the money involved, but there is more to it. There’s something more pure and innocent about it.
The drama of Premier League promotion like you’ve never seen it before
What is it like to see your club promoted? Three Crystal Palace fans showed us.
For many clubs, and their legions of supporters, making the Premier League is their grandest ambition and the playoff final is the biggest match they can possibly imagine.
On May 27, Crystal Palace and Watford took to the pitch at Wembley. A spot in the Premier League, their grandest ambition, was on the line and 82,025 people filled the ground. It was the biggest match most everyone in the stadium could imagine.
On that day, NBC gave three Crystal Palace fans cameras and sent them to the ground. Never before has the lore, intensity, emotion and drama of the playoff final, nor the joy of winning it, been captured so well.
This season, Crystal Palace will play in the Premier League, a league they have been relegated from a record four times since it was formed in 1992. Their ultimate goal is simple: to stay in the top flight, and odds are it will not happen.
But whether Palace stay up or not, they will always have May 27, 2013 -- the day they fulfilled their grandest ambition in the biggest match they could ever possibly imagine.
