Crystal Palace defeated Manchester City 1-0 at Wembley on Saturday to lifts their record English FA Cup.
It was an historic moment for both teams as City’s Pep Guardiola was also aiming to be the second coach in history to have won the FA Cup three times behind Alex Ferguson.
Eberechi Eze’s 16th-minute goal fired Palace to the first major trophy in their history with their first attack of the match before an inspired Dean Henderson saved Omar Marmoush’s penalty.
However, Henderson could count himself fortunate to still be on the pitch after he earlier appeared to deny Erling Haaland a scoring opportunity when he handled the ball outside of his area.
It had started encouragingly for Guardiola’s players, who had Palace camped inside their own half for the opening quarter-of-an-hour with Haaland meeting Kevin De Bruyne’s cross after six minutes to force a decent save from Henderson.
The Palace stopper was called into action five minutes later when he stopped Josko Gvardiol’s header from Savinho’s corner.
Manuel Akanji then headed over Savinho’s next set-piece inswinger and it seemed a matter of when, not if, a totally dominant City would open the scoring.
But suddenly, Palace were ahead. Jean-Philippe Mateta held up a long punt forward before he turned the ball round the corner to Munoz.
The Colombia international’s pinpoint pass was met by Eze, who steered the ball past Stefan Ortega.
It marked only the second time Palace had crossed the halfway line and they might have doubled their advantage moments later, only for Ortega to save well from Ismaila Sarr.
The game was alive and following his early saves, Henderson was back in the spotlight, but this time for the wrong reasons when he handled the ball outside of the area to prevent Haaland from meeting Gvardiol’s long ball forward.
However, VAR came to the rescue for Henderson who was initially shown a red by the referee for denying Haaland a clear scoring opportunity.
VAR ruled that the ball was going away from the goal and Henderson was in the clear.
Haaland has now failed to score in six appearances at Wembley and in eight City finals.
With half-time approaching, man-of-the-hour Henderson was back in action when he produced a flying save to stop Jeremy Doku’s curling effort.
Palace started the second half just as they did the first – penned inside their own half.
But, just as in the opening period, the south London club had the ball in the back of the net with their first attack on City’s goal.
Munoz’s thrash at goal deflected off Maxence Lacroix – and then Sarr – with a wrong-footed Ortega making the save before Munoz poked the rebound home.
