By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Five completed seasons.
Five different champions.
Since the UEFA Conference League began in 2021–22, Roma, West Ham United, Olympiacos, Chelsea and Crystal Palace have each lifted the trophy once.
There has been no dynasty.
No club has returned year after year to dominate the competition.
Instead, its first five champions arrived with dramatically different histories, expectations and relationships with European football.
Roma had the responsibility of becoming the inaugural champion of a tournament with no history behind it.
West Ham began in qualifying and went through the entire campaign unbeaten.
Olympiacos arrived only after its Europa League path had closed.
Chelsea entered as the overwhelming favorite and had to turn expectation into execution.
Crystal Palace qualified on sporting merit for the Europa League after winning the FA Cup, only for an off-field multi-club ownership ruling to redirect the club into the Conference League.
Same trophy.
Five completely different journeys.
And the differences matter.
Editor’s Note: The Conference League format changed beginning with the 2024–25 season.
Roma, West Ham and Olympiacos competed under the previous group-stage system.
Under that format, clubs finishing third in their Europa League groups could transfer into the Conference League knockout round play-offs.
Chelsea and Crystal Palace competed under the current league-phase format.
Roma: Somebody Had to Become the First
When Roma entered the inaugural Conference League in 2021, there was no history attached to winning it.
There were no previous champions.
No famous Conference League finals.
No legendary comeback from a decade earlier.
No club could point toward an earlier winner and decide what lifting the trophy was supposed to mean.
Somebody had to go first.
Roma’s journey began before the group stage, but it quickly became far messier than the eventual championship might suggest.
The Italian club reached the group stage and appeared to be one of the obvious contenders.
Then came Bodø/Glimt.
On Oct. 21, 2021, Roma traveled to Norway and suffered a stunning 6–1 defeat.
It was the first time a José Mourinho-coached team had conceded six goals in an official match.
For a club with Roma’s profile, losing was one thing.
Losing 6–1 to a Norwegian opponent few casual European football viewers would have considered comparable in stature was something entirely different.
And Bodø/Glimt was not finished.
The return match in Rome ended 2–2.
Roma eventually finished first in the group, one point ahead of Bodø/Glimt, but the two teams would meet yet again in the quarter-finals.
The first leg was back in Norway.
Bodø/Glimt won 2–1.
At that point, Roma had faced the Norwegian club three times during the season and had failed to win any of them.
Then came the response.
Back at the Stadio Olimpico, Roma produced a 4–0 victory.
The team that had beaten Roma 6–1 earlier in the competition was finally overwhelmed.
Roma advanced 5–2 on aggregate.
Leicester City followed in the semifinal.
After a 1–1 draw in England, Tammy Abraham scored in Rome as Roma won 1–0 and advanced 2–1 on aggregate.
That sent Mourinho’s team to Tirana to face Feyenoord.
Nicolò Zaniolo scored in the 32nd minute.
Roma protected the lead.
The final finished 1–0.
Roma became the inaugural Conference League champion and captured its first major UEFA club competition trophy.
That journey is more interesting because of what happened before the final.
Roma did not simply enter a new competition, dominate it from beginning to end and become the obvious first champion.
They were beaten 6–1.
They went three matches without defeating Bodø/Glimt.
They lost the first leg of the quarter-final.
And still they became the team whose name appears first on the list of Conference League champions.
Today, the competition has previous winners to provide reference points.
Roma had none.
The club helped create the first one.
West Ham: The Work Before the Spotlight
West Ham’s 2022–23 Conference League campaign is remembered for one moment more than any other.
Prague.
The final against Fiorentina was tied 1–1 as the 90th minute approached.
Lucas Paquetá slipped a pass behind the Fiorentina defense.
Jarrod Bowen ran onto it.
Bowen scored.
West Ham won 2–1.
For the first time since the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965, West Ham had captured a major European trophy.
But Prague only happened because of everything that came before it.
West Ham did not receive a direct place in the group stage.
They had to qualify.
Their opponent was Viborg.
West Ham won the first leg 3–1 in London.
A two-goal advantage was significant.
It was not qualification.
The job still had to be finished in Denmark.
West Ham won the second leg 3–0.
The 6–1 aggregate victory put them into the group stage.
Then the momentum grew.
West Ham won all six group matches.
Eighteen points from 18.
They defeated FCSB, Silkeborg and Anderlecht home and away.
The perfect group-stage record allowed them to bypass the knockout round play-offs and move directly into the round of 16.
AEK Larnaca was eliminated 6–0 on aggregate.
Gent provided a much greater challenge.
The first leg in Belgium finished 1–1.
Back in London, West Ham won 4–1, taking the quarter-final 5–2 on aggregate.
AZ Alkmaar came next.
West Ham won the first leg 2–1.
Then they traveled to the Netherlands and won 1–0, completing a 3–1 aggregate semifinal victory.
The final awaited.
One of the more interesting elements of West Ham’s run was that David Moyes did not need to turn every European match into an attacking exhibition simply because his team represented the Premier League.
In key knockout matches, West Ham could defend deep, stay compact and attack quickly in transition.
They could allow opponents possession in less dangerous areas and force them to solve an organized structure.
Set pieces offered another weapon.
That could create an unusual problem for opponents expecting a Premier League club to dominate the ball and attack relentlessly.
The stronger team on paper did not always have to play like the more aggressive team.
What mattered was finding the approach that gave West Ham the best chance to advance.
And advance they did.
West Ham finished the Conference League campaign with 14 wins, one draw and no defeats, including qualifying.
The unbeaten run makes the Prague celebration even more impressive.
But the most glamorous part of the story should not erase the least glamorous part.
There is no final without Viborg.
There is no Bowen winner without the August qualifying round.
There is no trophy lift without the work that came months before anybody knew Prague would become the destination.
The final produced the moment everybody remembers.
The work that made it possible started much earlier.
Olympiacos: The Opportunity Changed, but the Season Wasn’t Over
Olympiacos did not begin the 2023–24 season expecting the Conference League to become the setting for one of the greatest nights in Greek football history.
They began in the Europa League.
And even reaching that competition required qualifying.
Olympiacos entered in the Europa League third qualifying round and beat Genk 2–1 on aggregate.
Čukarički came next in the play-off.
Olympiacos won 6–1 on aggregate and entered the Europa League group stage.
There they finished third behind West Ham and Freiburg.
Under the competition format used at the time, third place meant the Europa League campaign was finished.
The European season was not.
Olympiacos transferred into the Conference League knockout round play-offs.
Their original European objective had changed.
The opportunity had not disappeared.
Ferencváros was the first Conference League opponent.
Olympiacos won 1–0 at home.
Then they won 1–0 away.
A controlled 2–0 aggregate victory moved them into the round of 16.
Then came Maccabi Tel Aviv.
And suddenly, the second European opportunity appeared close to disappearing too.
Maccabi won the first leg 4–1 in Piraeus.
Olympiacos had conceded four goals at home.
The situation looked disastrous.
The response was extraordinary.
Olympiacos won the return leg 6–1 after extra time.
The Greek club advanced 7–5 on aggregate.
The comeback became one of the defining results in Conference League history.
Next came Fenerbahçe.
Olympiacos won the first leg 3–2.
Fenerbahçe responded with a 1–0 victory in Istanbul.
The aggregate score was 3–3.
Extra time changed nothing.
Penalties decided it.
Olympiacos survived the shootout.
Then came Aston Villa.
On paper, the Premier League club represented another enormous test.
Olympiacos went to England and won 4–2.
Rather than merely protecting the advantage at home, they won again 2–0.
Olympiacos advanced 6–2 on aggregate.
The club that had finished third in its Europa League group was now one victory away from a European trophy.
Fiorentina awaited in the final.
There was another layer to the story.
The match was being played in Athens.
Not at Olympiacos’ own stadium, but in the same city where Greek football history was about to be made.
Ninety minutes passed without a goal.
Extra time arrived.
The match moved toward penalties.
Then, in the 116th minute, Ayoub El Kaabi scored.
Olympiacos led 1–0.
Minutes later, it was over.
Olympiacos had become the first Greek senior men’s club to win a major UEFA club competition.
The remarkable part of their journey is not simply that they respected the Conference League after leaving the Europa League.
It is how many times the opportunity nearly disappeared after they arrived.
The 4–1 home defeat to Maccabi.
The penalty shootout against Fenerbahçe.
The Premier League semifinal opponent.
A final that remained scoreless until the 116th minute.
Nothing about the path suggested inevitability.
Olympiacos did not control how they arrived in the Conference League.
They controlled what they did once they got there.
Video Courtesy of TNT Sports Football YouTube
Chelsea: Being the Favorite Is Not the Same as Being Champion
Chelsea entered the 2024–25 Conference League carrying expectations unlike any previous champion.
They did not need to prove that the club belonged in European football.
Chelsea had already won the Champions League.
The Europa League.
The Cup Winners’ Cup.
The UEFA Super Cup.
This was a club with enormous resources, squad depth and European pedigree.
Chelsea was the giant in the field.
But even Chelsea did not receive automatic admission to the league phase.
First came Servette.
Chelsea won 2–0 at Stamford Bridge.
Then Servette won the return match 2–1 in Switzerland.
Chelsea advanced 3–2 on aggregate.
The favorite had survived qualifying.
Once the league phase began, Chelsea looked much more like the dominant force many people expected.
Gent: 4–2.
Panathinaikos: 4–1.
Noah: 8–0.
Heidenheim: 2–0.
Astana: 3–1.
Shamrock Rovers: 5–1.
Six matches.
Six victories.
Eighteen points.
First place.
The knockout rounds followed.
Chelsea beat Copenhagen 3–1 on aggregate.
Legia Warszawa came next.
Chelsea won the first leg 3–0 away and appeared completely in control.
Then Legia went to Stamford Bridge and won 2–1.
Chelsea still advanced 4–2 on aggregate, but the defeat reinforced something Servette had already demonstrated.
Having the strongest squad did not make Chelsea incapable of losing individual matches.
Djurgården came next.
Chelsea won the semifinal 5–1 on aggregate.
Now only Real Betis stood between Chelsea and the trophy almost everyone expected them to win.
The final did not begin according to that script.
Betis scored first.
Chelsea went into halftime trailing 1–0.
The favorite had to respond.
It did.
Enzo Fernández equalized.
Nicolas Jackson put Chelsea ahead.
Jadon Sancho added a third.
Moisés Caicedo completed the scoring.
Chelsea won 4–1.
The club finished the competition proper with 12 wins from 13 matches and 42 goals.
And the trophy completed another piece of European history.
Chelsea became the first club to win all five of UEFA’s major men’s senior club competitions.
That is what made Chelsea’s challenge different.
Roma had no previous Conference League champion to follow.
Olympiacos had to adapt after its original European route changed.
Chelsea had to deal with an entirely different burden:
Everybody expected them to win.
Being the favorite can create advantages.
It can also create a situation in which success is treated as inevitable while failure becomes magnified.
Chelsea’s resources mattered.
Their squad depth mattered.
Their European experience mattered.
But none of those advantages physically placed the trophy in the cabinet.
Servette still beat them.
Legia still beat them.
Betis still scored first in the final.
Expectation was not the result.
Chelsea still had to produce it.
Crystal Palace: The Competition Changed, but the Opportunity Remained
Crystal Palace entered the 2025–26 Conference League under circumstances unlike any of the four champions before them.
Their European story began with an FA Cup.
Palace defeated Manchester City 1–0 in the 2025 FA Cup final, with Eberechi Eze scoring the winning goal.
It was the first FA Cup triumph in club history.
By winning the competition, Crystal Palace qualified on sporting merit for the 2025–26 Europa League.
That was supposed to be the destination.
Instead, an off-field issue changed the path.
UEFA determined that Crystal Palace and Olympique Lyonnais were non-compliant with its multi-club ownership rules at the March 1, 2025 assessment date.
Lyon retained admission to the Europa League.
Palace was placed into the Conference League instead.
Crystal Palace appealed.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed that appeal in August 2025.
The ruling became final.
Palace would play in the Conference League.
That created an unusual combination of achievement and disappointment.
They had won the FA Cup.
They had qualified on sporting merit for the Europa League.
Then circumstances away from the field changed the competition.
But being redirected into the Conference League did not provide an automatic league-phase place.
Palace still had to qualify.
Fredrikstad was the opponent.
Palace won the first leg 1–0 at Selhurst Park.
The second leg in Norway finished 0–0.
One goal across 180 minutes was enough.
Crystal Palace advanced 1–0 on aggregate.
Then came the league phase.
Unlike Chelsea one year earlier, Palace did not dominate it.
They finished 10th with 10 points.
That kept them alive but meant they missed the top eight and therefore had to enter the knockout phase play-offs.
Zrinjski came first.
Palace advanced 3–1 on aggregate.
AEK Larnaca followed.
The first leg finished 0–0.
The second required extra time.
Palace won 2–1.
Then came Fiorentina.
Few clubs knew the Conference League better.
Fiorentina had reached consecutive finals in 2023 and 2024, losing first to West Ham and then to Olympiacos.
Palace won the first leg 3–0 at home.
Fiorentina won the return 2–1.
Palace advanced 4–2 on aggregate.
The semifinal opponent was Shakhtar Donetsk.
Palace won the first leg 3–1 away.
Then they won 2–1 at home.
The 5–2 aggregate victory put Crystal Palace into its first major European final.
Rayo Vallecano awaited in Leipzig.
The first half finished scoreless.
Then Jean-Philippe Mateta scored in the 51st minute.
That was enough.
Palace won 1–0.
The club’s debut season in a major UEFA competition had ended with its first European trophy.
Their route had been far from perfect.
They qualified 1–0 on aggregate.
Finished 10th in the league phase.
Needed the knockout play-offs.
Required extra time against AEK Larnaca.
Lost the second leg against Fiorentina.
None of that prevented the final outcome.
Palace kept surviving.
And eventually surviving became winning.
The strangest part of the story is that this was not even the competition Crystal Palace originally expected to enter.
The FA Cup opened the Europa League door.
The multi-club ownership ruling closed it.
Palace challenged that decision and lost.
Then they had to decide what to do next.
By the end of the season, the competition that had initially represented a step down from the Europa League had become the stage for the first European trophy in club history.
Crystal Palace did not get the European competition it originally expected.
It still made history with the opportunity that remained.
Five Champions, Five Different Meanings
The first five Conference League champions did not arrive at the trophy through the same circumstances or the same path.
That is precisely what makes their stories useful together.
Roma became the inaugural champion after suffering one of the tournament’s most shocking defeats along the way.
West Ham started in qualifying and went through the entire campaign unbeaten.
Olympiacos arrived after its Europa League path ended and then survived a series of elimination threats before becoming Greece’s first major UEFA club champion.
Chelsea arrived as the obvious favorite and converted enormous expectations into results.
Crystal Palace expected to play in a different European competition altogether before eventually turning the Conference League into one of the greatest seasons in club history.
The trophy was the same.
Its meaning was not.
The Business Lesson
Organizations often spend enormous amounts of energy comparing opportunities.
Which client is bigger?
Which market is more prestigious?
Which platform has the largest audience?
Which project will receive the most attention?
Which opportunity looks best from the outside?
Those questions can matter.
But the first five Conference League champions suggest another question is sometimes more useful:
What can you actually build from the opportunity in front of you?
Roma could not wait for the Conference League to develop decades of prestige before deciding whether becoming its first champion mattered.
Someone had to create the first reference point.
West Ham could not skip the qualifying work because the final looked more glamorous.
The final existed because the earlier work had been completed.
Olympiacos could not restore its Europa League campaign.
It could only decide what to do with the European opportunity that remained.
Chelsea could not exchange its reputation, resources or previous trophies for an automatic championship.
Those advantages created expectations.
Execution still had to create the result.
Crystal Palace could not change UEFA’s ruling once its appeal was exhausted.
It could decide how seriously to treat the competition it was actually playing.
Those are five very different circumstances.
And that is important.
The lesson is not that every opportunity is equal.
Some opportunities clearly carry greater financial value.
Some markets are larger.
Some clients have more strategic importance.
Some platforms offer more reach.
But organizations should be careful not to confuse smaller with meaningless, unexpected with useless, or less prestigious with not worth pursuing.
A smaller opportunity can provide experience.
An unfamiliar one can reveal capabilities.
An unexpected change can create another path.
Work completed before anyone is watching can create the moment everyone eventually notices.
And sometimes the opportunity an organization did not originally want becomes the one people remember most.
The stage changes.
The expectations change.
The route changes.
The responsibility to execute does not.
Five clubs reached the same trophy from five very different starting points.
There was no single blueprint.
There was only the next challenge.
That may be the clearest lesson from the Conference League’s first five champions:
Opportunity does not have one correct starting point.
What matters is what you build from the one you receive.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Five Champions, Five Journeys: What Winning the Conference League Actually Meant
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Five completed seasons.
Five different champions.
Since the UEFA Conference League began in 2021–22, Roma, West Ham United, Olympiacos, Chelsea and Crystal Palace have each lifted the trophy once.
There has been no dynasty.
No club has returned year after year to dominate the competition.
Instead, its first five champions arrived with dramatically different histories, expectations and relationships with European football.
Roma had the responsibility of becoming the inaugural champion of a tournament with no history behind it.
West Ham began in qualifying and went through the entire campaign unbeaten.
Olympiacos arrived only after its Europa League path had closed.
Chelsea entered as the overwhelming favorite and had to turn expectation into execution.
Crystal Palace qualified on sporting merit for the Europa League after winning the FA Cup, only for an off-field multi-club ownership ruling to redirect the club into the Conference League.
Same trophy.
Five completely different journeys.
And the differences matter.
Editor’s Note: The Conference League format changed beginning with the 2024–25 season.
Roma, West Ham and Olympiacos competed under the previous group-stage system.
Under that format, clubs finishing third in their Europa League groups could transfer into the Conference League knockout round play-offs.
Chelsea and Crystal Palace competed under the current league-phase format.
Roma: Somebody Had to Become the First
When Roma entered the inaugural Conference League in 2021, there was no history attached to winning it.
There were no previous champions.
No famous Conference League finals.
No legendary comeback from a decade earlier.
No club could point toward an earlier winner and decide what lifting the trophy was supposed to mean.
Somebody had to go first.
Roma’s journey began before the group stage, but it quickly became far messier than the eventual championship might suggest.
The Italian club reached the group stage and appeared to be one of the obvious contenders.
Then came Bodø/Glimt.
On Oct. 21, 2021, Roma traveled to Norway and suffered a stunning 6–1 defeat.
It was the first time a José Mourinho-coached team had conceded six goals in an official match.
For a club with Roma’s profile, losing was one thing.
Losing 6–1 to a Norwegian opponent few casual European football viewers would have considered comparable in stature was something entirely different.
And Bodø/Glimt was not finished.
The return match in Rome ended 2–2.
Roma eventually finished first in the group, one point ahead of Bodø/Glimt, but the two teams would meet yet again in the quarter-finals.
The first leg was back in Norway.
Bodø/Glimt won 2–1.
At that point, Roma had faced the Norwegian club three times during the season and had failed to win any of them.
Then came the response.
Back at the Stadio Olimpico, Roma produced a 4–0 victory.
The team that had beaten Roma 6–1 earlier in the competition was finally overwhelmed.
Roma advanced 5–2 on aggregate.
Leicester City followed in the semifinal.
After a 1–1 draw in England, Tammy Abraham scored in Rome as Roma won 1–0 and advanced 2–1 on aggregate.
That sent Mourinho’s team to Tirana to face Feyenoord.
Nicolò Zaniolo scored in the 32nd minute.
Roma protected the lead.
The final finished 1–0.
Roma became the inaugural Conference League champion and captured its first major UEFA club competition trophy.
That journey is more interesting because of what happened before the final.
Roma did not simply enter a new competition, dominate it from beginning to end and become the obvious first champion.
They were beaten 6–1.
They went three matches without defeating Bodø/Glimt.
They lost the first leg of the quarter-final.
And still they became the team whose name appears first on the list of Conference League champions.
Today, the competition has previous winners to provide reference points.
Roma had none.
The club helped create the first one.
West Ham: The Work Before the Spotlight
West Ham’s 2022–23 Conference League campaign is remembered for one moment more than any other.
Prague.
The final against Fiorentina was tied 1–1 as the 90th minute approached.
Lucas Paquetá slipped a pass behind the Fiorentina defense.
Jarrod Bowen ran onto it.
Bowen scored.
West Ham won 2–1.
For the first time since the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965, West Ham had captured a major European trophy.
But Prague only happened because of everything that came before it.
West Ham did not receive a direct place in the group stage.
They had to qualify.
Their opponent was Viborg.
West Ham won the first leg 3–1 in London.
A two-goal advantage was significant.
It was not qualification.
The job still had to be finished in Denmark.
West Ham won the second leg 3–0.
The 6–1 aggregate victory put them into the group stage.
Then the momentum grew.
West Ham won all six group matches.
Eighteen points from 18.
They defeated FCSB, Silkeborg and Anderlecht home and away.
The perfect group-stage record allowed them to bypass the knockout round play-offs and move directly into the round of 16.
AEK Larnaca was eliminated 6–0 on aggregate.
Gent provided a much greater challenge.
The first leg in Belgium finished 1–1.
Back in London, West Ham won 4–1, taking the quarter-final 5–2 on aggregate.
AZ Alkmaar came next.
West Ham won the first leg 2–1.
Then they traveled to the Netherlands and won 1–0, completing a 3–1 aggregate semifinal victory.
The final awaited.
One of the more interesting elements of West Ham’s run was that David Moyes did not need to turn every European match into an attacking exhibition simply because his team represented the Premier League.
In key knockout matches, West Ham could defend deep, stay compact and attack quickly in transition.
They could allow opponents possession in less dangerous areas and force them to solve an organized structure.
Set pieces offered another weapon.
That could create an unusual problem for opponents expecting a Premier League club to dominate the ball and attack relentlessly.
The stronger team on paper did not always have to play like the more aggressive team.
What mattered was finding the approach that gave West Ham the best chance to advance.
And advance they did.
West Ham finished the Conference League campaign with 14 wins, one draw and no defeats, including qualifying.
The unbeaten run makes the Prague celebration even more impressive.
But the most glamorous part of the story should not erase the least glamorous part.
There is no final without Viborg.
There is no Bowen winner without the August qualifying round.
There is no trophy lift without the work that came months before anybody knew Prague would become the destination.
The final produced the moment everybody remembers.
The work that made it possible started much earlier.
Olympiacos: The Opportunity Changed, but the Season Wasn’t Over
Olympiacos did not begin the 2023–24 season expecting the Conference League to become the setting for one of the greatest nights in Greek football history.
They began in the Europa League.
And even reaching that competition required qualifying.
Olympiacos entered in the Europa League third qualifying round and beat Genk 2–1 on aggregate.
Čukarički came next in the play-off.
Olympiacos won 6–1 on aggregate and entered the Europa League group stage.
There they finished third behind West Ham and Freiburg.
Under the competition format used at the time, third place meant the Europa League campaign was finished.
The European season was not.
Olympiacos transferred into the Conference League knockout round play-offs.
Their original European objective had changed.
The opportunity had not disappeared.
Ferencváros was the first Conference League opponent.
Olympiacos won 1–0 at home.
Then they won 1–0 away.
A controlled 2–0 aggregate victory moved them into the round of 16.
Then came Maccabi Tel Aviv.
And suddenly, the second European opportunity appeared close to disappearing too.
Maccabi won the first leg 4–1 in Piraeus.
Olympiacos had conceded four goals at home.
The situation looked disastrous.
The response was extraordinary.
Olympiacos won the return leg 6–1 after extra time.
The Greek club advanced 7–5 on aggregate.
The comeback became one of the defining results in Conference League history.
Next came Fenerbahçe.
Olympiacos won the first leg 3–2.
Fenerbahçe responded with a 1–0 victory in Istanbul.
The aggregate score was 3–3.
Extra time changed nothing.
Penalties decided it.
Olympiacos survived the shootout.
Then came Aston Villa.
On paper, the Premier League club represented another enormous test.
Olympiacos went to England and won 4–2.
Rather than merely protecting the advantage at home, they won again 2–0.
Olympiacos advanced 6–2 on aggregate.
The club that had finished third in its Europa League group was now one victory away from a European trophy.
Fiorentina awaited in the final.
There was another layer to the story.
The match was being played in Athens.
Not at Olympiacos’ own stadium, but in the same city where Greek football history was about to be made.
Ninety minutes passed without a goal.
Extra time arrived.
The match moved toward penalties.
Then, in the 116th minute, Ayoub El Kaabi scored.
Olympiacos led 1–0.
Minutes later, it was over.
Olympiacos had become the first Greek senior men’s club to win a major UEFA club competition.
The remarkable part of their journey is not simply that they respected the Conference League after leaving the Europa League.
It is how many times the opportunity nearly disappeared after they arrived.
The 4–1 home defeat to Maccabi.
The penalty shootout against Fenerbahçe.
The Premier League semifinal opponent.
A final that remained scoreless until the 116th minute.
Nothing about the path suggested inevitability.
Olympiacos did not control how they arrived in the Conference League.
They controlled what they did once they got there.
Video Courtesy of TNT Sports Football YouTube
Chelsea: Being the Favorite Is Not the Same as Being Champion
Chelsea entered the 2024–25 Conference League carrying expectations unlike any previous champion.
They did not need to prove that the club belonged in European football.
Chelsea had already won the Champions League.
The Europa League.
The Cup Winners’ Cup.
The UEFA Super Cup.
This was a club with enormous resources, squad depth and European pedigree.
Chelsea was the giant in the field.
But even Chelsea did not receive automatic admission to the league phase.
First came Servette.
Chelsea won 2–0 at Stamford Bridge.
Then Servette won the return match 2–1 in Switzerland.
Chelsea advanced 3–2 on aggregate.
The favorite had survived qualifying.
Once the league phase began, Chelsea looked much more like the dominant force many people expected.
Gent: 4–2.
Panathinaikos: 4–1.
Noah: 8–0.
Heidenheim: 2–0.
Astana: 3–1.
Shamrock Rovers: 5–1.
Six matches.
Six victories.
Eighteen points.
First place.
The knockout rounds followed.
Chelsea beat Copenhagen 3–1 on aggregate.
Legia Warszawa came next.
Chelsea won the first leg 3–0 away and appeared completely in control.
Then Legia went to Stamford Bridge and won 2–1.
Chelsea still advanced 4–2 on aggregate, but the defeat reinforced something Servette had already demonstrated.
Having the strongest squad did not make Chelsea incapable of losing individual matches.
Djurgården came next.
Chelsea won the semifinal 5–1 on aggregate.
Now only Real Betis stood between Chelsea and the trophy almost everyone expected them to win.
The final did not begin according to that script.
Betis scored first.
Chelsea went into halftime trailing 1–0.
The favorite had to respond.
It did.
Enzo Fernández equalized.
Nicolas Jackson put Chelsea ahead.
Jadon Sancho added a third.
Moisés Caicedo completed the scoring.
Chelsea won 4–1.
The club finished the competition proper with 12 wins from 13 matches and 42 goals.
And the trophy completed another piece of European history.
Chelsea became the first club to win all five of UEFA’s major men’s senior club competitions.
That is what made Chelsea’s challenge different.
Roma had no previous Conference League champion to follow.
Olympiacos had to adapt after its original European route changed.
Chelsea had to deal with an entirely different burden:
Everybody expected them to win.
Being the favorite can create advantages.
It can also create a situation in which success is treated as inevitable while failure becomes magnified.
Chelsea’s resources mattered.
Their squad depth mattered.
Their European experience mattered.
But none of those advantages physically placed the trophy in the cabinet.
Servette still beat them.
Legia still beat them.
Betis still scored first in the final.
Expectation was not the result.
Chelsea still had to produce it.
Crystal Palace: The Competition Changed, but the Opportunity Remained
Crystal Palace entered the 2025–26 Conference League under circumstances unlike any of the four champions before them.
Their European story began with an FA Cup.
Palace defeated Manchester City 1–0 in the 2025 FA Cup final, with Eberechi Eze scoring the winning goal.
It was the first FA Cup triumph in club history.
By winning the competition, Crystal Palace qualified on sporting merit for the 2025–26 Europa League.
That was supposed to be the destination.
Instead, an off-field issue changed the path.
UEFA determined that Crystal Palace and Olympique Lyonnais were non-compliant with its multi-club ownership rules at the March 1, 2025 assessment date.
Lyon retained admission to the Europa League.
Palace was placed into the Conference League instead.
Crystal Palace appealed.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed that appeal in August 2025.
The ruling became final.
Palace would play in the Conference League.
That created an unusual combination of achievement and disappointment.
They had won the FA Cup.
They had qualified on sporting merit for the Europa League.
Then circumstances away from the field changed the competition.
But being redirected into the Conference League did not provide an automatic league-phase place.
Palace still had to qualify.
Fredrikstad was the opponent.
Palace won the first leg 1–0 at Selhurst Park.
The second leg in Norway finished 0–0.
One goal across 180 minutes was enough.
Crystal Palace advanced 1–0 on aggregate.
Then came the league phase.
Unlike Chelsea one year earlier, Palace did not dominate it.
They finished 10th with 10 points.
That kept them alive but meant they missed the top eight and therefore had to enter the knockout phase play-offs.
Zrinjski came first.
Palace advanced 3–1 on aggregate.
AEK Larnaca followed.
The first leg finished 0–0.
The second required extra time.
Palace won 2–1.
Then came Fiorentina.
Few clubs knew the Conference League better.
Fiorentina had reached consecutive finals in 2023 and 2024, losing first to West Ham and then to Olympiacos.
Palace won the first leg 3–0 at home.
Fiorentina won the return 2–1.
Palace advanced 4–2 on aggregate.
The semifinal opponent was Shakhtar Donetsk.
Palace won the first leg 3–1 away.
Then they won 2–1 at home.
The 5–2 aggregate victory put Crystal Palace into its first major European final.
Rayo Vallecano awaited in Leipzig.
The first half finished scoreless.
Then Jean-Philippe Mateta scored in the 51st minute.
That was enough.
Palace won 1–0.
The club’s debut season in a major UEFA competition had ended with its first European trophy.
Their route had been far from perfect.
They qualified 1–0 on aggregate.
Finished 10th in the league phase.
Needed the knockout play-offs.
Required extra time against AEK Larnaca.
Lost the second leg against Fiorentina.
None of that prevented the final outcome.
Palace kept surviving.
And eventually surviving became winning.
The strangest part of the story is that this was not even the competition Crystal Palace originally expected to enter.
The FA Cup opened the Europa League door.
The multi-club ownership ruling closed it.
Palace challenged that decision and lost.
Then they had to decide what to do next.
By the end of the season, the competition that had initially represented a step down from the Europa League had become the stage for the first European trophy in club history.
Crystal Palace did not get the European competition it originally expected.
It still made history with the opportunity that remained.
Five Champions, Five Different Meanings
The first five Conference League champions did not arrive at the trophy through the same circumstances or the same path.
That is precisely what makes their stories useful together.
Roma became the inaugural champion after suffering one of the tournament’s most shocking defeats along the way.
West Ham started in qualifying and went through the entire campaign unbeaten.
Olympiacos arrived after its Europa League path ended and then survived a series of elimination threats before becoming Greece’s first major UEFA club champion.
Chelsea arrived as the obvious favorite and converted enormous expectations into results.
Crystal Palace expected to play in a different European competition altogether before eventually turning the Conference League into one of the greatest seasons in club history.
The trophy was the same.
Its meaning was not.
The Business Lesson
Organizations often spend enormous amounts of energy comparing opportunities.
Which client is bigger?
Which market is more prestigious?
Which platform has the largest audience?
Which project will receive the most attention?
Which opportunity looks best from the outside?
Those questions can matter.
But the first five Conference League champions suggest another question is sometimes more useful:
What can you actually build from the opportunity in front of you?
Roma could not wait for the Conference League to develop decades of prestige before deciding whether becoming its first champion mattered.
Someone had to create the first reference point.
West Ham could not skip the qualifying work because the final looked more glamorous.
The final existed because the earlier work had been completed.
Olympiacos could not restore its Europa League campaign.
It could only decide what to do with the European opportunity that remained.
Chelsea could not exchange its reputation, resources or previous trophies for an automatic championship.
Those advantages created expectations.
Execution still had to create the result.
Crystal Palace could not change UEFA’s ruling once its appeal was exhausted.
It could decide how seriously to treat the competition it was actually playing.
Those are five very different circumstances.
And that is important.
The lesson is not that every opportunity is equal.
Some opportunities clearly carry greater financial value.
Some markets are larger.
Some clients have more strategic importance.
Some platforms offer more reach.
But organizations should be careful not to confuse smaller with meaningless, unexpected with useless, or less prestigious with not worth pursuing.
A smaller opportunity can provide experience.
An unfamiliar one can reveal capabilities.
An unexpected change can create another path.
Work completed before anyone is watching can create the moment everyone eventually notices.
And sometimes the opportunity an organization did not originally want becomes the one people remember most.
The stage changes.
The expectations change.
The route changes.
The responsibility to execute does not.
Five clubs reached the same trophy from five very different starting points.
There was no single blueprint.
There was only the next challenge.
That may be the clearest lesson from the Conference League’s first five champions:
Opportunity does not have one correct starting point.
What matters is what you build from the one you receive.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
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