England's European Spring: Forest, Villa and Palace in the Semis
Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace are all in European semi-finals. Three clubs, three different stories, one extraordinary English spring.
Editorial digest April 17, 2026
Last updated : 08:20
Three English clubs. Three European semi-finals. On a single Thursday night. If you needed a reminder that this country's football — for all its noise, its money, its occasional self-destruction — can still produce something genuinely remarkable, this was it.
The All-English Semi-Final Nobody Saw Coming
Let's start with the obvious absurdity. Nottingham Forest, a club that spent the better part of three decades in the lower divisions, will face Aston Villa in the Europa League semi-finals. An all-English tie for a place in the final in Bilbao. The last time Forest reached a European semi-final, Brian Clough was in the dugout and most of their current squad's parents hadn't met yet.
Forest made hard work of it, as Forest tend to do. Morgan Gibbs-White's early strike against Porto — who finished the match with ten men after Jan Bednarek's red card — should have opened the floodgates. It didn't. Porto hit the crossbar twice. The City Ground held its breath until the final whistle. The celebrations, when they came, reportedly echoed those great European nights of the 1980s. That comparison isn't being made lightly: it's being made because it's earned.
Aston Villa were rather more surgical. Ollie Watkins — a player Gareth Southgate famously left at home during the Euros — scored his 100th goal for the club inside 16 minutes against Bologna. Emiliano Buendía and Morgan Rogers added more before half-time. Villa are in a European semi-final, playing football that Thomas Tuchel can barely afford to ignore as he assembles his World Cup squad.
Two different routes. The same destination. One of them will be in Bilbao.
Crystal Palace: What Exactly Is Happening at Selhurst Park?
Meanwhile, in Florence, Crystal Palace were doing their best to give their supporters heart attacks. Ismaïla Sarr headed them in front early — sensible, professional, the kind of away-day discipline that suggests this team has genuinely grown up on the European stage. Then they lost Adam Wharton and Maxence Lacroix to injury before half-time. Fiorentina, playing to preserve some dignity after a 3-0 first-leg humiliation at Selhurst, cut the deficit to two goals with half an hour still to play.
And Palace held on. Oliver Glasner's side are in the Conference League semi-finals, where they will face Shakhtar Donetsk. A club that twelve months ago had never won a major trophy. A club from south London whose most famous cultural export until recently was a football ground that looks like a Victorian railway station.
The question of what this means for English football's self-image is worth asking. Palace aren't Chelsea. They aren't Arsenal. They are a mid-table Premier League club with a tight budget and a bright manager, and they are three wins from lifting a European trophy. Sport does this occasionally — it punctures the narrative that only the biggest, richest clubs deserve to matter.
The Weekend Ahead: Manchester vs. Everyone
Saturday brings Manchester City against Arsenal at the Etihad. Context: Arsenal are already through to the Champions League semi-finals — via what the Guardian's football panel have called, not entirely flatteringly, one of the least enjoyable routes to a last four in recent memory. City, meanwhile, need Premier League points to stay relevant in the title race. This one will tell us whether Arsenal can sustain a domestic push alongside their European adventure, or whether Mikel Arteta's squad is already beginning to feel the strain.
Tottenham, per the Guardian's weekend preview, continue their search for leadership. That search has been ongoing for some time.
The Women Who Stayed — and What It Cost Them
Away from the silverware and the scorelines, a quieter, more significant story. Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh, two former members of Iran's women's football team, have been granted asylum in Australia. They remained in the country after the Women's Asian Cup rather than return home. They have since trained with Brisbane Roar. In a statement, they said they "respectfully ask" for privacy and space — words that carry a particular weight when you consider what the alternative likely was.
Their situation sits at the intersection of sport, politics, and human rights in a way that no trophy run can match. Women's football in Iran operates under layers of state control and social restriction. These two players made a decision that will define the rest of their lives. They are "overwhelmed," their statement says, by the support they have received.
It is worth holding that alongside the celebration of English clubs in European semi-finals. Football can be a fairytale. It can also be a lifeline. Sometimes in the same week.
What to take from all this: England is having an extraordinary European spring — Forest, Villa and Palace simultaneously in semi-finals across three UEFA competitions. Whether that translates into actual trophies remains to be seen. But the momentum is real, and for once, it doesn't belong exclusively to the clubs with the biggest chequebooks.
