Crystal Palace secured a spot in the semi-finals of the English FA Cup after an impressive 3\u20130 away victory over Fulham on Saturday in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Palace settled the match in the first half, finishing with a two-goal lead. Eberechi Eze opened the scoring in the 34th minute, and four minutes later, Senegalese forward Isma\u00efla Sarr added the second goal.<\/p>\n
In the second half, Odsonne \u00c9douard sealed Crystal Palace\u2019s victory by scoring the third goal in the 75th minute.<\/p>\n
Jean-Philippe Mateta returned to Crystal Palace\u2019s lineup for the first time since suffering a severe head injury that required 28 stitches to his badly torn ear. He played the match against Fulham while wearing protective ear gear.<\/p>\n
The French striker had been hospitalized after a violent clash with Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts during an earlier FA Cup match this month. Roberts received a red card for kicking Mateta in the head outside the penalty area while both players were racing for the ball early in the fifth-round match, which ended with Crystal Palace winning 3\u20131.<\/p>\n
Mateta had been sidelined since that incident but made his return to the squad against Fulham.<\/p>\n
Roberts was initially handed a three-match suspension, but the English Football Association extended it to six matches. The goalkeeper later revealed that he had received abusive messages and threats.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sky Sports, Mateta said: “Liam called me and sent me a text message while I was in the hospital. I told him: ‘It’s okay, it\u2019s football.'”<\/p>\n
He added: “He apologized and was worried. I don’t think he woke up thinking, ‘I want to take Mateta\u2019s head off.’ There’s a lot of pressure, and he wanted to do what\u2019s best for his team. Excessive enthusiasm can lead to reckless actions \u2014 it was just a mistake. We learn from it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crystal Palace secured a spot in the semi-finals of the English FA Cup after an impressive 3\u20130 away victory over Fulham on Saturday in the quarter-finals. Palace settled the match in the first half, finishing with a two-goal lead. Eberechi Eze opened the scoring in the 34th minute, and four minutes later, Senegalese forward Isma\u00efla …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45531,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45529\/revisions\/45531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}