Crystal Palace has just discovered it is one of the oldest clubs in the world

In April 2020, historian Peter Manning, while writing his latest book: 'Palace at the Palace: A History of the Crystal Palace and its Football Club 1851-1915', discovered a small detail that turned the entire history of Crystal Palace upside down. The London club as we know it was founded in 1905 and takes its name from the glass and steel palace of the same name, but in fact its origins seem to date back to 1861.

The English historian has managed to find some correlations that show that Crystal Palace was originally founded as a "training ground" to keep the cricketers of the Crystal Palace Company in training. Those people were the same ones who 44 years later, in 1905, started Crystal Palace and in 1863 helped to create the Football Association. That's why the club has decided to dedicate one of its kits to that iconic team that marked the beginning of everything, even English football in part.

Together with PUMA, the club unveiled the new third kit based on the colours, white and blue, red was not yet present at the time and the design where the iconic silhouette of Crystal Palace, symbol of the team, could not be missing. The kit is a perfect reproduction of the first shirt worn by the club in 1861, to make even stronger the link with the past is the writing "CPFC 1861" on the back of the shirt. The first club to be founded was Sheffield F.C. in 1857, but having always remained at amateur level, the primacy of the professionals was held by the famous Notts County, founded in 1862, but this will no longer be the case.