Crystal Palace, Patrick Vieira Agree to Deal to Appoint Former-Arsenal Captain as Manager

Former Arsenal captain, and more recently Nice boss, Patrick Vieira, has agreed to a deal with Crystal Palace to become the club’s new manager.

Lucien Favre turned down the offer to lead Crystal Palace last week.

Although nothing is official in terms of a contract at the time of publication, reports indicate Palace are confident in this deal going through.

Heading into the beginning of this week, Palace’s board of directors were hoping Lucien Favre would change his mind and take the offer; the ex-Borussia Dortmund boss, however, decided it was a ‘no.’

Players are set to begin training for the next season on 5 July, so the club wants to make sure things are in place by this upcoming weekend.

Vieira is well known throughout the Premier League primarily for his time as the captain for Arsenal. He won three Premier League titles, four FA Cups.

On the coaching side, he most recently managed Nice in Ligue 1 action, taking charge of them in Summer 2018 before being let go at the end of 2020.

He also spent some time prior to that as a coach with Manchester City, and 2.5 years with New York City MLS club in the United States.

Favre was the most recent ‘leading candidate’ for this role after the club’s discussions with Nuno Espirito Santo dissipated. Favre turned down the offer, though.

Vieira made some news to start the week as he was explicitly critical of France after their defeat to Switzerland in the Euros.

“I am disappointed with the attitude they had on the field,” Vieira said. “I think it was a poor French national team, there wasn’t any kind of togetherness or spirit, we didn’t play as a team so we didn’t deserve to go to the next round. At times we played well because individual quality of the players makes a difference but collectively we were far behind the Swiss.”