In explaining why he departed Crystal Palace in the summer, goalkeeper Vincente Guaita acknowledged that a dispute with Roy Hodgson was to blame. Guaita, 36, was transferred to Celta Viga at the end of the previous season on a free transfer despite holding the Eagles’ starting spot for five years. And when asked how the transfer came about, the Spanish goalkeeper recently spoke to DAZN and said: “If it is true that we were already in the last years with the desire to change again, we had been in Crystal Palace for many years, where we were very happy, but there were things on the way we did not like.
There were six games left to win the season when I played against Leicester. I was injured, and when I returned, Roy Hodgson treated me the same way he had when I had first started working with him: by telling me things that I didn’t understand. “At that point, I determined that my time at Crystal Palace was up, and I told the president so. There were challenging times when things were tense, but they believed the best thing for me was to cut off communication with Crystal and allow me to enjoy football. Guaita, who signed a two-year contract in Spain, kept 46 clean sheets in 154 games across all competitions during his stint at Selhurst Park.
