Details emerge about Crystal Palace’s World Cup winter break plans

Crystal Palace will be travelling to Turkey to play Napoli in a friendly during the break for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, according to The Athletic.

The report also explains that the Eagles are in talks over a possible friendly with Spanish side Real Valladolid.

Napoli are eight points clear at the top of Serie A and are through to the knockout stages of the Champions League after they finished top of Group A, ahead of Liverpool and Ajax.

Real Valladolid, who are owned by former Barcelona and Brazil forward Ronaldo, are 12th in La Liga.

The South Londoners have already confirmed that they will be playing Brazilian side Botafogo in a friendly at Selhurst Park in early December.

Botafogo are owned by Palace co-owner John Textor, who invested £87.5million into the Eagles in August 2021.

The Eagles had two groups during pre-season, with Vieira taking a team to Singapore and Australia to play Liverpool, Manchester United and Leeds. While assistant manager Osian Roberts took a group to play Gillingham and QPR.

When Vieira was asked whether the winter break, Palace boss Patrick Vieira said: “We forget sometimes the difficult perorations that we had [during pre-season].

“As a team, it wasn’t easy at all to have those two groups because we needed a couple of games to really get used to playing together.

“This mini break will help us to focus even more on those kinds of details and mistakes that we’re making.”