After almost two decades of football, from his first steps into the academy at the age of 12 to captaining the team in the Premier League, Wilfried Zaha’s Crystal Palace love affair has finally come to an end.
Zaha’s decision to turn down the offer of a new contract and join Galatasaray on Monday night — in a three-year deal worth £3.75m a year after tax — means the 30-year-old forward will not end his playing career at Selhurst Park as many had hoped. But his legacy in his native south London – even allowing for a short, unhappy spell with Manchester United for the 2013-14 season — was already beyond doubt.
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Nobody has scored more Premier League goals for Palace than Zaha’s 68, and only two players can boast more appearances than his 458 across all competitions in the club’s history. Having grown up a short walk from their ground, his bond with Palace was profound, and not simply because of his supreme artistry and skill as a player.
To mark his departure, Matt Woosnam has spoken to some of those who were closest to Zaha during his Palace days – former managers, team-mates, fans and friends – to build a picture of the man behind the footballer.
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Hodgson managed Zaha 138 times at Palace in two spells, from 2017-21 and in the second half of 2022-23.
Working with Wilf has been a body of work. We’ve spent a lot of time on the training ground, there have been a lot of matches where his performances have lifted the team and got us results we otherwise maybe wouldn’t have got.
He is an iconic player. His legacy (at Palace) is written in stone, he has nothing to even consider in that respect. I would hop onto that bandwagon. And that’s how I found him (as a colleague). It was good working with a Crystal Palace legend and someone who got us so many good results during the times I’ve had with him.
Wilf’s not always easy, but then neither am I. No one is. But the one thing about Wilf is he might not always be easy in the sense that he’s always going to be 100 per cent uniform in his behaviour and his thinking but, come training, he’ll be trying to do it properly.
On a match day, he’ll often be playing after recovering from injuries in double-quick time. If Wilf picked up an injury it would be (Hodgson asking the club doctor), ‘How long do you reckon, Doc? Three or four weeks out?’ Then, a week later, Wilf’s playing. But that’s because he likes to play football.
Any moments where he’s a bit upset with the referee’s decision or whatever, that’s because he likes playing and he likes to win. So it’s been pretty easy for me, as a coach or manager, to accept that because you know it’s his passion for the game shining through.
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Adam Sells: ‘I told him he’d play in the first team – his eyes popped out’
Sells coached Zaha in Palace’s academy. He is now managing director of Sells Goalkeeper Products.
He first came across me when he was a full-time scholar. My early recollection was a very skilful lad who didn’t believe in himself much and struggled early on to make an impact in the youth team.
It all changed one Friday afternoon around November 2009. We played Fulham at home and (fellow academy player) Nathaniel Pinney was our centre-forward but wasn’t available to play, so Wilfried got his chance. He took it immediately and his talent started to show. He needed a lot of help with telling him how good he was, encouraging him and making himself believe in himself.
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We played at Motspur Park (Fulham’s training ground) in the return fixture around February time. I was going through all the lads in the dressing room in the team talk. I pointed to him and said, ‘Wilfried, you’re going to play in our first team before the end of the season’. I remember those great big eyes popping out as if they were on stalks — like in a cartoon.
As we went onto the pitch he said, ‘Sellsy, did you really mean that?’ I said, ‘I know it, kid. You’re the most talented player I’ve ever seen and you can do things I’ve never seen anyone else do.’ He’d light up games.
Towards the end of the season after his first-team debut (in 2010), the youth team played against Aston Villa at (Villa’s training ground) Bodymoor Heath and he was unplayable. All you could hear when he got the ball was the sound of the Villa players kicking his shin pads.
There was a pause in the game and I said to the ref, ‘You need to protect him better or else he’s going to get hurt’. All they were doing was throwing themselves into tackles and getting nowhere near the ball, smashing him up in the air all the time. I was wincing on the touchline.
We have a bond that’s been there since he was a kid breaking through. It gives me so much pleasure to see that talent blossom at our club and from a local boy. He is the club’s greatest-ever player. He is Crystal Palace.
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McArthur and Zaha were Palace team-mates for nine years from 2014, playing together 213 times.
We thrived off each other. I demanded from him and he demanded from me. Wilf is Wilf. If you say anything to him, you know you’ll get a shitload back, but I didn’t mind that. Both of us wanted to win and we always appreciated that.
Sometimes we’d argue and at the end of the game we wouldn’t really talk, but then on the bus we’re like, ‘I’m sorry’ and the other would say, ‘I’m sorry as well’. In football, there are so many different characters. Some people could maybe go, ‘He shouted at me or did this, (so) I’m not speaking to him’. We didn’t, we just went, ‘Alright, mate?’. It’s just about winning.
I feel fortunate enough to have played so many years with him and I feel that one of my achievements at Palace is demanding from him and trying to get the best out of him every day. We texted each other when we left (at the end of the last season), sending nice words to each other. I said, ‘I’ve loved being your team-mate and enjoyed your laughs, the banter, even the arguments’.
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I’ve appreciated everything he’s done for this club. If he hadn’t been at Palace, we would have been nowhere near as successful. Every time I got the ball, I tried to get him in (on the attack), because he’s been a talisman, the best player on the pitch.
Ben Garner: ‘Man United changed him – he had more steel after that’
Garner, now head coach at Colchester United in League Two, English football’s fourth tier, worked with Zaha in Palace’s academy and later the first team.
I first saw him at 13 or 14, and you could see his wonderful talent and ability. He was really unorthodox and still had a lot of physical development to do.
He wanted to do extra finishing at the end of a session. The trouble sometimes was getting him to stop doing too much, he had so much enthusiasm. He could be hard on himself sometimes, things got to him or he became frustrated, but that boiled down to the will to win.
There probably wasn’t a session where Wilf didn’t make you go, ‘Wow!’. He could embarrass anyone at any point.
Your body has to cope with physical confrontation but you have to have a strong mentality to deal with it and almost enjoy it, which Wilf does. It spurs him on. Sometimes a full-back would go to smash him early in a game and you thought, ‘You’ve awoken the beast there, that will just get him going’.
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I was always calm with him, because that’s what he needs. He was quite private and introverted. He mixed well but not in a huge way. When he came back from Manchester United (initially on loan in August 2014 before re-signing permanently the following winter) you saw a big change. The disappointment (of his time at United, for whom he only made four senior appearances and never started a league game) hardened him. You could see more steel in him and he had matured.
The header at Brighton (in a 2012-13 Championship play-off semi-final second leg, en route to promotion)… I can’t remember seeing Wilf ever score with a header (other than that one) but his technique was brilliant.
If a certain player was good at something or had a real strength, he not only appreciated it but he’d be interested about it — what could he learn? He probably doesn’t get credit for what an intelligent player he is, and he learns and picks up from others.
Wilf is one in a million who can do something completely different. It’s a challenge for a coach but you allow him the freedom and creativity to do what he does best.
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Ian Holloway: ‘He left Danny Murphy for dead. He had no idea where he’d gone’
Holloway managed Zaha in 35 games during Palace’s 2012-13 Premier League promotion-winning season.
The day before I met him, I was told how brilliant he was by one of the directors, whose house we stayed in (after joining Palace in November 2012 from Blackpool in the north west of England). His son said, ‘You won’t believe how good he is’. I had worked with Tom Ince, Billy Clarke and Matt Phillips (at other clubs) but he went, ‘We’ve got a song — “He’s just too good for you”, and I was like, ‘What?’. Then I thought, ‘Wow, I can’t wait to see this’.
Within 10 minutes of the first time I saw him live, he flicked it over (Blackburn Rovers midfielder) Danny Murphy and left him completely for dead. Murphy had no idea where he’d gone. He looked at the bench and put his arms up.
Wilf is very special, he’s a wonderful kid who always has time for everybody and is desperate to learn. Sometimes he comes over as frustrated (in live matches) on the telly, where he throws his arms up in the air, but it was about trying to get him to deal with the pressure he’s going to have to play under.
He was the purest I’ve ever had because he wanted to do so well and couldn’t understand why people were kicking him and (felt) that it isn’t fair. I told him he had to get on with it as they’ll try to stop him unfairly but he has to be even better. You have to get the pure person to understand. And then, wow, away he would go, because his talent was so genuinely God-given. If you tried to force him it wouldn’t have worked.
If you’re too much (overbearing), and I can tend to be that, you can push him away. You learned to not tell him what to do and to let him express himself and find his currency. You had to be quiet, then talk about it, let him think.
He was very moved in the play-off semi-final win over Brighton when someone had messed up our dressing room (faeces had been left in the away changing area at Brighton’s stadium). That moved him. And Watford still think he dived (to win the decisive penalty) in the play-off final. No way that boy would ever dive; he wanted to beat his man, he didn’t want to cheat.
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I loved every minute with him. It’s just a shame it wasn’t longer.
Ibra Sekajja: ‘He doesn’t trust easily but friends keep him grounded’
Sekajja played in Palace’s academy with Zaha and is one of his closest friends today.
He’s like a brother to me.
We grew up together, our families know each other, and we spent a great 10 years together at Palace. He’s just a novelty. On the pitch he’s about competing, dominating and winning. Off it he’s controlled, relaxed, loves to have a good time and doesn’t take things too seriously. He’s very sensitive, because there’s so much speculation and so much said that is far from the truth.
The family and friends he’s known for years keep him grounded. He has a good support system, as his inner circle are people he’s known since he was young. Outside of that, he doesn’t care what people think. It doesn’t get to him. They can have their opinions but that means nothing to him.
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When you’re close with him, he actively seeks positive, constructive feedback, as he knows you’re only saying it for his development. He deals with feedback very well but doesn’t trust easily.
He’s always been a competitor. There was a stage where he wanted to be dominant and he couldn’t see how anyone could get in his way with this mindset shift. Going into games, the only thing in his head was to be so far away from everyone else in terms of performance level.
We had a conversation about that, and he was so driven. We’d talk about games and he was like, ‘I don’t know how they’re going to stop me’. He went into every game believing he was unstoppable. He had a ‘killer’ mindset, just ruthless. I was like, ‘Wow, I knew you were competitive but this is another level’.
Colin Omogbehin: ‘A classic example of believing 110 per cent in your ability’
Omogbehin was a Palace academy coach in the early 2000s, and now works for Fulham.
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One situation that stands out was a game against Chelsea at Cobham (their training base).
He picked the ball up inside their half but he was facing our box. I’m shouting, ‘Set it back, set it back. You’ve got two people around you’. But he believed in his ability. He’s tried to express himself and I don’t know how but somehow he had wriggled out of it. The next minute, he’s running down the line and then he cuts across the byline and past the corner flag. I’m shouting ‘Square it’, which was the right to do. The defender comes out to him, he goes past him. I’m still saying ‘Square it’ but he puts it in the goal at the near post. That would be a classic example of believing 110 per cent in your ability, expressing yourself and not worrying. That’s the example set.
I learned to be patient. He was small, it would have been easy at 14 (for Palace) to cast him aside. Before he came to us at under-12 or under-13, there were question marks over the group, which wasn’t the best in terms of behaviour. He would have been part of that. But the first training session I had with him, someone went through him, he got up and argued with them and I made sure he was spoken to assertively. He was as good as gold from that day on.
I was really, really impressed when we (Fulham) played Palace at Selhurst Park last season in the first game back after the World Cup break (Fulham won, 3-0). He wasn’t in the best mood afterwards, but one thing he said to me was, “It’s important that the young players listen. I’m always talking to them and telling them you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that”, and I was just so proud to see that this young kid who I gave that same advice to is now passing it on to people like Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise and Tyrick Mitchell.
Reuben Pinder: ‘Start building the statue now’
Pinder is a video journalist at The Athletic and Palace supporter who has watched Zaha since his debut in August 2010.
When I first started going to Selhurst Park on a regular basis, there wasn’t much to get excited about. Lingering in the bottom half of the Championship, fresh off a dramatic final-day survival (the season before) — fans were grateful the club still existed. Promotion to the Premier League was beyond anyone’s dreams or ambitions. But there was one thing that kept me entertained and gave me a reason to come back week after week: Wilf Zaha.
His shirt looked two sizes too big and his crossing was inconsistent, to put it kindly. But his direct style and his complete absence of fear as he attempted to take on any and every defender were worth the entry fee.
In the years that followed, his development as a player and a person were a joy to watch in real time. The goals against Brighton… all the other goals against Brighton…. drawing the foul in the play-off final… Zaha has provided us with countless unforgettable moments.
Without him, the club would not now be entering an 11th consecutive season in the Premier League. He has more than earned the right to leave – regardless, they should start building the statue now.
(Top photo: Tom Dulat/Getty Images)
