Having been called up for England, the young forward has come a
long way since his 2010 debut for Crystal Palace
With Manchester United ready
to pounce for Palace starlet Wilfried Zaha, we asked our Crystal Palace expert Ed Malyon to
give us the lowdown on the hottest player in the
Championship.
"He looks about twelve,"
comments one supporter in the Holmesdale stand as a gangly,
youthful striker takes to the field for Crystal Palace.
His shorts are pulled high above
the waist, his shirt billows with excess polycotton yet his boots
are electric blue. The boots, it will later emerge, are new. Bought
for him as a present by his manager when it was decided that his
shabby old black ones simply weren't fit for him to be making his
professional debut in.
He touched the ball perhaps six
times, but this brief 10-minute cameo was one of exciting promise -
although whether this youngster's substitute appearance had come
about because of his unique talent, or because of the club's
perilous financial state was still unclear. After all, every player
on the Eagles' substitute bench that day was an academy
product, the oldest just 20 years-old.
This particular youngster was
Wilfried Zaha, and once his
club had survived a financial near-apocalypse in the approaching
summer he would prove that he had made his bow for all the right
reasons, going on to establish himself as a regular in the first
team, just as many of the club's academy graduates had
before.
Zaha though, is very much a
one-of-a-kind player. Immediate comparisons were inevitably drawn
to Victor
Moses, with both players being
exciting wingers capable of being the central frontman, but as is
often the case with these lazy parallels it is wide of the
mark.
Moses is an exciting prospect, but
an entirely different proposition to the player that Palace fans
affectionately refer to as 'Wilf'. While the two players are of
similar height, the Chelsea winger is of broad-shouldered build,
with a languid, slow-motion dribbling style where he seems to
almost drag and slide the ball past players.
Zaha on the other hand, is a
spindly, darting little winger. Fast and incisive, but forced to
bend with and skip over challenges that Moses would simply bounce
off or ride. Where Zaha's strength lies is in his ability to beat a
man one-on-one - and that's the principal reason for his
call-up to the England
squad.
To many, it may seem that
Roy Hodgson has added the Palace star to this week's team
simply to prevent him being convinced to play for the Ivory Coast,
something that the Elephants were very keen on for
January's African Cup of
Nations. However, Hodgson told
Zaha in his phone call this weekend that he sees him as a very real
part of his World Cup 2014 plans, considering there to be few
players anywhere in England (perhaps Europe) that are better at
taking on - and beating - a man.
The youngster's array of skills
are to be marvelled at. When the Brazilian, Ronaldinho, was at the
height of his powers he was asked a question in an interview about
his dazzling variety of stepovers and tricks, and how he performed
them. "They just happen," he said, "they are natural".
With Zaha it is the same. His footwork and shift of balance are
sublime, but the speed at which they happen suggest that it
emanates not from an elaborate thought process, but an innate burst
of something deeper - raw talent.
It has taken the South London club over a year to begin to fully
harness this talent in the first team, but their hard work is
undoubtedly being rewarded as they find themselves top of the
league and having nurtured this fine young man - 20 years-old only
on Saturday - into the best player in the Football League.