"Potential-wise Wilfried represents the biggest talent
to come from the Palace youth system...He is probably the best prospect we
[Palace] have had in terms of what he could go on to achieve."
Posted in conjunction with Football
Fans Today
“He’s just too good for you!”
It’s a chant that’s rung around
Selhurst Park this season, a chorus that has gone up whenever the wonderfully
talented and unpredictable Wilfried Zaha has left another despairing defender
on his backside and trailing in his wake. Bemused by the lightening turn of pace
and mesmeric dribbling skills, they just haven’t been able to get near him.
Ever since he broke onto the scene, you could tell the recently turned 20 year
old Palace winger cum forward had something special. His repertoire of tricks,
his ability to run with the ball and a supreme self confidence to take on opponents
and want to beat them always stood out, but over the past 12 months, his game
has been taken to another level.
Precocious talent in football is
nothing new. There are countless young players that have exploded onto the
scene, with a big reputation for greatness that has too often hung like a mill
stone around their neck. The pressure becoming too much, the hype unwarranted,
until the next thing you know they are turning out in the Combined Counties
league. But even from the start you could see that the Palace No. 16 had
something extra ordinary about him, and now with greater consistency and end
product he has emerged as someone with an England cap to their name.
Understandably it took a little while
for his game to come up to the level that has made him an international. The
ability was always there, but knowing when and where to use his incredible
balance and innate ability to beat opponents was something that he has had to
learn. In his first full season, where he scored on his debut start for the
club, he too often wasted his final ball, was riled up by an opponent or failed
to turn promise into end product. He was raw and learning, and to his credit
doing so in a badly struggling side made up of young academy graduates and
short term loans that were plunged into a fight against survival only secured
in the penultimate game of this season.
Even in that year you could see that
there was a rough diamond, if only in need of a little polishing. What has made
Zaha so special is that he has maintained that boyish enthusiasm and street
football instincts, the unpredictability and explosiveness has not been coached
out of him but harnessed and turned into the exhilarating performances we have
seen over the last year and a half.
The man originally hailing from the
Ivory Coast has the quickest feet that I have ever seen, and more so than any
player I can recall has the game that allows him to make space and create chances
from the most impossible angles and spaces. A trade mark has been the skill to
beat a man from tight on the touchline, moving the ball so quickly away from a
whole clutch of adversaries and then crossing it to the middle for the centre
forward to finish.
His end product was called into
question when he first broke into the team and it’s true to say that his goals
to game ratio could be better, but the raw numbers fail to take into account
just how integral he is to the way that Palace, at time of writing at the top
of the league and playing a brand of effervescent football, play, and how many
goals he has set up directly and create through his ability to relieve pressure
and take the game to the opposition.
Last season he was excellent, but since the
beginning of August he has been a man possessed and taking his game to another
level. Following his starring role in turning round a 1-0 deficit against
Peterborough into a 2-1 win, their manager Darren Ferguson was open with his
praise; "Zaha is
the best player in this league and will go to the top. He was unplayable at
times.”
How far he will go with Palace is
open to debate and his talent is such that he will get to the top with or
without the club. Currently, and with Ian Holloway now in charge, there is a
real hope in South East London that the ambitions of the player to play at the
highest level can be achieved in the familiar surroundings of the club that he
has grown up with. Palace’s academy has been rightly gaining a lot of praise in
recent times, and the recent success of Victor Moses at Chelsea shows the
talent that the club has been able to nurture, but Wilfried Zaha is the jewel
in the crown and a player that emphasises the sheer joy and excitement that the
game can bring to fans.
I’ll leave it to former Palace
legend Mark Bright’s views on the player and say that during my time watching
the Eagles, that in terms of what he can do with the ball at his feet he is the
best player pull on the red and blue stripes that I‘ve ever seen;
"Potential-wise Wilfried represents the biggest talent
to come from the Palace youth system...He is probably the best prospect we
[Palace] have had in terms of what he could go on to achieve."
"His ability to run fast with the ball is
excellent, he can go past players left or right, he can play left or right wing
or through the middle and, if you allow him to turn and face you, then you will
have a problem if you haven't got back up because he will show you the ball and
take it past you.”
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