Grief, according to the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kúbler Ross, happens in five stages. In the 24 hours after news first surfaced of Wilfried Zaha’s move to Galatasaray, they could be seen playing out in almost perfect harmony.
First, when David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano tweeted about the deal, came denial: Nope, no way. I don’t trust [insert reputable journalist’s name here]. They said he was going to Saudi Arabia, then Lazio, then Atletico Madrid. But Galatasaray? I don’t buy it. Players get linked with Turkish clubs all the time and it never happens. Plus, Zaha posted a picture at the training ground the other day and [insert another journalist’s name here] said Palace were increasingly confident of him staying. He loves South London. He loves us. This is just another rumour.
After Galatasaray shared a video of Zaha flying to Turkey, that was swiftly followed by the anger phase: How could he do this to Palace?! The club just offered him the biggest contract in its history. This is the greatest travesty since Judas betrayed Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Get him out of the training ground. Tag him in discouraging tweets. Take down the mural. Down with Zaha. We don’t need him. No, we don’t want him. He wasn’t even that good anyway.
The bargaining stage was next: If only we’d matched his ambition. If only we’d spent more handsomely in those transfer windows when the team looked like it was ready to push on. Is it too late to change? If we make a couple of signings now, would he change his mind? And wait, what about that hamstring injury? Maybe he’ll fail his medical and he’ll have to come back anyway.
Then a bout of depression arrived: Well, I really should be going to bed now. But is that another seven-minute montage of Zaha’s best bits? With Coldplay as the backing track? Well, I suppose I should probably watch it. There’s that solo goal at Hull away again, the pirouette at Bournemouth, the playoffs, the Eagle skank, the equaliser at home to Brighton, the assist for McArthur against Watford… and look, there’s the turnaround at Peterborough, sitting down half the Burnley team at Turf Moor, the goal at the Etihad, the win at the Emirates, the 97th minute against West Ham. And now some nutmegs, the stepovers. Oh, so many stepovers…
In the end, as images trickled through of the Ivorian greeting his new fans and touring Galatasaray’s stadium, followed by the dreaded farewell Instagram post, there was nothing left to do but accept what was happening. Zaha, who first signed for the Eagles academy when he was eight, was departing for the Turkish Super Lig after a second stint in SE25 that cemented his status as one of the greatest to ever pull on a Crystal Palace shirt. This really was it. The end.
Zaha departs with 458 senior Palace appearances to his name, putting him third in the all-time list of players who have featured for the club. He netted 90 goals, including 68 in the Premier League, meaning he stands alone as the Eagles’ leading goalscorer in the modern top flight.
But to reduce Zaha’s time at the club to statistics is to ignore the impact he had both as a player at Selhurst Park and as an ambassador in the wider community. It doesn’t depict the feeling of security that accompanied seeing him on the pitch. And it doesn’t capture the magnetic force that made every fan in the stadium lean that little further forward in their seat whenever he received the ball.
There is perhaps no other individual who has had a greater influence on where Crystal Palace Football Club are today. There can surely be no other player whose own rise has been so synonymous with the team he represents.
Indeed, Zaha’s breakthrough season was the first under the ownership of CPFC 2010, the consortium led by Steve Parish which saved Palace from going out of business. Like the club at the time, still bruised from the hangover of administration, this slender kid raised just streets away from Selhurst Park was simply trying to find his feet in a division renowned for its physical demands. But once those feet were found, the only direction they were going to propel him was up.
After two full seasons of Championship football, it was the 2012/13 campaign when Zaha truly came of age. Games were won by his individual moments of genius. Full backs were reduced to quivering wrecks. It wasn’t their fault. He was just too good for them. Or so I hear.
Palace fans rejoiced in seeing an academy product transform their team from relegation candidates to promotion favourites. And he did it playing with a swagger, an edge, that was moulded by the environment in which he was brought up. Zaha was the best of South London, and Palace fans could see South London in him.
International recognition soon followed when Zaha was called up to Roy Hodgson’s England. He then became Alex Ferguson’s final signing at Manchester United. But not before dragging Palace into the top flight with him. And then, after returning from his ill-fated stint at Old Trafford, a place where he was never given a proper chance or fully understood, Zaha kept Palace there. Year after year, season after season, he made it his personal mission to ensure that the Premier League status he and the class of 2012 had worked so hard to secure wasn’t surrendered easily.
As Zaha became an established Premier League star, so too Palace became an established member of the top flight for the first time in their modern history. But in many ways, he also started to outgrow his surroundings. He knew it, we knew it, and his teammates possibly did too.
They say great footballers have an aura, and Zaha developed one. He stood two inches taller than every other player on the pitch. Top defenders doubled up on him out of respect. Making him angry only made him want it more. Palace fans watched him morph from a shy, unassuming teenager into a commanding, confident talisman. He went from being part of the team, to the player the team always turned to.
In losing Zaha, the Eagles haven’t just lost their best player, but also their poster boy. The link between the club and the fans. The man who for many people, for many years, made watching Palace worthwhile.
It’s fine to feel sad that Zaha is gone. Sad that we’ll never again see him drift out to the left wing with ten minutes to go with the game on the line. Sad that he didn’t believe he could fulfil his ambitions with Palace. And perhaps even sad that this move might have come a couple of years too late for a player turning 31 in November.
It’s also fine to feel happy. Happy that he may finally achieve his ambition of playing in the Champions League. Happy that he has signed for a genuinely big club. And happy that we were the ones who got his best years and had the privilege of watching him week after week.
But one thing no Palace fan will be feeling right now is ungrateful. Because Zaha leaves SE25 having given everything and owing nothing.
So for one final time: Go on Wilf.
