Wilfried Zaha opens up on Everton, Arsenal transfer sagas after regaining form - EXCLUSIVE

EXCLUSIVE: Crystal Palace talisman Wilfried Zaha speaks to Express Sport's Tony Banks to reflect on failed moves to Arsenal and Everton last summer, his return to form and a Carling project to help support his local Sunday League team, Lambeth Allstars.

Posted Monday, December 16, 2019 by Express.co.uk

Wilfried Zaha opens up on Everton, Arsenal transfer sagas after regaining form - EXCLUSIVE

Wilfried Zaha came from Sunday football and he has admitted that he would have happily gone back there had his career in the professional game not worked out.

But right now the Crystal Palace forward is as happy as he has ever been on a football field, with his club riding high in the Premier League, and he himself finding his shooting boots with two goals in his last four games.

That was maybe not the case at the start of the season, as potential moves to Arsenal and Everton broke down in the summer and Palace rejected his transfer request.

He admits the furore threw him but reveals he then decided that sulking was not going to get him anywhere and decided to get his head down and get on with his game.

As Palace prepare to face bitter rivals Brighton at Selhurst Park on Monday night (8pm), local boy Zaha, now 27, revealed how his roots in South London junior football and his old friends has helped him.

He said: “As you get older you grow a thicker skin. You realise that you can only control the things you can control.

“That’s why I’m back to enjoying my football again. What happened in the summer did affect me. When the season started it was still in my head.

“But after a while I told myself that I have got to get over it. Going around sulking is not going to help. I told myself I can’t be like that.

“The team has not disrespected me, or the club, or the fans. So they don’t deserve me disrespecting them.”

Zaha, who donates a percentage of his salary to charity every month, has now also donated £10,000 from Carling’s Made Local Fund to his local Sunday League team Lambeth Allstars, the money going towards new kit and equipment for a team in which a friend of his from primary school days still plays.

The funding has been used to buy new kit and equipment in Allstars’ new club colours, purple.

The club’s teams will all receive a new home and away kit, plus tracksuits, training clothing and coaching equipment.

Zaha said, “The club has given so many people from the South London community a reason to come together and improve themselves both on and off the pitch.

“Playing my football in South London has helped me become the man I am today. I’m around my friends and family and that’s important to me.

"I’d like to thank Carling for giving me the opportunity to support a project that means a lot to me."

The Palace star started out playing for Whitehorse Wanderers as an eight year old – where he was spotted by the Selhurst Park outfit three years later – and said: “I loved playing there.

“It was so important to my development. It was exciting, looking forward to Sunday, getting up and playing with my friends.

“It is better than going straight into an academy. In Sunday League there is barely any equipment, you wore whatever boots were you could get hold of. Horrendous pitches, just your dad on the sideline. It brings you down to earth.”

Zaha revealed that he often goes to watch the Allstars, where old friend Jordan Davies still plays.

He said: “Some of the team are people that have not had the easiest of lives and they are trying to turn things around through football.

“I thought maybe I can help. Sunday League football is massive. I came from there myself, and now I know how lucky I am to be able to get up every day and play football.

“There are boys there who are good players. Maybe rejected when they were younger, maybe they did not have the right attitude. But there are players who could still make it, if only people would come and watch.

“If I had not made it I would have gone back to Sunday football, for sure. I loved it.”

Zaha, brought up literally around the corner from Selhurst Park after his family moved to Britain from the Ivory Coast when he was four, knows what it is like to be rejected.

“When I was playing at Under-18 level at Palace there was a coach who told me I was not good enough,” he said. “I used to go home and cry. My mum didn’t understand what was going on.

“I was not getting games in the league. But then the FA Youth Cup came along and I got my chance. That was my breakthrough.

“You can’t let it get you down. I have had that in my career. I thought, there was no way I was going to take that.”

As for Palace, he added: “We are definitely looking steady as a team right now. The team has got experience all over. A player like Gary Cahill coming in has really helped. He has this steadiness, he knows how to manage a game.

“My ambition is to win trophies. I want to go to the World Cup finals with my country. That is a dream.

Wilfried Zaha has donated £10,000 of Carling’s Made Local Fund to his local Sunday League football club, Lambeth Allstars to help them continue to make a difference to lives in South London.

Carling has committed to a multi-million-pound investment over the next three years into its Made Local Fund – a community bursary designed to celebrate a generation’s ambition to make things happen in their own backyard.