Zaha is an Ivory Coast national football player who plays as a forward and right winger. He plays for Galatasaray, one of the Super League teams. Zaha helped his team hold on to the match by scoring Galatasaray's first goal against Manchester United, which they could not hold on to, and 10 years later, he returned to Old Trafford with the Galatasaray jersey and ignited his new team against Manchester.
Wilfried Zaha was born on November 10, 1992 in Abidjan. The Ivory Coast national football player, who plays as a striker and right winger, plays for Galatasaray, one of the Super League teams.
Born in Ivory Coast, Zaha grew up in England from the age of four. He played his first match for the England national team in 2012. After not playing for England for four years, he opted to play for Ivory Coast ahead of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations.
Zaha progressed from Crystal Palace's academy to the first team in 2010. He scored 18 goals in all competitions in his first three seasons at Selhurst Park. In January 2013, he transferred to Manchester United for a fee of £10 million (the most expensive Crystal Palace player sold at the time). Zaha remained on loan at Palace until the end of the season and helped the club return to the Premier League. After an unsuccessful 2013–14 season with Manchester United (mostly spent on loan at Cardiff City), Zaha returned to Palace on a season-long loan in August 2014. He has since become the 10th top scorer in the club's history.
Here are the details of the MANU adventure
On Saturday, November 10, 2012, Crystal Palace was away at Peterborough United in the English Second Division Championship. Zaha did, in his own words, "crazy things" that day. The assist in the winning goal in the last minutes of the match that ended 2-1 was one of them. It chilled the opponent's blood. The chant of "This kid is too much for you" was rising from the away stands. Palace retained their place at the top of the league. While Zaha was strengthening his reputation as the "defense destroyer", the host Peterborough's coach wrote in his mind what he saw in the shed. That night, Sir Alex Ferguson received a phone call. His son, Peterborough manager Darren, was calling. The message was clear: “This kid can do business. “It has everything you are looking for.” A few weeks later, Zaha was invited to meet Ferguson at a hotel in London.
According to Ferguson, Zaha and the likes of Ronaldo and George Best had one thing in common: He wanted the ball, no matter how many kicks he received.
Sir Bobby Charlton was also there. Zaha was given strict instructions not to raise the issue with anyone and a temporary agreement was made. Zaha, who is from the Croydon district, was going to start a new life at Manchester United. The popular narrative is that Zaha's short United spell was a victim of timing and, to put it mildly, bad luck: he had signed a five-and-a-half-year contract and was due to join United after spending the 2012-13 season on loan at Premier League promotion-challenged Palace. However, he was unaware that Ferguson would retire just three months later and be replaced by then-Everton manager David Moyes. There are also those who approach the incident more suspiciously, based on some details of Zaha's difficult United days, such as his statement that he was depressed.
Neil Warnock, who transferred the player to Palace again a year later, said: “The environment he was in was not good. He obviously felt let down by Manchester United and when I spoke to him I understood why. He was young, he needed help and someone to back him up. “He didn't seem to find any of that,” he says.
Was it really so? Counterclaims may also be made. Perhaps 20-year-old Zaha did not yet have the necessary maturity and experience. He buckled under the pressure. Therefore, it would be easy to put all the blame on the club. However, his former teammate at Old Trafford, Rio Ferdinand, would also say that Zaha was "not managed correctly". Moreover, the technical team was not the only one responsible. When Zaha came to United, Ferdinand was a star who had won the Premier League six times and played 81 games for the England National Team. “As one of the senior players, I should have helped him more,” he says today.
With a little patience, he would be like Cristiano Ronaldo
One thing is for sure. He expected to play at United, coached by Ferguson, not Zaha Moyes, and his position was weakened when the most successful coach in the history of the game left the team. Ian Holloway, who coached Palace during the transfer, said: “He continued to play for us on loan in the second half of the season and helped us get to the Premier League through the playoffs. But when he went to Manchester, unfortunately, Sir Alex had left the club,” he says.
He didn't happen with Van Gaal either
21-year-old Zaha's new rental address would be Cardiff City, the Welsh club fighting to stay in the league. The team was led by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who was working in the Premier League for the first time. That adventure also went badly. Zaha did not want to play for Cardiff and attributed his lackluster performance (zero goals and one assist in 13 games, five of which were in the league's first 11) to feeling "shattered" and "a shadow of his former self".
When he returned to Old Trafford that summer, Moyes was sacked and replaced by Louis Van Gaal. But Zaha could not go beyond being seen as unimportant again. He felt so distant and isolated that he stayed in a hotel instead of renting a house. This would turn out to be a smart move. Although he played in a few friendly matches in the summer, the new coach had other plans. When The Athletic asked him to share his memories of those days with Van Gaal last week, what he said gave the impression that he never seriously considered Zaha in the team.
“They set me up for failure”
In fact, Van Gaal did not use classical wingers as he preferred a 3-5-2 formation. That's why he told the player that he should learn to play as a wing-back or center-forward. Zaha remembers thinking, “They are setting me up for failure.” Van Gaal disagrees: “On the left side were new signing Angel Di Maria and Ashley Young. The following season, I took Anthony Martial for the same position. Zaha was supposed to compete with Di Maria and Young, and then with Martial, but it was very difficult for him to cope at that age. That's why I thought he needed to change positions."
In the club, there were Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney, whom Zaha called "the best player I ever played with", in the center forward position. Moreover, Radamel Falcao joined the squad on loan instead of Danny Welbeck, who went to Arsenal at the end of the summer. The reason why Alex Ferguson appreciated Zaha so much was his ability to subtract men, play close to the line, and get the crowd on their feet.
According to Ferguson, Zaha Ronaldo, George Best, and other famous wingers in United history had one thing in common: He wanted the ball every time, no matter how many times he was kicked. Ferguson saw this behavior as a show of courage. But now the player was being asked to play with his back to goal, hold the ball, and reinvent himself for a position that currently holds three senior players at United.
Struggled against the giants
When he was substituted in the second half against Inter, in the team's third game and his first in the summer tour in the USA, he was facing the former United legend, the giant Nemanja Vidic. In the second of his center-forward trials, he played as a substitute against Real Madrid and the game's elite center-backs Pepe and Sergio Ramos. It was no surprise that he did not turn into Van Basten in these matches. On his return to Manchester, Van Gaal told Zaha before a training session that this training was his last chance.
Zaha thought he did a good job in training. Even some names, including Rooney, said the same. But Van Gaal disagreed and the player was asked to find himself a club. Speaking on the OnTheJudy podcast in 2020, Zaha said: “I was incredibly relieved. "I thought, 'Thank you for speaking openly and giving me the opportunity to restart my career,'" he would say.
While it's not entirely true that Zaha has been erased from modern United history, it's not entirely false either.
July 2023
Continuing its transfer efforts before the new season, Galatasaray included Ivory Coast player Wilfried Zaha in its squad. The 30-year-old attacker, who has been playing for the English team Crystal Palace for 9 seasons, scored 7 goals in 27 league matches last season.