For Wilfried Zaha, playing in Europe has always been the ultimate goal.
The ideal would have been to make his European bow with Crystal Palace, that was the dream. But after an almost 20-year association and the end of a five-year contract, the second he had signed within the space of a year, he decided to chase the dream elsewhere.
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A deal worth £200,000 a week was rejected at Palace, and at the end of July he completed a move to Galatasaray. The finances were less lucrative, but he would potentially have the chance to play in the Champions League.
On Wednesday night, that dream was finally realised. A European debut had arrived in the qualifying rounds, but this was his first appearance in the competition proper. In the 66th minute, with Galatasaray trailing FC Copenhagen 2-0, he was introduced as a substitute for his third appearance of the season.
His ability to drive at players is not quite what it was for the 30-year-old, and he was tentative with his early touches, setting off the ball to a team-mate, taking the safest option for him and the team. He has become more efficient with age and experience, as some of that explosiveness has departed.
That was on occasions how he played in the closing stages of his Palace career, with those moments of brilliance interspersed with the intention of helping the team in a more understated way.
His departure has left a hole at Palace, yet to be filled despite the summer transfer window and the knowledge that him leaving was a serious possibility.
Each time Galatasaray attacked down the left, the call from the TNT Sport commentator was to give the ball to Zaha, to let him run at his defender and cause problems for the defence. After Sacha Boey had pulled a goal back, Zaha was involved in the equaliser. He had minutes earlier attempted to get beyond a defender only to be well marshalled and penalised for an apparent foul.
The next time, however, he made some space after beating his man and crossed to Tete on the edge of the area who fired in an excellent low shot to equalise. Whether Tete was his intended target is questionable, but on his first appearance in the Champions League group stage, Zaha had an assist.
There wasn’t to be the fairytale of a victory or even a goal, but Zaha will surely feel a sense of achievement at having fulfilled part of his dream. Competitiveness is a significant aspect of his character, sometimes to his detriment, but after that frustration at being denied a move away when Arsenal had come calling in the summer of 2019.
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“I have to experience the Champions League. I just need the opportunity, that’s it. And I’ll do the rest,” he had said that April. The sense from one of his closest friends, former Palace academy team-mate Ibra Sekajja, was that he “knows he belongs there”.
“It’s a drive he has always had,” Sekajja previously told The Athletic. “If Palace were playing Champions League football, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. You can’t separate Palace and Wilf. Without them, there is no Wilf.”
But that relationship remains only in the mural of the Ivorian which is painted onto the side of a house on the corner of Holmesdale Road just outside Palace’s Selhurst Park stadium, and to an extent in the academy he founded in the outskirts of Croydon.
“You have all seen me angry and frustrated, but you’ve also seen my hunger and passion and the joy that I take from winning, and I hope that is the memory that lives on in the minds of Palace fans,” he said when confirming his departure after more than 450 appearances in all competitions over two spells. “From the bottom of my heart, I’m forever grateful.”
A failure to win when Galatasaray were favourites against Copenhagen, amid the backdrop of a challenging group including his former side Manchester United and Bayern Munich, will make it even more difficult to progress into the knockout stages.
Whether simply playing in this competition, against two elite sides, one of whom he has never faced before, is sufficient in itself for Zaha is uncertain. In reality it probably won’t be, such is the determination to prove himself at the highest level in the most prominent occasions. There may also be further opportunities to progress in future seasons given he signed a three-year deal.
But he has now achieved something of his dream, and that will surely bring about some level of satisfaction for him.
(Top photo by Ahmad Mora/Getty Images)
