Wilfried Zaha was willing to take a gamble. Not a blind one, to be fair, but a calculated one. But there, of course, was one very important person he had to convince: his wife.
“I’m married. I’ve got kids,” Zaha says. “That has been difficult, but what I try to tell my wife, because she’s in my ear all the time, during this period now… we’ve got the rest of our lives to sit in one place. Just enjoy the moment that is actually right now. Let’s just enjoy this moment right now.”
There hasn’t been much for the Zahas to enjoy over the last year. After spending over a decade at the club where he started as an academy prospect at Crystal Palace, his moves to Turkey with Galatasaray and France on loan with Lyon hadn’t gone to plan. His future was uncertain, his career was at a crossroads. Zaha didn’t want to wait for a solution that may never come; he wanted to make his solution by diving into something with no second thoughts and just a little bit of hope. Hope is what so often carried him, after all. Zaha has never been afraid to bet on himself. He has a career worth of case studies to prove it.
“That’s the gamble sometimes in football,” he says. “Obviously, now I’m 32, I’ve had both sides. I’ve gone from [being the guy] at Crystal Palace to not playing at all at Galatasaray and then not playing at Lyon. It’s a thing where I don’t let it break me mentally because I know the player I am.”
That in many ways, is how he ended up at Charlotte FC: Zaha’s willingness to bet on both himself and a club. Charlotte announced the signing of the former Premier League star on Wednesday, capturing a player that is no doubt the club’s most high-profile signing to date. While the 32-year-old ex-Crystal Palace standout’s decision may have come on an impulse, the signing itself is the work of many months of close calls and near misses for those in charge at Charlotte FC. The club needed a game-changer and, finally, they were able to get one that, in many ways, feels designed in a lab for this exact moment and this exact team.
“The love I’ve had being here [with the team] for a couple of days from the players, from the staff, everything, it makes me feel like this is a better journey,” he says.
That process was never easy, which Charlotte can certainly tell you, and, for a player like Zaha, that decision was never straightforward. He’s made it, though, for a variety of reasons. Many are on-field. After being frozen out while on loan at Lyon, Zaha is motivated or, you could say, desperate to play. For years, he had a home at Crystal Palace. For the past two years, he felt like he didn’t have one. An unfamiliar feeling, but ultimately the one that made him cross an ocean to find that home in a place that he, admittedly, is only just learning more about.
“When the opportunity came up, I’m a person, I want to try new things, you know? I want to discover new things,” Zaha explains. “Charlotte seemed like a beautiful family-based place. That’s exactly what I’m looking for. All I want is a peaceful life, enjoy my football, score goals, and just be happy.”
Everyone involved seems happy with this deal, none more so than those at the club that made it happen. This is the story of how Zaha got to Charlotte.