The curious case of Wilfried Zaha: Man Utd's former misfit who took the circuitous route to stardom

Disappointment, anger, shame. There are a number of emotions that can run through a footballer who has been told to find another club. But Wilfried Zaha didn't feel any of those when Louis van Gaal let him know that his time at Manchester United was up.

"I was so relieved," Zaha remembered years later. "I was thinking: 'Thank you for telling me straight and letting me restart my career.'" And what a curious career it has been.

Despite signing for Manchester United as a 20-year-old, Zaha had to wait until his 30s before appearing in European competition. Arguably the most naturally gifted Premier League winger of his generation never recorded double digits for league assists in a single season and finished above tenth in the table just once.

After years of actively seeking a move elsewhere, Zaha finally left Crystal Palace on a free transfer in 2023 as an undisputed icon, hailed as the club's "best and most influential player".

Relief may have washed over Zaha a decade ago, but he has plenty of reason to feel great pride for the rest of his career.

Failed move to Man Utd

Two Fergusons conspired to bring Zaha to Manchester United in 2013 but David Moyes was at the helm by the time the fleet-footed winger rocked up at Old Trafford.

Flagged by his son Darren as Peterborough manager, Sir Alex sanctioned the move for Zaha in January 2013 before he was loaned back to Palace for the rest of the season. Ian Holloway, the Eagles manager who sold Zaha to United for £10m, reflected: "Sir Alex would have loved his talent.

"He would have shown him patience like he did when Cristiano Ronaldo first came over. Wilf had the same level of skill as Ronaldo but needed that guidance, with all Sir Alex's knowledge to take him under his wing. It was a totally different scenario for him with David Moyes coming in."

Zaha admitted it was "weird" that Ferguson had facilitated his arrival but was gone that summer.

In two-and-a-half years, Zaha was afforded 167 minutes of competitive football at United, roughly £1,000 of his transfer fee for every second he spent on the pitch.

Happy homecoming

Zaha is always keen to quash any talk of regrets regarding his move to Manchester United. The optimistic winger routinely describes the chastening experience as "a learning curve", citing the rehabilitation of Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku after their failed spells at Chelsea.

"Realistically I think I went through a phase [at United] where you either build from it or you die out from it," Zaha explained before returning to Old Trafford with Galatasaray in 2023. "And me personally, I was never going to die out from it."

Back at the club he first joined as an eight-year-old, Zaha was the perennial star of the Premier League's highlights reel.

The prototypical inverted winger honed his famed dribbling skills by practising with a tennis ball for hours on end as a child, tiptoeing up and down corridors and avoiding the grabbing hands of his little sister. "Imagine doing that with a small ball, then you get out on the pitch and it’s a big ball," he explained. "It makes it a lot easier." Zaha made most of the Premier League's defenders look like flailing children with a size five.

Even Yannick Bolasie, Crystal Palace's trickster on the opposite flank, was spellbound by Zaha’s skills during matches. "When he goes down the wing," Bolasie gushed, "I'd be watching saying: 'Oh. Look what he’s doing!'"

Gossip column favourite

Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Everton, Arsenal and even a return to Manchester United were all floated in various transfer gossip columns following his Crystal Palace comeback.

Zaha stoked the flames of the rumour mill by publicly expressing his desire to leave once he had turned 26 and entered his prime but made the rod for his own back by signing a five-year contract extension with Palace in 2018.

After a particularly tense summer of 2019, where Palace priced Zaha at an audacious £100m, Roy Hodgson admitted, through mirrored sunglasses, that his talismanic forward had "beef with the chairman and owners of the club".

While overseeing that all-important extension, Parish made it clear that Zaha was worth "more to us than what anybody would ever pay us". The vocal chairman has scarcely said anything more accurate.

Forever a Crystal Palace legend

The image that Zaha chose for the mural Palace commissioned captured the celebration of a goal he didn't even score. Wearing a triumphant snarl, with veins popping and eyes bulging, the centrepiece of an artwork that also includes his famous play-off goals against Brighton exposes the fierce passion that Zaha brought to Palace, the club of his dreams.

Zaha not only stands alone as Crystal Palace's all-time Premier League top scorer, but only one player in the modern history of the club can even match half of his tally (Christian Benteke, just).

The weighty deal Zaha penned with Palace may have denied him the chance to play in Europe during his peak years but he was richly rewarded. Unlike so many players in the same summer, Zaha resisted the advances of the Saudi Pro League to join Galatasaray on almost half of what he had been earning at Palace.

On his long-awaited Champions League debut - for the feverishly supported Turkish giants whom he rightly described as "a big club" - Zaha came off the bench to tee up a late equaliser. He went one better the next time out, scoring, ironically and almost inevitably, at Old Trafford as Galatasaray ran out 3-2 winners over Manchester United.

As the bio of his social media perfectly puts it: "What a life".

READ THE LATEST FEATURES AND ANALYSIS FROM 90MIN