“He's just too good for you, he's just too good for you…”
It was a chant Crystal Palace supporters loved, a taunt to opposing defenders getting tormented by Wilfried Zaha’s delightful dribbling skills and nose for goal, to the tune of ‘La Donna e Mobile’ from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto.
The Eagles were usually thriving when it rang down from the stands in celebration of Zaha’s creativity, as a local kid blossomed into an international star and club legend across more than a decade of service. With the winger producing well over 100 goal contributions across his 417 appearances for the South London club, the chorus and its subject grew iconic enough to be splashed across a 20-foot billboard prominently displayed next to one of the area’s main highway junctions.
Now the show will finally touch down in MLS, with songs old and new on tap at Bank of America Stadium. Charlotte FC’s showcase winter acquisition, a loan capture from Turkish giants Galatasaray, is on course to make his debut on Saturday as The Crown host near-neighbors Atlanta United for a Southern showdown in their 2025 home opener, in front of what’s projected to be a bumper crowd (2:15 pm ET | Apple TV - MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+ | FOX, FOX Deportes).
Magic man
“He can produce bits of magic. I think he's done that throughout his career. I have no doubts that he will come and do that here as well,” CLTFC head coach Dean Smith told reporters on Thursday, emphasizing how Zaha is anticipating the moment just as fans are.
“He's looking forward to it. That's the big thing for me. He's excited, he wants to play, and he's an entertainer. He wants to entertain 50-odd-thousand fans on Saturday, so that, I believe, is going to be his mentality, and we're looking forward to having him back.”
Zaha has prowled the touchlines on some of world soccer’s biggest stages; Charlotte believe he’s the missing link that can elevate them into a legit MLS Cup contender. You could hardly have guessed all that by his unassuming airs at last week's introductory press conference.
“It's nice to be seen as a big deal, you know. I can't complain,” he said of his warm North Carolina welcome. “I'm happy. My only thing is, I just want to repay that faith and that noise that everyone makes when I've come. I just want to repay it on the pitch, really. That's why I look forward for the season to start and just get things going.
“We have aspirations as a team to do so much.”
Family matters
Circumstances have complicated Zaha’s arrival, albeit the most joyous circumstances imaginable. The Cote d’Ivoire international missed out on Charlotte’s season-opening 2-2 draw with the Seattle Sounders FC last weekend to be in London with his wife Paige for the birth of their daughter Zuri, spending nearly a week away from the squad. Last week he confessed that “I don’t even have a house yet” in his new city amid all the goings-on of a transcontinental transfer, a baby on the way and the usual itineraries of a preseason.
He hopped back on a plane to cross the Atlantic on Thursday and was scheduled to conduct an individual training session with Smith and his staff to gauge what level of gameday participation makes sense. Smith’s measured remarks hinted at the recognition that the season is a marathon, not a sprint, and that everyone responds differently to the happy disruptions of childbirth.
“I mean, my first child was 27 years ago on Christmas Day, and I kicked off the following day in a game at 11:00 [am],” recalled Smith, a distinguished defender in his own playing days, with a smile. “I kind of sleepwalked through that game, I must admit. Listen, you go through a lot of emotions watching your wife give birth, but he's just on a plane, he's had hopefully a seven-hour sleep on the way here and he's in the right frame of mind.
“But I don't think, knowing Wilf as I do, that there's going to be anything that puts him off playing in this game.”
Raising the bar
Zaha is the biggest name to don a Charlotte jersey to date, and the fourth-year club’s sizable fanbase – a chunk of which flocked to BofA Stadium to watch their team hold an open training session on Monday – has responded in kind. Expectations are soaring along the Piedmont, with hopes that he can spark the attack after Smith’s work building a stingy defensive structure last year.
“I came in last season and looked at the roster, and I felt the best way to go was the way we went last season, was to become tough to beat. I felt we did that,” said the coach, who has made clear that his side’s performance against the Sounders was unsatisfactory despite the road point gifted them by a last-minute own goal from Seattle defender Yeimar Gómez Andrade.
“As poorly as we played last week, we were still tough to beat, still showed a lot of resilience. And we're trying to turn that [offensive] side of the game into more of a positive for us.”
That context informs the recruitment of Zaha, 32, who’d found himself in need of a fresh opportunity after falling out of favor in Istanbul.
“When I was speaking to Dean, he was saying they had one of the best defensive records last season,” said the winger. “The only aspect we need to improve is scoring goals, and that's where I fit in. So it's just like, this is perfect, perfect. I'm that missing piece of the puzzle, you know?”
He believes “the possibilities are endless,” and his new teammates, too, are keenly aware that a marked step forward can be made this year – needs to be made. Their budding rivals from ATL, the MLS winter window’s biggest spenders and a rising force in their own right, present a timely early measuring stick.
“The bar has been raised. Good teams rise to that, and teams who are nervous or afraid bow down to that,” said veteran defender Tim Ream this week. “So we have to rise to to the new standards that we've set, the new standards that people around, experts, pundits, or whatever you want to call them, have set for us.
"For us, it's just putting our heads down and working and getting back to that hard-to-beat mentality, running for each other, working for each other and taking care of each other.”
