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Outstanding or over-hyped: Where do you stand when it comes to Wilfried Zaha?

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England’s friendly at the aptly named ‘Friends Arena’ in Sweden was a game dominated by a Swede whose 4 goals made him the toast of Stockholm today, unless you’re Joe Hart. You’d have been forgiven for thinking last night was just another pointless friendly done in order for someone high up the ladder to pocket a few quid or repay a favour to someone.

However, in the scale of pointlessness this friendly ranks somewhere between slightly pointless and potentially interesting. England gave a debut to three players that in the future, if they so desire, could be playing against England for other countries. Carl Jenkinson,whose mother is from Finland and has represented them at under-19 level, Raheem Sterling, who was born in Jamaica, and the man whose name is on everyone’s lips Wilfried Zaha. Zaha was born in Ivory Coast and moved to England aged 4. His talents are so highly thought of in the game that Didier Drogba personally called the Crystal Palace winger to try and persuade him to choose the Ivory Coast over England.

The fact that the 20 year old is the at the top of every team’s Christmas list and even has countries fighting over him goes to show that people within the game think very highly of him. Perhaps that is why Palace have slapped a £20 million price tag on the man who, in the summer, Wigan felt £3.5 million was too steep for him. That may come back to haunt Martinez if Zaha does what is expected.

Zaha obviously has the potential but we all know of many youngsters who had potential but didn’t have the right attitude and ended up going stale. Zaha himself mentioned John Bostock in an interview with the Guardian (Bostock moved from Palace to Spurs aged 16 and has made 4 substitute appearances in 4 years) and the recent incarceration of former Everton player Michael Branch is another example of things going wrong for young footballers, so it seems Zaha needs his head screwed on.

When asked about his future by the Guardian he said: “…the Premier League’s the place to be. It’s where I want to get to and getting there with Palace would be nice. We definitely can with the team we have.”

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