Charlotte FC signs EPL vet Wilfried Zaha, and hopes they found their self-assured star
The last time Wilfried Zaha did something that shocked the sporting world — joining a club in Turkey’s Süper Lig after a decade at Crystal Palace in the English Premier League — he heard the same refrain over and over.
“Oh my God, why would you do such a thing?”
The answer Zaha suggested then was simple.
It’s the same one he’s offering now.
“It’s my life,” Zaha told local reporters on Monday. “In the end, it’s what I want to do. So it’s like, ‘I just made the decision. I want to come to MLS and see where the journey takes me.’ And I did it.”
And he’s done so in Charlotte.
Charlotte FC announced Wednesday morning that the club has acquired Zaha until Jan. 17, 2026. The contract also includes a club option to extend the loan through June 30, 2026 — meaning the 32-year-old left winger and Premier League veteran and mainstay for the Ivory Coast national team could be calling Bank of America Stadium “home” for nearly two seasons before negotiating a new contract.
The announcement makes official the rumors that had Charlotte FC in the international sports news cycle for weeks. It also quite possibly delivers the still-young MLS side the big-named, self-assured star it has been seeking.
In turn, the club embarking on its fourth season offers Zaha something he’s looking forward to as well, after one of the most difficult years of his career.
“I just need to get back on the pitch,” Zaha said. “That’s it, really. I know what I can do. The reality is, I don’t look elsewhere for confidence. I look for confidence in myself. So I’ve gone through a difficult period, but those things, they have helped me become who I am now.
“So now I’m with Charlotte, once I get the opportunity to get back on the field, I just want to show what I can do to everyone.”
Why Wilfried Zaha came to Charlotte FC
It’s no secret that landing a talent like Zaha is the Charlotte FC front office’s biggest achievement to date. A quick review of his CV:
Zaha was born in the Ivory Coast but moved to England at the age of 4. He joined the Crystal Palace academy at 8 and made his debut for Crystal Palace by 18. He spent three seasons there, from 2010 to 2013, and was a key piece in getting Crystal Palace promoted to the Premier League in 2013.
He then spent a brief time with Manchester United before returning to Crystal Palace and spending 2014 to 2023 with the club, playing in 307 matches and scoring 69 goals.
In 2023, though, he sought a change. The left winger up and left for Galatasaray, one of the top clubs in Turkey. That didn’t work out immediately. After an unremarkable beginning there, he joined French Ligue 1 club Lyon on loan.
That move was even less satisfying. Zaha appeared in six matches for Lyon and only notched 112 minutes of game time — and included a public calling out from Lyon head coach: “He needs to understand that we recruited Wilfried Zaha, so we would like to have Wilfried Zaha,” Lyon coach Pierre Sage told French radio station RMC Foot. The coach added, “It has nothing to do with his abilities as a player but his capacity to live with this team.”
This, in all, appeared to have Zaha take stock and weigh the possibility of moving on. Word eventually made it the desk of Charlotte FC general manager Zoran Krneta that he wasn’t opposed to learning more about Major League Soccer.
That’s when Krneta began to fall in love with the idea.
“He was a fantastic player for Crystal Palace,” Krneta said. “He had a brief spell when he was very young at Man United. And he probably made a mistake going to Galatasaray. And so he didn’t find a home there, if you will. He was a London player from south London, a very specific area. He’d done brilliantly in a place that is very family-oriented, with a close-knit community, the fans and the players and everyone else.
“We thought that the Wilfried Zaha that we know will be one of the top players in MLS. We know that he’s fit. We know that he’s level. I spoke to the players that I know very well at Lyon. I spoke to players at Galatasaray. ... We know the character of the player. ... All he cares is to play. And he’s now more hungry than I’ve ever seen any other player being coming to Charlotte FC, I can tell you that.”
Krneta said this deal was three-months-in-the-making, and that “until he literally landed” in Charlotte, “I wasn’t sure we were going to pull it off.” That’s because a lot of money was tied up in a lot of hands over Zaha this past season. Zaha reportedly signed a three-year contract with Galatasaray that was worth up to approximately $8 million pounds (or approximately $9.8 million USD). He was then acquired by Lyon via a loan fee of 3 million pounds ($3.7 million USD).
“In my 20-something years in professional soccer, this is probably one of the most difficult negotiations I have done,” Krneta said. “You have to talk to the player, and the intermediaries. And then Galatasaray has to agree to the deal that was below their value, well below their value. And then you have to agree with Lyon to cancel the contract. ... So it was very complicated.”
The timing was right for Zaha and Charlotte FC
It’s fair to say that Zaha and Charlotte FC met each other at the right time.
For one, they each have what the other is looking for. Zaha is looking for a club to play for, a pitch to play on. Charlotte FC, meanwhile, needs a difference maker that can bring an offensive firepower that the team struggled to find in this past season. Charlotte boasted one of the best defenses in 2024 — allowing a second-in-MLS-best 37 goals in 34 matches — but also only scored 45 goals itself, dwelling in the bottom 25% in the category. (The team is trying to rectify that in the 2025 season, which opens Feb. 22 against Seattle on the road.)
For another, Charlotte FC — in Krneta’s words — is “ready” for a standout like Zaha. It’s a product of the steady progression of Charlotte FC as an organization.
The club has its own state-of-the-art practice facility and headquarters, the first of its kind in MLS. The club has an owner in David Tepper who isn’t shy to take big swings. The club is in a league that has “grown up a lot” in the past decade — so much that it’s unrecognizable from what it once was, when arrivals of David Beckham and Zlatan Ibrahimovic drew public intrigue but didn’t raise a tide that lifted all boats.
And that steady progression has been painful at times but has also always resulted in substantive steps forward.
That pain? Having hired three coaches in three years, including firing your first coach in Miguel Angel Ramirez 14 games in Charlotte FC’s inaugural season.
Those steps forward? Cultivating a real fandom and community in 2022. Earning a playoff appearance in 2023. Making a deeper playoff run in 2024 — and finding a bunch of other important features along the way, including a fifth-place Eastern Conference standings finish in the regular season and a wonderful mind as a coach in Dean Smith and an MLS Goalkeeper of the Year award winner in Kristijan Kahlina.
That also includes building a culture that is worth bragging about. That’s something that caught the eye of Zaha himself.
“Obviously now I’m 32,” Zaha said. “I’ve had both sides. I’ve gone from having (it all) at Crystal Palace to not playing at all in Gala and not playing in Lyon. And it’s a thing where I don’t let it break me mentally because I know the player I am. So the love I’ve had for me being here, for a couple of days from the players, from the staff, everything, it makes me feel like this is a better journey.”
In other Charlotte FC news ...
▪ Karol Świderski, one of Charlotte’s three designated players and who was part of the team’s inaugural-season roster, has been involved in rumors of departure for a lot of his time in Charlotte. The latest has come in the last two months, as European clubs have vied for his attention. Krneta answered to those earlier this week: “I can’t tell you much about Karol’s status. All I can tell you is we have received the bids and we’ve turned them down. They’re not matching our valuation. That’s all I can tell you really right now.”
▪ Jamie Smith is joining Crown Legacy FC, the MLS NEXT Pro club associated with Charlotte FC. Smith has spent the past two seasons with USL League One side Greenville Triumph and is also the son of Charlotte FC head coach, Dean Smith.
This story was originally published January 22, 2025 at 9:00 AM.
