Where Crystal Palace stand as Italian side latest to show interest in talisman Wilfried Zaha

Lazio are the latest team to show interest in signing Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha who has still not made his mind up on where he will be playing his football next season.

The Ivory Coast forward is a free man as his current Crystal Palace contract runs out this month, and even though the Eagles have offered him a staggering £200k-a-week- wage to renew, he still hasn’t shown any indication that he’s willing to continue in south London.

There has been interest also from Saudi Arabia, as they have become the latest country to be willing to throw cash at players from Europe, N’Golo Kante has just been there while the likes of Edouard Mendy and Hakim Ziyech are expected to join shortly.

Palace are still silently optimistic that they will be the ones who eventually win the race to have Zaha but at things stand, it’s all still a waiting game. Sources close to Zaha say he’s interested in Champions League football but if he were to stay at Palace then he’d demand that at least the team showed enough ambition to want to compete for some form of European football.

It has not been lost on him the giant strides that teams like Brighton and Brentford have made in the short period that they have been in the Premier League. He wants to spend his last years playing for a team that wants to push itself.

A large part of this will also depend on who the next manager will be as with most cases- the next appointment will be an indication of where the club is heading.

Maurizio Sarri is looking for a centre-forward who can be used as a backup for Ciro Immobile now that Lazio have qualified for the Champions League and hope that a trip in Europe added to the challenge of living and working in a different country could be interesting to Zaha.

Zaha scored seven goals in 27 appearances for the Eagles in the Premier League despite having issues with his hamstring. On his day, his day, he’s a match for any defender in the world.