Yannick Bolasie could see Wembley Stadium from his bedroom window as a kid on Cup final day, not that he cared too much. Back then he was more interested in playing “Wembley” – the goalmouth game needing only a ball and two posts – with friends on the estate, while thousands of supporters descended on his London borough.
This year will be different. On his mum’s birthday, Bolasie will lead Crystal Palace’s hopes of a first FA Cup, against Manchester United. The gilded edge on the Eagles’ wing has been one of the more dynamic attacking forces in English football this season, and he is ready for the biggest game of his career.
“The journey I’ve personally taken over the past four years with Palace, it’s a dream come true,” Bolasie says. “Scoring early in the semi-final did a lot for me personally. Now I am just looking forward to playing in the final and expressing myself, enjoying myself and showing the world what I can do.”
He has done that in the Premier League and it was no coincidence Palace’s downturn this season, beginning in December, coincided with an injury to Bolasie. Before then, Alan Pardew’s side had been flying but, although recent league performances have left a little to be desired, the Cup run has provided renewed exuberance.
Bolasie’s journey from playground to professional has not been simple. There was no academy for him, no easy path to the top. The DR Congo international, born in France but raised in London, started as a youngster at Hillingdon Borough and his road took him to Floriana in Malta before a return to England with Plymouth Argyle. Loans to Barnet followed, Bristol City signed him in 2011 and then Palace came calling.
The rest has been for all to see, a remarkable progression from a wide player with pace and mesmeric feet to a consistently brilliant winger. There have been bumps along the way – Bolasie still smarts at missing out on the 2013 Championship play-off final when Ian Holloway was the Palace manager – but with Wilfried Zaha back many Premier League full-backs have left Selhurst Park with scrambled brains this season.
Zaha is flourishing in south London once more after an ill-fated spell at United and Bolasie believes having a wide threat on the opposite flank benefits his own game. “When we were both in the Championship, in my first season here, nobody knew about me, so everybody was concentrating on Wilf,” he says. “They’ve seen Wilf go to United, coming back, teams starting to concentrate more on me a bit.
“We get along obviously off the pitch but he’s got his life and I’ve got mine. We’re at totally different stages: I’ve got two kids so I’ve got responsibilities. For myself, I just like to relax and chill out with the family.”
It was only when Bolasie was 14 that he began to dream of a football career, watching Thierry Henry score a hat-trick for Arsenal at San Siro against Internazionale. Yet this week he has had time to reflect on his ascent, posting a picture of a Willesden playground on social media alongside the caption: “Where it all began.”
“That is the estate where I grew up,” says Bolasie, who was going to arrange a special coach to Wembley on Saturday for his mum, Yolande, before realising it would probably be quicker to walk. “From my estate, where my mum still lives now, from my bedroom you could see Wembley. I go back a lot, my brothers are still there and she does a lot of cooking for me. To try to get a coach doesn’t make sense, Willesden to Wembley. You can’t do that really.
“The way I’ve grown up, the manner I am today, reflects on my mother. I’ve seen other people grow up and not have respect for human beings. But even though I play football, I’m still able to talk to everyone on the estate. Whenever I go, I can literally talk to anyone that I meet and everyone I have known from my past. It is normal, I casually get on with it.”
Bolasie has designed a customised pair of boots that chart his journey, from his mum’s house to Wembley, which he wore during the warm-up before Palace’s 2-1 semi-final victory over Watford. “On one side of the boot it had the journey from my mum’s house to Wembley,” he says. “The road map is highlighted in blue and obviously you can see the green and stuff, and on the other side of the boot it had the Wembley arch, what I could see from my mum’s bedroom, with a Palace flag on it and the Palace fans walking to Wembley.
“Palace offered me the opportunity to come and play and I took it with both hands. For me, at the time [of signing in 2012], I didn’t care about what money I was getting or whatever it was going on; I just wanted to play football because I knew playing games would make me improve, and I think looking back at my career at Palace every year I’ve always improved and improved and added a lot more things to my game.”
Thousands of Palace fans will travel to Wembley expectant of a big performance from their side against a United team who have endured a trying season under Louis van Gaal, and had their Cup preparations disrupted by last Sunday’s dummy bomb incident which led to the league fixture against Bournemouth being played on Tuesday.
United missed out on a qualification place for next season’s Champions League but, whereas the Europa League may not appeal to many at Old Trafford, for Palace such a prize would feel more significant.
“You can’t help yourself thinking about those kind of things,” Bolasie says. “The main thing is that, if I get that opportunity, it would rub away the hurt that I got when I didn’t play in the play-off final. Hopefully my mum will enjoy it and hopefully I can make it special.”
