Palace's Wilfried Zaha produced one of the worst Premier League penalties ever vs Norwich | OneFootball

Wilfried Zaha certainly had an eventful game at Norwich City on Wednesday night.

Having returned from Africa Cup of Nations duties with Ivory Coast, the Crystal Palace star simply didn’t seem to be at the races during the early exchanges at Carrow Road with criticism raining in on Twitter.

Marry that to Teemu Pukki having fired the Canaries into the lead with less than a minute on the clock and it’s fair to say that proceeding weren’t exactly going Zaha and Palace’s way.

Norwich City vs Crystal Palace

However, true to the unbelievable talent that everybody knows Zaha possesses, the former England international pulled the rabbit out of the hat by scoring an equaliser in remarkable fashion.

Cutting in from the left wing on his favoured right foot, Zaha let rip with a brilliant shot that flew past Angus Gunn and into the far top corner for one of the best Premier League goals of 2022 so far.

But don’t get too excited because that’s where the brief reprieve ended for Zaha as he proceeded to take one of the worst penalties that we’ve ever seen in England’s top-flight just a few minutes later.

While it might not sound all that awful on paper to say that Zaha scuffed his spot-kick wide, watching the footage quickly reveals what was so bad about the penalty with the Palace man truly fluffing the contact.

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Zaha’s nightmare penalty

You could tell from the moment that Zaha’s right foot makes contact with the ball that it was never destined for the net with the resulting ‘shot’, if you can call it that, bobbling comfortably wide of the post.

It’s never nice to see a player missing a penalty, but it’s especially painful when you know that it’s destined to go down as one of the worst spot-kicks in Premier League history – and you can check it out down below:

Goodness me. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

Fan reaction

One of the worst ever Premier League penalties

You can tell by the contact – or lack thereof – that Zaha made with the ball that he must have lost his footing to an certain extent, even if zoomed-in shots of the penalty spot suggested that the turf was unharmed.

In Zaha’s defence, it’s the type of mistake that can befall any player regardless of their quality and ability, but it’s just so rare that you see a penalty being botched exactly like that in the Premier League.

Another rare case came from Wayne Rooney against Chelsea in the 2011/12 season when he slipped upon contact and duly missed the target, while John Terry’s effort in the 2008 Champions League final speaks for itself.

But with Zaha’s contribution to the catalogue of botched Premier League penalties more revolving around poor contact than an out-and-out slip, perhaps fans might be a little less generous in his instance.

All that and it came in a game where Zaha scored one of the finest goals of his entire career. Football can’t half be a cruel sport sometimes.

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