Ismaïla Sarr: the bargain buy who has become Crystal Palace’s unsung hero

Ismaïla Sarr hasn’t had many more memorable weeks. But most remarkable about his match-winning performance for Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-final against Aston Villa is that it came after his wife, Fatou, had given birth to twins a few days earlier. “It was a surprise – nobody knew,” said the manager Oliver Glasner after Palace’s thrilling victory at Wembley thanks to two goals from the Senegal forward.

Eberechi Eze said the BBC pundit Alan Shearer had awarded him player of the match “a bit prematurely” before Sarr’s second. “I’ll be giving this to him inside – he’s a top player and he’s helped us so much this season,” the England forward said.

Sarr has gone largely under the radar at Palace, since his arrival last summer from Marseille, in a side that includes Eze, Adam Wharton and the larger-than-life striker Jean-Philippe Mateta. Yet at £12m plus bonuses, the 26-year-old has proved one of the bargains of the season, having scored 11 goals and turned himself into one of the first names on Glasner’s team sheet as Palace look towards the FA Cup final date with Manchester City on Saturday.

Sarr’s recruitment has been particularly well received behind the scenes at Selhurst Park. Palace had tracked Sarr since he was spotted by the former sporting director Dougie Freedman as a gangly teenager who had just arrived at Metz from Génération Foot, the academy in his homeland that produced Sadio Mané. He turned down Barcelona in favour of Rennes before, in 2019, joining Watford, who paid a club-record £30m that was out of the south London club’s price range. Sarr bought his father, Abdoulaye – a former player who is a farmer in Saint-Louis on Senegal’s north-west coast – a flock of sheep to celebrate his arrival in the Premier League. Throughout his stay at Vicarage Road it is understood that key figures remained in touch with his representatives. “Every summer there was a ‘shall we, shan’t we?’ situation,” a source says.

Two goals in Watford’s 3-0 victory against a previously unbeaten Liverpool side cruising to the title under Jürgen Klopp during Sarr’s first season in English football alerted some of the country’s biggest clubs to his talent. The former Watford technical director Filippo Giraldi said Sarr had been “extremely close” to joining Manchester United that summer, and Liverpool are also believed to have considered a move for the player described as “like a gazelle” by his mentor at Génération Foot, Mady Touré.

View image in fullscreen Sarr lifts the ball over Liverpool keeper Alisson for his second goal in Watford’s 3-0 win against Liverpool in 2020, the eventual champions’ first defeat of the Premier League campaign. Photograph: David Klein/Reuters

“He needs time,” Touré told the Guardian in 2020. “He needs to be trusted by the coach. If he has the coach’s confidence … he’s an introverted lad, you have to go towards him. That’s his nature. Ismaïla doesn’t talk much. If the coach takes him under his wing like a son, he is very affectionate but you have to go towards him. He needs to feel people around him. If he feels that, he can do a lot of damage …”

Sarr still speaks to his father after every match and is understood to have struggled in isolation in a new country during the Covid pandemic. He won Watford’s player of the year in his second season but missed a large chunk of the following campaign because of injury as the club were relegated. Palace came close to signing him then but could not agree a deal and he ended up playing a season in the Championship. Marseille proved to be an ill-fated move, Sarr playing under five coaches during his solitary season and even being used as a wing-back.

“To say that he didn’t enjoy his time at Marseille is something of an understatement,” the Palace source says. “He was very keen to come back to London. Once it became clear that Michael [Olise] was leaving, he became the No 1 target.”

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Palace were surprised more clubs were not queueing up to sign a player who this year passed 70 international caps. Their persistence has paid off. Despite a slow start after being handed the No 7 shirt vacated by Olise when the France forward moved to Bayern Munich, Sarr is the only outfield player who has appeared in every game for Palace this season. “He’s an absolute warrior,” one Palace source says. “He has aches and pains but just gets on with it.”

As well as creating more chances than any other Palace player since he became a regular, Sarr has been an integral part of Glasner’s pressing game, having made the second most pressures in the middle third, behind United’s Bruno Fernandes.

“He’s such a great, great guy and he is really an important part of the team,” Glasner said. “He has a lot of skill, great physicality like a sprinter combined with technical ability. This always helps to score goals.”

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