Marouane Chamakh: Mischievous, infectious and revered at Crystal Palace (2024)

Every club has its heroes, but during this international break, The Athletic is paying tribute to those players cherished for more than just what they did with the ball at their feet –the modern-day cult heroes…

When Marouane Chamakh arrived at Crystal Palace, nobody could be certain what they were getting.

Was this the centre-forward who broke goalscoring records at Bordeaux and thrived in his early days at Arsenal, or the one carrying extra weight and lacking fitness who struggled on loan at West Ham United and his parent club were desperate to offload?

It proved to be neither, with Chamakh reinventing his game thanks to Tony Pulis and, with an “almost carefree” attitude, winning a place in the hearts of Palace fans through committed performances and a touch of class in a No 10 role.

In all, 13 new players arrived in the summer of 2013 after promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs. Several of them struggling to acclimatise but, despite a slow start, Chamakh added swagger, self-belief and quality.

“Sometimes when you are battling relegation you need that, and to take the concentration away from what you’re going through,” then-Palace midfielder Mile Jedinak tells The Athletic. “When all the pressure is on and you have people who are relaxed and calm around it, that is going to rub off on everyone else. That’s his persona. He wasn’t distant from it. He was embedded in it. That was just one of his attributes — calming and positive.

“He was professional. That’s what sets him apart. He’d do whatever he had to do. Would you always get the best out of him in training? He would be the first to admit that you wouldn’t. But what we knew was we were going to get 100 per cent every weekend. And that’s what you need to understand, some players are like that, they live for the game and the crowd.”

The Moroccan’s arrival owed itself to manager Ian Holloway who felt, after consultation with scout Gary Penrice, himself a former striker at clubs including Aston Villa, Watford and Queens Park Rangers, that he could turn Chamakh’s fortunes around.

Holloway pushed concertedly for his signing, despite the player’s lack of fitness after that unhappy half-season with West Ham that brought only two Premier League starts. Penrice had knowledge of his time at Bordeaux before his 2010 move to England and Palace capitalised on Arsenal’s desire to move him on.

It was the application and work rate that made his spell at Selhurst Park so special. His mischievous and infectious personality were enough for most people to turn a blind eye to some of his failings. That industrious nature on a match day played to that desire of an underdog applying himself.

For Holloway, it was appreciation and attention that Chamakh required. He fancied himself to get the best out of a player who made simple things look difficult and difficult things look simple.

Chamakh ought to have been an infuriating player, and in the early days that lack of optimum physical condition did frustrate, but as time went on, and a new manager arrived in the November, he became integral to the success of the team.

“He just needed a bit of love, really. He needed an arm around his shoulder,” Holloway tells The Athletic. “I thought it was quite a coup to get him.

“He showed a lot of belief in us. Not every Arsenal centre-forward will want to come to Palace, with the greatest respect — we had just got up. He showed a lot of grit and determination, wanting to rebuild his career again. That’s what I liked about him.

“When I first met him, I looked into his eyes and I liked what I saw — an inner strength and someone who wanted to do things. It’s pointless getting someone who thinks they’re already good to come to a non-favourite club. You need someone who is level and grounded and wants to get to work.

“He worked his socks off, did his role and realised we were going to play him.”

😍 On this day in 2013: We signed Marouane Chamakh…#CPFC | https://t.co/utMcYSDkhb pic.twitter.com/tWK7r91uPd

— Crystal Palace F.C. (@CPFC) August 10, 2020

There was little time for Chamakh to try to replicate Glenn Murray’s 30-league-goal impact during the promotion season under Holloway, who left in late October after Palace had lost seven of their first eight league games, but the effusive praise was no doubt in part fuelled by the work of his successor and friend Tony Pulis.

Moved into a No 10 role, Chamakh thrived as a focal point of Palace’s counter-attacking game, flanked by Jason Puncheon and Yannick Bolasie with Jedinak partnering Joe Ledley as holding midfielders.

The few attempts on goal he did have were almost invariably converted. It was a stroke of genius from Pulis to drop him into a deeper role where he could use his guile and flair to link play.

“I played him down the middle, Pulis played him off of Cameron Jerome,” says Holloway. “He left the lazier one up the middle and Marouane to do a lot of the chasing and the running, which proved fantastically successful for the team.

“Marouane was such a big part of that team defensively. He never shirked on that and he got a few goals as well. It was a no-brainer. You always gamble on someone who scored a lot of goals when they were young and help them to regain that confidence.”

As much as Chamakh’s endeavour endeared him to fans, staff and team-mates alike at Palace, it was a mischievous demeanour off the pitch which brought a smile to faces.

This was an “incredibly generous” person whose attitude to training may not have always been perfect and whose professionalism was not always entirely assured but who made up for it on a match day and with his ability to unite different factions within the squad.

Will Hoare, then a first-year scholar, was quick to volunteer as Chamakh’s boot boy. “One day all the boys were cleaning the boots and I got there late,” Hoare says. “They told me, ‘Chamakh is looking for you.’ I went to the changing room and poked my head round. He came out and took me to his car.

“There was this massive box and I was thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ He was sponsored by Nike and gave me his kit drop — trainers, boots, tracksuits, jumpers, everything. He said, ‘There you go’. I was like, ‘I can’t take that’, but he insisted.

“A few weeks later he gave me £500 cash. I felt bad and I didn’t want to take it, not that much. Then, at Christmas, he gave me another £500 and all the boys were like, ‘How have you managed to get him?’”

“He mixed well, rolled his sleeves up, worked hard, but had quality,” recalls former Palace first-team coach Ben Garner. “He could see a pass, worked under pressure and was a clever footballer.

“He’d gone away for international duty with Morocco and came back in the following week and we were waiting to train.

“I asked him, ‘How was it, how did it go?’ They’d had two friendly games. He said, ‘Yeah, really good, I played in the first game and didn’t score but set up two and the coach rested me in the second game’. Then he went out to train.

“When we went in afterwards, the assistant secretary looked up the game and he wasn’t even in the squad. He’d just gone home and had a few days seeing his family and bits and pieces, but that’s precisely the type of character he was. There wasn’t a bad bone in his body.”

The perfect demonstration of Chamakh adding that touch of quality to the team came in the closing stages of a 3-0 win away to fellow relegation candidates Cardiff City in April 2014.

Puncheon played a ball to Adrian Mariappa, who spotted the opportunity for a return pass. Chamakh allowed it to run through his legs, before Puncheon curled an outstanding effort into the top corner.

It was the intelligence to offer up the dummy that made the goal so special,a fine example of his contribution for Palace over three seasons after his initial year’s loan was turned into a permanent transfer.

That selflessness was a crucial part of Chamakh’s character — someone whose presence was relaxing and who never took himself too seriously. Even when the hard work came, it was interspersed with humour.

“We went to Austria for pre-season, with Tony, and he got the players up in the mountains at six in the morning,” says Garner. “Tony was at the top of the hill, bellowing the players up on their bikes and I was on the last corner.

“They came up in fours and fives, grimacing, but Cham came up and started ringing the bell and high-fiving me as he came past. He did the work but he always had a smile on his face.

“He kept having problems with his teeth and going to the dentist. I saw him having a coffee one morning and asked him how many sugars he had. He told me six. I said, ‘No wonder you keep having to go to the dentist’. He was infectious. Whatever group he was in or where he was, everyone loved him and nobody had a bad word to say about him.”

It was that debut season where his influence was most noteworthy, once Pulis arrived to replace Holloway. Three goals in as many games at the start of December, two of them to clinch Palace wins, alongside committed performances earned standing ovations.

Two goals in a stand-out performance during a 3-2 FA Cup win at Southampton in January 2015 saw newly-appointed Palace manager Alan Pardew hail Chamakh as “the best player on the pitch” as he pointed to the confidence shown by his team-mates, revealing they had said to expect a lift once the Moroccan, who had missed the previous month with a hamstring problem, was back in the team.

Indeed, injuries hampered Chamakh over his final two seasons at Palace with neither Pardew nor predecessor Neil Warnock getting the benefit of his best form and he was eventually released at the end of 2015-16.

The bald stats of 10 goals in 66 appearances belie the transformative impact Chamakh’s presence had on a team who were new to the top flight and undergoing a multitude of changes.

He may not have been prolific, but his impact was profound. For that reason, he is still revered by Palace fans.

(Photos: Getty Images/Design: SamRichardson)

Matt Woosnam is the Crystal Palace writer for The Athletic UK. Matt previously spent several years covering Palace matches for the South London Press and contributing to other publications as a freelance writer. He was also the online editor of Palace fanzine Five Year Plan and has written columns for local papers in South London. Follow Matt on Twitter @MattWoosie