Zaha says he is glad VAR has come into the game. ‘It will just prove I’m not a cheat,’ he says

“Our mission is to rescue the vulnerable.” So runs the credo of the orphanage funded by Wilfried Zaha and run by his sister Carine in Daloa, 200 miles inland in Ivory Coast. The 30 orphans currently sheltering from the emotional storm of lost or overwhelmed parents read the huge letters painted on the wall of the playground in French and English. “Nous sommes les espoirs de demain.” “We are the hope of tomorrow.”

The children, “our little rising stars”, know that they are loved, that they are not abandoned. Wilf and Carine have so far given more than 100 orphans a future. The 30 now at Tomorrow’s Hope orphanage absorb the words and think of the 27-year-old who has given them hope, the