Adam Wharton: A serial Wembley winner

And while the young midfielder is not taking part in England's U21 European Championships campaign this summer, having the final games of 2024/25 after he suffered concussion following our FA Cup final victory last month, his incredible end to the season was still one to savour – as we republish his recent programme interview below...

This interview was conducted in April 2025 and was initially published in the Crystal Palace v Bournemouth programme - you can buy previous issues of the matchday programme by clicking HERE.

At the time this interview was originally published, ahead of our FA Cup semi-final against Aston Villa, Palace were facing the prospect of returning to Wembley for the first time since the 2021/22 season.

And no matter how many Premier League – or even senior international – appearances you've made before, the prospect of playing at Wembley would be enough to at least slightly daunt even the most experienced of professional footballers.

Put it to Adam Wharton, however – and he remained habitually unfazed.

Here stands a 21-year-old with a precocious talent, one which has long since been destined for the very grandest of stages.

“I played there once for my primary school, actually,” Wharton smiles – of course he did.

He paints the picture of his Wembley debut as an 11-year-old: “Yeah, so this was in 2015 – 25th May, 2015 – before the Championship play-off final.

"We’d won a couple of tournaments before, and we were representing Blackburn – all the schools in Blackburn – and we were playing a team representing Bournemouth.

“We played box-to-box, width of the box, eight v eight before the 2015 play-off final – and we won on penalties! There were probably like... I mean, I’ve got no idea, but I’d say there were at least 10,000 fans maybe, just scattered about? So yeah!

“And I managed to get a Patrick Bamford shirt after the game as well...” We wonder where that resides these days!

Regardless, Wharton’s anecdote reinforced that, given the stage, the truly great players in the game are those whose mentality empowers them to showcase the best of themselves irrespective of the opposition, or the occasion.

Take this interview. The softly spoken Lancastrian was talking to a large number of media outlets, all on the same afternoon, as part of an ‘International Content Session'.

And despite being in front of the cameras for a considerable spell of time, with each broadcaster Wharton was polite, he was calm, he was collected and – in the words he chose – he was considered.

You would scarcely think you were talking to a young player then only recently recovered from long-term injury, and who has been the subject of daily newspaper columns teeming with praise ever since.

Just 112 days separated Wharton’s Premier League debut last February and his first senior cap for England. Soon after, his place in the Three Lions’ squad, who eventually finished runners-up at last summer’s European Championships, was confirmed.

“Yeah, it’s been quite a long way in just over a year!” he laughed, when his list of achievements are put to him, following his transfer from Blackburn in January 2024.

“It probably feels a bit longer than that, with how much has happened!

“I just try and take it as it comes, not think too much about it, and just try and play. It’s mad when you look back on it, but in the moment, it’s just another day.

“You see things online, in the media and stuff like this, but I don’t try to look too much into it. I just try and keep level-headed, take each game as it comes, and not get ahead of myself.

“[When the England squad was announced last year] I was actually on a call with my agent. We knew the squad was going to be announced, so we were just having a chat. I was with my friend as well.

"I got a notification - a little message saying I’d been called up. I don’t think I really reacted too much – it was hard to take in. It was just like a normal message, to be honest.”

A ‘normal’ message, indeed – but while Wharton is accustomed to taking praise and honours in his stride, so too does he seize opportunities to develop himself, as he quickly acclimatised to regular football in England’s top-flight.

The next obstacle, having impressed enough in his first 16 Palace appearances to become a senior England international, was to build on that in the early stages of 2024/25. But there-in lay a new challenge for the midfielder: “I got an injury during pre-season.

“It was affecting me. I could still play. Obviously, we were always in discussions about getting it sorted, and then, to be fair, against Villa [in October] it got a bit worse. So then surgery was almost... well, it had to happen.

“It was difficult just every day being in the gym, seeing the lads training and not being able to go out. And then, obviously, watching the games, not being able to go out and play...”

A challenging time, naturally, with Wharton absent from 16 matchday squads between November and January, returning against Manchester United in February.

The midfielder’s form, however, would return – and how.

He said back in April: “Thankfully, it’s gone well. I’m feeling better now. I still don’t think I’m as fit as I want to be. I’m feeling better and better with each game.

“I always want to get fitter and I always want to get better, so there’s plenty of room for improvement. But, yeah, I’m feeling better, I’m feeling myself – and I really feel like I can go for each game.”

Ominous words for the rest of the Premier League – and, perhaps, England’s international opponents in the coming years.

For this summer's internationals, England head coach Thomas Tuchel intended for Wharton – had he recovered from his concussion – to be a leading figure within the Under-21s' European Championship campaign in Slovakia, but the midfielder proved unable to partake.

Back in March, Wharton still partook in several days’ training with the senior squad, before featuring for the U21s in competitive action.

“He [Tuchel] just said he’s watched a few games, he likes some of the things I can do,” Wharton said of April's international window.

“The training was good, just getting involved, trying to show what I can do. It’s obviously good to try and leave an impression, and train with some of the best players in the world.

“It’s nice when top managers speak highly of you – but obviously if you don’t continue, then the last 10 games before were irrelevant. It was really nice – but I’ve just got to keep working and improving, and putting in performances each week.”

Wharton’s focus – as ever – is on improving his game, a by-and-large unique one as an English midfielder.

At the time of his Euro 2024 call-up, then-Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate said he was the type of player England had missed “for seven or eight years”. Tuchel not long ago said: “I can clearly see the potential he has. He’s looking for key passes. He’s bypassing opponents. He’s always thinking up front. He’s a very strategic player.”

Wharton himself describes his style as: “Simple – just because that’s how I like to play. If there’s a simple pass to play forward, then I’m going to play it in as few touches as possible.

“[It’s] just the way I play football. When I was younger I used to play as more of a No. 10 – more of an attacking midfielder – so I know how you play that position.

“But if I have got the ball and the striker is an option, I’m going to pass to him, as he’s the one that scores the goals. If I can pass it forward to a player who’s going to be effective, score goals, create chances, or get assists, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t pass it to them.

“That’s how I look at my job. I’m not going to dribble through five people and put it in the top corner – that’s not my game. I try and keep it simple, and make it easy for the forwards. If I can get it to them earlier, they’re in more space, and they’ve got more time to pass, or do whatever.”

It’s the kind of footballing simplicity, but elegance, which has seen many a Wharton compilation do the rounds on social media, but the midfielder laughs: “Yeah, they come up – friends send them. You see them from time to time, but you can’t get too ahead of yourself.

“It’s easy to take, from a 90-minute game, two minutes of good things or two minutes of bad things. You just have to keep level-headed and go into every game as though nothing has happened, and it’s a fresh start.

“I’ve never really come out of a game thinking ‘[I’m] satisfied with my performance’. I’ve not had a perfect performance – I probably never will. I don’t know what a perfect performance is ever going to be. Sometimes you might think ‘I’ve done pretty well’, but then I always think ‘I could have done this better, I could have done that’.

“I will watch them – and it’s usually just the good clips, so it’s pretty good to watch! But I always know that there’s somewhere I have not done the right thing.”

Under manager Oliver Glasner and at Crystal Palace, Wharton’s relentless dedication to self-improvement – and driving himself and his team forwards – seems to have found a manager and a football club to match.

“He’s a top manager,” Wharton says of Glasner. “I think you can see it with the way we’re playing, and how together we are as a team. He makes it so clear, in training and analysis, how he wants to play, which makes it so much easier for us as players.

“We have probably two, maybe three meetings before each game, about the opposition and how we’re going to play, how they play, and what we can do to beat them. He makes it so clear to us as to where we can get at them and create chances.

“He’s always calm. At the start of the season, it wasn’t going well, but he made sure we were level-headed. And even now, when we’re doing well, we’re not getting ahead of ourselves."

“He’s very detailed, enthusiastic, and he gets the best out of players. When we do analysis, he’s top, and I’m learning every day.

"He’s helped everyone in the team to get better, and I think there’s a togetherness now between the whole squad, the staff, the fans... everyone."

Little did we know, back then, what was to come at Wembley, with Wharton saying: “We’re in a good moment at this point – but we’ve got to keep it going.

“All the lads are buzzing. Hopefully, we’ve got a lot to look forward to. It’s a big chance for us to hopefully be in with a chance of winning a trophy – but that’s a long way away.

“We’ve just got to take each game as it comes. Hopefully, we’ll have a good end to the season, and have something to cheer about.”

From schoolboy matches under the Wembley Arch, to the prospect of an historic end-of-season for club and country, and the mere prospect of an FA Cup semi-final on the horizon...

A decade on, the stage might've been the same – but Wharton’s will to conquer it, and success rate in doing so, remained unwavering.