Post: Zaha Holdings team is forced to spend 10,000 pounds to clean up garbage caused by tourists camping

The Post reported that the Croydon Athletic Football Club, an eighth-level English football club owned by Stormzy and Zaha, was forced to bear about £10,000 in cleaning costs as travelers dumped large amounts of garbage at their stadiums.

At the end of June this year, a group of travelers broke into Croydon Athletics' Mayfield Stadium. They allegedly destroyed locked doors to enter the site and initially parked six campers. This figure then increased to eight, and the club turned to local councils for help, hoping to intervene quickly. In July, the club said illegal dumping of garbage posed a threat to public safety, wildlife and community sports, causing them to cancel a youth football event. Illegal dumpers take advantage of the opportunity to create a “large” accumulation of garbage. Due to ambulance access issues, the club was unable to lock the door again, and the land was owned by the local council.

Although the club had reported safety issues to the local council and admitted that thousands of pounds of stadium maintenance were forced to be suspended, travelers were eventually deported in July for about two weeks. However, the cleaning is very expensive for this non-league club as it leaves a lot of rubbish behind.

Although the local council informed the club that it would arrange for cleaning, the garbage was stuck on the ground for another three weeks. Croydon Athletics requested local council updates but was told that garbage cleaning was not within the scope of its environmental law enforcement team’s responsibilities.

The estimated cleaning costs could reach £10,000, and several flatbed trucks have transported the garbage from the site. Without the investment from well-known shareholders, the five-digit fee would be more than the club can afford.

Since 2023, the club has been owned by a consortium, including Zaha, Stormzy and former Crystal Palace nursing director Danny Young. Zaha and Stormzy are good friends, partly because they are both from Croydon. Zaha once joined the nearby Crystal Palace and stood out through the club's youth training system, playing for Crystal Palace from 2010 to 2013 and 2015 to 2023, scoring a total of 72 goals. In 2023, he joined the Turkish team Galatasaray in a free transfer and is now playing for the Major League Soccer team Charlotte FC.