August 26 2010

Edgar Davids

Football superstar Edgar Davids has spoken of his excitement at returning to football with Crystal Palace.

The former Holland international, 37, has joined the Eagles on a one-year pay-as-you-play deal and made his debut in Tuesday's Carling Cup defeat at Portsmouth after two years on the sidelines.

Davids said: "It is very exciting to be playing again. I love to be competitive and as long as you have the energy and the ability to play at a certain level, then it is always better to play at that level then if you played with an amateur team.

"The trigger for me to get back to playing was after the chat with George [Burley] because he was very enthusiastic and very charismatic.

"I used to watch Wright and Bright and they played good football, which stuck with me, but also they have a lot of talent coming out of the academy. The important thing for me is to have fun and enjoy myself.

"I don’t underestimate the Championship, it is very competitive, very physical and for me it is a challenge to be playing football again.

"Every team has a different style of play but they all have the same objective and that is to win, so we need to prepare ourselves and try and win every game."

Davids was aware of Palace's financial troubles and tried to help out through his twitter page.

He said: "On my twitter, there was a guy who was telling me about the club being in trouble and he said ‘can you help us out?’

"I told all my followers to go and support Palace and after a couple of weeks I got another message saying thank you, so it is good when you can help somebody to help somebody."

He added: "We need to cultivate the talent we have. I have seen a lot of talented players, so we need to make them into the players that they can become because talent alone is not enough. We have to exploit that and see what it can bring us.

"I hope they can look up to me but I also hope that they think that about their other team mates because it is important that it is a team and not just Edgar Davids but Crystal Palace."