EDGAR Davids has expressed his excitement at playing competitive football again with Crystal Palace.

The former Juventus, Ajax and Barcelona midfielder started Tuesday night’s Carling Cup tie at Portsmouth, his first game in two years, and explained exactly why he decided to sign for George Burley’s Eagles.

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 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.”

Ironically before any talk of a possible return to football was mentioned, Davids had an eye on the off field problems at Palace and even played his own part in helping the club he later signed for.

He revealed: “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.”

Looking to the season ahead, Davids knows exactly what he is expecting from the Championship as he settles into life in the second tier of English football.

He said: “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’ arrival sparked a huge amount of excitement around SE25 but the player himself doesn’t want the emphasis to be on him but rather the club to focus on its tradition of allowing youngsters to flourish in order to succeed.

He said: “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.”