On his preparations for the game, he explained: “They are one of the [biggest] names in Colombian football. If you’d asked me to name Colombian teams, I would name them because they’re very famous through the years.
“If it had been a competitive game in a competition, we’d have prepared very diligently for the game and I’m sure Millonarios would have done as well, but we regard this as a pre-season friendly against a team with very good players and very good pedigree, and we’re going to use it to very much make certain we take the next step forward towards our important game on the 12th August, our first game of the season [away at Sheffield United].
“After this fixture we only have two games left – playing in Detroit against Sevilla, and then at Selhurst Park against Lyon – so it’s important for us to do the best we can in this game and continue our preparations, and make certain we get some minutes into our players as well.
“You won’t see the same Crystal Palace XI play the whole 90 minutes as yet, because we still want to use some of our players and give them some game time.
“We’ll make certain that we hopefully get some game time into all of our players, so that when we have to choose a group of XI to play 90 minutes, it won’t be anybody who hasn’t had some minutes against quality opposition like Millonarios.”
Hodgson also noted the growing interest in Premier League football within the United States, explaining: “There are several reasons why teams are coming over from England.
“Partly the Premier League is interested in promoting its brand in America, where we already have enormous interest, but perhaps more importantly is that more and more clubs in England are being owned or part-owned by Americans who are quite keen to see the clubs they owned playing on home soil.
“We realise that the game in America is growing and improving all the time from those early days when they tried to start off the league by just importing foreign players. Now, we have a very solid league which produces players like Chris [Richards], along with many others who have come from America to make a career there.
“I think coming to America, to some extent, to promote our club and our brand of football, is a way of really of trying to perhaps promote more interest from the American public in English football.
“They’re the main reasons we come here, and of course when we do come here, you stay in very, very nice hotels wherever you go, we’re treated royally, so it’s really a question of: ‘why would you not want to come?’
“If it were an hour’s flight away, we’d come all the time!”
