Joachim Andersen has revealed his most difficult Premier League opponent, as part of a supporter Question & Answer session in Chicago earlier this week.
The Denmark international is set to enter his fourth season of Premier League football, and third with Crystal Palace, when the Eagles kick off 2023/24 at Sheffield United in under a fortnight’s time.
Prior to that, however, Palace have one more pre-season fixture abroad – against Sevilla at Comerica Park in Detroit on Sunday evening – before returning to south London to face Olympique Lyonnais at Selhurst Park. Both games will be available to watch on Palace TV+, now from just £9.99.
Speaking with supporters at an event held at H.O.M.E. Bar as part of Palace’s pre-season tour of Chicago, Andersen admitted: “I think the best opposing striker in the league is Harry Kane.
“Whenever we’ve played, I haven’t had too many direct duels with him, but he’s always dropped deep and is always really good there.
“[Erling] Haaland is quite good as well! Haaland doesn’t affect the game as much but when the ball is around the box, he’s there, so he’s a top striker.
“I’d say those two are the most difficult players to play against.”
After a delayed return to action following international duty, Andersen made just his second start of pre-season against Millonarios in a late midweek defeat, but feels his side are on course to attain the match sharpness required to compete in English football’s top-flight.
“I look forward to competing in the Premier League again,” the defender declared. “It’s always a pleasure to play against the best players in the world, and it’s something that I enjoy doing.
“Hopefully we can do better than last year. We want to finish in the top ten this year, so it will be a good ambition to try to do that.
“The last part of last season was good, so hopefully we can continue that kind of spirit and those kinds of results, and in the end we will do something good.”
Speaking after training in hot and humid conditions in Chicago, Andersen reflected on his pre-seasons prior across spells in the Netherlands, Italy and France – while speaking favourably of Palace’s host nation, and supporters, this week.
He smiled: “When I was in Italy, we did some quite tough pre-season sessions – always double sessions! I was running in the morning in the mountains, so that was really tough, but here so far at Palace it’s been good – although not as tough as that!
“It’s amazing that fans here in America get up so early to watch us. It’s incredible that they do that, and that the football is good enough for you do so – it’s great. We really appreciate it.
“I was talking to my missus about this the other day: we’d like to do a road trip around America. It’s really interesting, and there are so many interesting places. We’d like to travel far around the country and see what’s going on around here.”
