Crystal Palace boss Patrick Vieira says he values his time in MLS as New York City FC coach.

The Palace manager moved to the 'Big Apple' in 2016, and he immediately felt right at home.

“I enjoyed it straight away," he told the club's website. “I had a couple of friends living in New York for a while, like Youri Djorkaeff who played with me in the French national team.

“He really understood what New York was about and he made me understand the city really well – and things to do in the city... New York is a good place to live."

Professionally, though, it was a huge challenge: a first job managing outside Academy football.

“I wanted to challenge myself moving from youth football to professional football," he explained. “I wanted to go to a league where I was getting more pressure, and wanted to test the philosophy that I wanted to implement.

“Of course, moving to New York City F.C. was a really good decision, because I was surrounded by people who were prepared to give me a platform to go to the next level."

Major League Soccer is a very different set-up to European football, from the calendar to the financial regulations, and it took some adapting.

“It's a different way of working, because you have to take a lot of elements into consideration when building teams," Vieira said. “The salary cap is one of them. It's pushing you as a manager to really think about the priority and the quality that you want when you're building the team.

“There are also different levels of players. You have players who came from South America or players who came from Europe and are used to training every day and playing games every weekend, and you have players who came from the draft and have been training three or four times per week.

“So there were different levels of ability of players and it's not something easy for a manager to build a team or build the training session."