Former Crystal Palace defender Rob Holding has said his preference would be to stay in the MLS rather than return to England.
The 30-year-old made a £4m move from Arsenal to the Eagles in 2023, but made just a single appearance for the club in a two-year spell.
A rift with boss Oliver Glasner is the reported turn of events, somewhat backed up by the Palace manager saying “he [Holding] knows the reason, but it is something that stays between Rob and me,” back in September 2024.
Rob Holding has no desire to return to English football
Whatever the situation behind the scenes, it was clearly a difficult for the former Arsenal regular, but his love for the game was resurrected by a highly-regarded manager.
“Things didn’t really work out the way that I’d imagined after leaving Arsenal and going to Palace,” Holding admitted to FourFourTwo. “My love for football died away a bit.
“I was stuck in this rut of, ‘What’s going to happen? Am I just going to call it quits?’ But then I went to Sheffield United just to start playing again under Chris Wilder.
“He revived the love for football in me, just him day-to-day, the type of person he was and the group of lads up there – some of those lads were great. I had such a blast over my six months at the club. It was a really special changing room and environment there.”
Following that loan with the Blades, Holding then made a big move across the Atlantic, signing for Colorado Rapids in MLS – but he stresses this wasn’t the sign of a player looking for one last contract wherever he could get it.
“Coming to the MLS was always something I wanted to do,” he said. “When I first started at Arsenal, I told my agent, ‘I want to play the last years of my career in MLS, I want to move to America and try something different.’
“It just sort of felt like the right time to do it. I was about to turn 30, and I still wanted to come over to the US and have something to give. I didn’t want to wait until I was a 34-year-old.
“I wanted to come here earlier than that, actually play good football and achieve something.”
Some may believe Holding would jump at the chance to return to his home country if the right offer came up, but the centre-back is keen to reinforce the sure-mindedness of his decision.
“I’d never say never [on returning to England], because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “But if it was up to me, I would happily spend my next five or six years, however long I play for, here in the States and trying to win something.”
