Crystal Palace Baltimore and their youth teams arrived on the Island yesterday ahead of their festival of football against Bermuda's national academy.

Semi-professional outfit USA Eagles, whose senior team take on Bermuda Hogges at the National Sports Centre tonight, have travelled with their under-15s, under-17s and a reserve team for a series of matches this weekend.

Bermuda Football Association technical director Derek Broadley believes USA Eagles, a feeder club for English Championship team Crytsal Palace, will provide the national academy coaches with a useful early gauge of the standard of their youngsters.

"This is part of what we're trying to do with the national academy – organise more games against overseas opposition," said Broadley, a former academy director at Crystal Palace in England.

"Every time you play against foreign opposition is a good test for our players.

"We haven't been together very long so it will be interesting for the coaches to see how we get along against Crystal Palace Baltimore."

"I'm sure Keith Tabatznik (USA Eagles youth director) and his players are thrilled to be coming to play in Bermuda and I know our players can't wait for the games."

Tabatznik, who spent time as Keith Tucker's Bermuda national team assistant last summer, reckoned the matches would give his players invaluable international experience.

"We are very excited to bring our Crystal Palace USA teams to Bermuda for our first international experience," said Tabatznik.

"We have just been training as a group this spring, so this will be our first test on the field against an outside opponent.

"Getting our players on the same page in the game against a quality opponent will be our biggest challenge.

"We are grateful to the BFA for helping us to be able to play these games and hope that they will be competitive and beneficial matches for all teams.

"Personally I'm looking forward to seeing the new national training centre which broke ground during my last stay on the Island with the national team."