Burnley will get first crack at USL stars

8:41pm Thursday 5th June 2008

Comments (6)   Have your say »

By Suzanne Geldard »

ACCESSIBILITY to players is the main reason why Burnley have opted to link up with a United Soccer Leagues side, and not one of the big hitters in the top American division, Major League Soccer.

"All the players in the MLS are owned co-operatively, so there's a problem there if you want to buy players from the MLS you can only buy them by negotiating with the whole league, so USL has more independence so clubs can do transactions in their own right," explained Burnley's oper-ational director Brendan Flood.

"It's easier to get the players, and the good thing about where we will be is that the players will be at a younger age, and when you link into a franchise with a certain state, you automatically get a collective agreement with the youth set-ups within that state.

"Say Carolina, for instance, there are 10,000 kids playing football through their youth set-up and they can come through. If there are any stars we get the first crack at those guys."

Potential transfer targets would require a European passport in order for a switch to Turf Moor to be sanctioned. However, USL president, Francisco Marcos, who is helping the Clarets with their search for an American partnership, has explained a way around the system.

"The nature about the US population is that it's multi-cultural so 60 per cent of the players that you see have a European connection," said Flood. Probably 40 per cent would have to loan them out to Portugal or Belgium and get a registration in Europe so that they could come and play in the UK.

"But the good thing about people like Francisco is that he's strategically organising these relationships so if we, as a club, want to get players who are US born, he can make the connection with a Portuguese club, get a player loaned out and then they can come to the UK to play once they've got a European passport, so they are thinking about all the right ways of successful connectivity."