ORLANDO, Fla. – Phil Rawlins has promised that a regular “player exchange” between Orlando City SC and Stoke City is now firmly in the pipeline after the two teams announced a formal transatlantic affiliation prior to the Lions’ game with New York Red Bulls on Friday night.
The Orlando president also insisted there will be more affiliation deals to come, notably with South America, as his team explores new ways of sharing soccer insight across different leagues.
“I fundamentally believe soccer clubs will increasingly create networks like this around the world,” Rawlins insisted. “We're delighted to now have two great partners in Benfica and Stoke City and no doubt will add more around the world as we grow our particular network.
“We have the opportunity to learn from each other and share best practices, insight, and, more importantly, the sharing of players. I don’t want to elaborate on that just now, but I think we will see that in the near future at both youth and senior level.”
This is a formalizing of a relationship that has existed for several years already due to Rawlins’ long-standing ties with his hometown team, where he helped to put them back on the Premier League map after a long spell in the lower divisions.
“It is personally very gratifying for me as I grew up a Stoke fan and was a director and owner at the club for 15 years,” he explained. “But beyond that it is a very significant relationship and today we have the opportunity to take it to a whole new level.”
The immediate benefit for Orlando and their fans will be a 10-day visit from Stoke in July when the English club begins its pre-season campaign. The trip will culminate in a friendly between the two clubs at the Camping World Stadium on July 27.
Stoke chief executive Tony Scholes added that his club has already been tapping into Rawlins’ soccer savvy for quite a while, and that the two teams now have an opportunity to explore new avenues of collaboration.
“Phil’s been a great friend of Stoke City for a long time,” Scholes insisted. “The knowledge that he has gained with Stoke and then here in Orlando makes him one of the imaginative and creative people in the game, and somebody who all of us in football can learn things from.”
