Everton explore Dundee partnership link-up
Everton and Scottish championship side Dundee Football Club are exploring the possibility about an informal link-up that would see the clubs sharing ideas to improve their respective academies and also see some Everton youngsters join the Scottish club on-loan.
Dark Blues boss Paul Hartley and director John Nelms travelled to Merseyside to meet up with Everton boss Roberto Martinez and took in the Under 21’s Merseyside derby while there were here.
Roberto Martinez is keen to improve links to Scotland having had great success in bringing Scottish talent to the Premier League, including James McCarthy, James MacArthur and Sean Maloney. This link up would hopefully provide Martinez with some options on the best talent coming through the Dundee ranks.
Nelms said of the partnership: “We’ve been talking about doing this for a long time,” said Nelms.
“It’s always been in our plans.
“Paul, myself and Scot (Gardiner) have a lot of contacts within the game.
“That’s something we need to utilise and begin to cultivate.
“Not only that we’ve used this as a scouting mission.
“We wanted to see how things were done at such a high level down south.
“We’re doing a lot of work on our academy at Dundee. It is important that we see how things work elsewhere.”
“Everton said that they would love to have some of their players playing up in Scotland,” said Nelms.
“And, for us, we would love to have some of them with us at Dens.
“In the future, you may even see Scottish players from these type of clubs coming back up to gain experience.
“This will be the first of many trips up and down the road — we want to strengthen our relationships with a number of clubs.
“Everton is just the first club in this process. There will be many others, too.”
According to reports, Everton also have formal arrangements in place with AC Milan and Dynamo Houston.
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