EVERTON'S quest to widen the profile of the club around the world has seen a new link-up announced in Canada.
The Premiership club has officially joined forces with the Ontario Soccer Association and will be providing its coaching expertise to the organisation, which will both help raise revenues and identify potential future players.
Chief executive Keith Wyness is in Canada finalising the initiative, which is called 'Play Soccer', and is hoping that the idea could be extended to other countries.
Wyness said: "Everton was selected from a number of top clubs and we are delighted to be involved. We will be looking at a commercial agreement whereby we tie in with the Ontario Soccer Association allowing us both to profit from new revenue streams.
"We will also be working on another commercial programme to train their coaches, which will be the first step in our bigger plan of commercialising the academy set-up at the club.
"There is the option of working alongside them to try and identify new young talent. We recently hosted one young hopeful at our Netherton training complex."
There are more than 438,000 players in the province, 30,000 coaches and 14,000 volunteers with the 'Play Soccer' project aimed at increasing these figures. Wyness added: "We plan to send our younger teams out to Canada. There is also the possibility of bringing out the first to Canada in the future."