Rangers could be set for a link with South American team Rangers de Talca with a delegation from the Chilean club set to arrive for talks at Ibrox this week in a trip financially backed by former striker Sebastian Rozental.
Rangers de Talca – from the south of Chile – were founded by an exiled Scotsman 119 years ago and are named after the Ibrox club. And they have sent a four-man delegation to Scotland for talks with Rangers to set up future links and arrange a friendly in either Chile or Glasgow in the future. The trip has been backed by Rozental who became the first South American player at Rangers and was at the time the most expensive Chilean in the world when he completed a £4million move to Ibrox in 1996.
Rangers de Talca are trying to copy another Chilean club – Everton de Vina del Mar – who agreed a partnership with their namesakes from Liverpool and played a friendly match at Goodison Park. The club's president Felipe Munoz explained on departure to Scotland: "We have been working on this project for four years.
"This has taken us a great deal of effort to arrange the trip to Scotland. We will go to the Ibrox Stadium to see the team and meet the people at the club and we hope that this is the first step to play, at some point, a friendly match in Chile or Scotland. We want to form an alliance with Rangers. There are high expectations. It is a tour from which we hope a lot to be able to get closer to Rangers and that can be translated into sports, commercial and institutional links."
Gio van Bronckhorst 's side host Kilmarnock in their first home Scottish Premiership fixture of the season. They came from behind to secure an opening day win at Livingston, but crashed to a damaging 2-0 defeat against Union Saint Gilloise in the Champions League on Tuesday.
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