PC - Affiliate Clubs

Affiliate clubs are fast becoming a more and more predominant part of global football and take place for a number of different reasons.

Types of Affiliation (some are a lot rarer than others)

- Local Club used for loans + (Club which hosts your reserve team used for loans)

- National Clubs used for loans

- Continental Loan club

- Continental First option club

- International First option club

- International Link whereby you pay a flat fee per year (a few million+), and this allows you to get the players for free. (only for large clubs and small clubs in third world nations - e.g. Africa) Beveren - ASEC a real life example of this Commercial/Merchandising Link (possible first option included as well in the deal)

You can then also have the chance of clubs being linked increased if the managers like each other... or say if a team's reserves plays its games at the other stadium (e.g. Leeds-York, Arsenal-Barnet etc.)

To request a user club it's very simple, you can either go to the Board Room and make a board request for a feeder / parent club, or you can do exactly the same thing from your Affiliated Clubs homepage. The board will then take this request on and look into a selection of clubs for you to recommend (or not), and at no stage do you have to accept any of these suggested clubs.

Note - Depending on the size of your club it may be impossible for you to request certain options i.e. a club the size of Chelsea won't let you request a parent club.

Managing your relationships is as simple as fulfilling your commitment to each other, and there are some tricks to help you get the most out of your relationship with clubs - for example Manchester United enjoy a good relationship with Antwerp and Sporting CP and have used them in the past to send out players to get the first team football they need in order to get a work-permit.

With these affiliations it's best to start small and work out how each relationship can suit you; and remember, if you think a partnership is no longer pay dividends, or is too financially expensive you can always cancel the agreement.