Brian Wellman can see it now. The Carolina RailHawks sign a player. He lights the USL First Division afire and his reputation garners interest from European clubs. Because the RailHawks have a professional partnership with Burnley FC in England, Carolina loans out the player to them, and he plays with the Clarets in England’s second division.

Meanwhile, Burnley has a player they feel could use additional seasoning, and sending him to the United States would be best because that’s where he’d see the most playing time, so they loan that player to Carolina.

“That would be the end game,” said Wellman, who along with his father, F. Selby Wellman, are the majority owners of the RailHawks.

The RailHawks began the journey toward that end game last week, when they hosted Burnley for five days of training at WakeMed Soccer Park. Burnley is a member of the Football League Championship, England’s second division, and just started its preseason. Their stay also included a friendly against the RailHawks’ amateur PDL team, which beat Burnley 2-1 on Thursday. Burnley’s U.S. tour was to conclude in Blaine, Minn., where they were to train and play an exhibition against the USL-1’s Minnesota Thunder earlier this week.

Though it’s still early in the process toward forming an official partnership, which would also include player development and off-season training, Burnley officials were impressed by what they saw in Cary.

“This is a wonderful facility,” said Clive Holt, the longest-serving member of Burnley’s board of directors (23 years). “Fortunately you’ve got good weather, good pitches and you’ve got a slightly recession-proof area. … At the moment, it’s all hope, wish, putting issues on the table and saying, is there a basis for some sort of formal agreement? We wouldn’t have spent the length of time here if we weren’t interested.”

The friendly between to the two sides last Thursday raised a few eyebrows, too. After a scoreless first half, Burnley took a 1-0 lead in the 54th minute after Wade Barrett’s remarkable 60-yard run through the RailHawk defense. But two minutes later, Cary’s Zack Schilawski tied the game on a shot from 12 yards. In the 76th-minute, midfielder Tyler Lassiter lashed a swerving 18-yard shot that dipped into the goal for the game winner.

“[Cary] did very, very well,” Holt said. “I looked at the size of them against ours and went, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen here?’ I was surprised. I thought they played very well. There was one or two players there that would undoubtedly make it in Europe.”

Having European club officials in the audience was certainly an extra bit of motivation for the players, too.

“When you’ve got an English second division team out here, you want to show what you’re capable of,” said Cary’s Michael Callahan, a midfielder who will enter his senior season at North Carolina next month. “I think everyone has a dream to play overseas. Any chance you get, you never know what can happen.”

Several players, including Schilawski, had the opportunity to train with Burnley later in the week. Holt said they were taking a look at some players but would not comment on any one in particular.

More and more in recent years, European clubs are looking to the United States for talent. Never has the U.S. been so rich with the type of players who can cut it in Europe. And from the European perspective, American players aren’t just talented, but they are relatively cheap, too.

European superclubs — the likes of Manchester United, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Barcelona — typically snatch up young talent at the first glimpse of potential, leaving clubs in the lower divisions, like Burnley, to have to work harder to find players. So Burnley has come to the U.S. to take a look.

“I think over the years we’ve heard so much about America and that soccer’s going to take off,” Holt said. “Now with the [David] Beckham situation and MLS, USL-1 and USL-2, things appear to be on the up. … The problem in Europe and the U.K. is everybody’s after the same thing — we’re all looking for the better player.”

Burnley is interested in developing a partnership with the USL because it is easier to negotiate with than Major League Soccer. MLS owns the rights to all its players, so if Burnley wanted to buy a player from that league it would have to negotiate with the league. If Burnley wanted to buy a player from Carolina, it would have to negotiate only with the RailHawks to procure his rights.

The relationship would be beneficial to Carolina, too. If they have that pipeline to Burnley and Europe established, the Wellmans believe that will give them an advantage in the free agent market.

“If I’m going out to recruit a player and that player is considering MLS or any other alternatives, but over here there’s this path, what are the odds I’m going to have a recruiting advantage? Pretty darn good,” F. Selby Wellman said. “So if that allows me to recruit better and it puts a better team on the field, it puts more people in the stands.”

If or when an agreement is reached, it is not then just a simple matter of sending players back and forth. To play in England, any player who is a citizen of a country outside the European Union or does not hold a dual passport within the EU, he must apply for a work permit. A work permit is granted if a player has appeared in 75 percent of his national team’s competitive matches during the previous two years and that national team is among the top 80 in FIFA’s world rankings.

If the player doesn’t meet those criteria, he and the club must appeal for a work permit. They have to demonstrate why the player didn’t play for his national team and also demonstrate that the player will significantly improve English soccer and that that type of player is not available in Europe.

“And that’s difficult,” said Holt, whose team successfully appealed for one player this summer and had another one turned down.

But dealing with that issue is a ways off. For now, they’re still just talking. But it’s clear both sides have an interest in going forward.

“I think we’ve gone through the discovery stage,” Brian Wellman said. “Now that Clive’s been here for a week and the players and coaches have been here, their entire organization has seen this. They’ve consumed it, now we get together on a business side and start discussing details.”