Departing Stoke City director Phil Rawlins has reveled he came close to buying the club.

Rawlins is leaving Stoke to focus his energies on Orlando City after their acceptance into MLS.

"I would have taken a gamble. Just before we sold our company in the States I would have bid to buy the club," Rawlins told The Sentinel.

"It was December 1999 and I was about three months late on the deal, or I would have beaten the Icelanders to it."

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