Plymouth Parkway: Kuwaiti businessman Muizz Mirza wants to take non-league side to EFL

Kuwaiti businessman Muizz Mirza has said he wants to lead seventh-tier Plymouth Parkway into the English Football League.

Mirza has been in talks for his firm, MEC Study Group, to take a stake in the Southern League Premier Division South club.

Mirza has turned his attention to Parkway, who are four divisions below city neighbours Plymouth Argyle, after he said his previous interest in the club's Southern League rivals Gloucester City came to nothing.

"My dream is within the next 10 years to see this club reach the EFL," Mirza told BBC Radio Devon.

"What we're looking into is basically with our partnerships coming in, within the next 12 to 18 months we're going full-time hopefully, if everything falls into the plan that we've got.

"Infrastructure-wise we've got a couple of things which are planned up, our academies, our stadium going up and big as much as we can, so the plan's there."

Plymouth Parkway's co-chairman Mark Russell hopes the partnership can help the club both on and off the field.

Having had calls and face-to-face meetings, he feels the partnership with Mirza can help the club.

"When you first see the email, you question whether it's real," Russell said.

"I think having had the first call with Muizz, it sort of felt that there was genuine opportunity there.

"Obviously, as much as Muizz does research on us, we did some research on Muizz and sort of looked into his business and what he'd done with placements at universities and his relationship with universities.

"It felt that the opportunity would give us something that we could build on and build on the club that was already there."

Mirza's firm helps students from the Middle East and South Asia find university and education places in Europe.

He hopes to be able to use Plymouth Parkway to help students play a good standard of football and also learn about the off-field running of a football club.

And Russell feels that should any investment and partnership come to fruition Parkway could rival Plymouth neighbours Argyle in years to come.

He added: "I've always felt that Plymouth has an opportunity for a good second club and I truly believe that there's the fan base around the south west that would be interested in that.

"There's a lot of work to do, there's a lot of development work that would need doing around the ground, not just around our site but looking at potential other areas that we can expand the business.

"There's a lot of infrastructure behind the scenes - obviously we're a relatively small team and based upon heavily on volunteers.

"We've already started the process of looking at bringing people into the club to support lots of different areas and putting in the infrastructure for partnerships that we're working on in terms of education programmes."

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