GREENOCK footballer Robbie Crawford is living the American dream after joining Charleston Battery as he flies the flag for Scotland along with fellow Inverclyde ex-pat Lewis Morgan.

The former Rangers kid and Morton loanee has come a long way since kicking a ball about with his pals at Battery Park in Greenock.

Since leaving Rangers in 2016, he has played in Iceland, where he experienced Champions League qualifiers with FH, and Finland, where he played in cup finals with IFK Mariehamn.

The midfield ace now finds himself in sunny South Carolina as he becomes the second man from Inverclyde to swap Scottish football to go Stateside in a matter of weeks, following Gourock player Morgan’s switch to David Beckham’s Inter Miami.

Crawford is aiming to become a success for Battery in the USL Championship, and would love the opportunity to play in the MLS in the future.

He told the Tele: “It’s very different here to the Battery Park that’s for sure, it’s sunny for a start!

“Battery play in the USL, which is the second division, but the facilities are very good and the club got new owners in the winter so new facilities are getting built as part of a whole revamp since they’ve come in.

“I’ve joined at the right time. It’s a club that’s on the up and I’ve had a good pre-season with a lot of minutes under my belt.

“I’m at the stage of my career where I want to be hitting my peak and playing as much as I can but I’m excited to get going

here.

“Life in America is great; it’s been a bit of an adjustment with the time difference and such but the first few weeks have been really good.

“I signed a few days before pre-season, so I was able to get back into things straight away with training and

games.

“I had high hopes and there’s a lot of things to be grateful for, especially how everything has come about.

“I’m living the dream for many and I’m hoping to just make the most of it, enjoying my time here in the process and I want to play as many games as I can.

“Of course, it would be nice to get to the MLS in future and join the likes of Gary Mackay-Steven, Sam Nicholson and Lewis Morgan, who are flying the flag for Scotland at the minute.

“It’s up to me to play well and prove myself, but the aim for me at the minute is solely on Charleston Battery and the season ahead and hopefully getting some more attention for the USL in the process.

“It’s a good standard to play in going by what training has been like, so there’s no reason why I can’t do that here.”

The 26-year-old revealed that he is eyeing up success at the end of the season after only a few weeks of training with his new team-mates.

He admitted that his American dream very nearly didn’t happen, but thanks to a text message to a former team-mate, he now finds himself in an exciting new chapter of his life.

He said: “There hadn’t been any contact from any teams before I’d left IFK Mariehamn, so it was a risk leaving them, but thankfully I am where I am now.

“I remembered that a former team-mate of mine was already here at Charleston Battery, so I’d texted him and asked if they were looking for players in hope and funnily enough, he said that they might be and I managed to go there on trial for a few days.

“Thankfully I’d impressed them and managed to get myself a deal pretty quickly.

“There’s no reason why we can’t be successful this season and if the pre-season is anything to go by then we’ll definitely have a good year and maybe even win a trophy.

“We’ve played a couple of pre-season friendlies against MLS teams and fared quite well, although we were beaten in the final few minutes in one of the games.

“I’d say we’re in a good position looking forward because they were very good teams in the terms of the way they play.”