Adrian Heath is holding court at his weekly pre-match press conference, and one of the local reporters wants to talk crossbars.

Might it be a good idea to raise it a bit so more goals could be scored for the benefit of goal-hungry American fans? The well-travelled former Everton and Manchester City midfielder – now manager of the newest MLS team Orlando City – responds with good humour.

'Well, soccer's being doing quite well for about 150 years now and if you look at the amount of people who play and watch it's still doing quite well, so I don't really see a need,' he replies with a patient smile.

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Adrian Heath is manager of the newest MLS team Orlando City

Such inquiries are actually becoming fewer and further between, as the world game and the huge US market get better acquainted with each other.

Heath has been here for eight years now and witnessed the process at first hand, going from the backwoods of the USL to the major leagues that Orlando have been elevated to this season.

The years have not dimmed Heath's impish enthusiasm and, now 53, he speaks of the game's expansion with an almost missionary zeal. Perched in the morning sunshine on a bench at City's pristine training facility he talks about the upside of salary caps, what Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard can expect, the humility of his star signing Kaka and his hopes of an eventual rivalry with David Beckham's troubled Miami project.

Steven Gerrard will join LA Galaxy in the summer after spending 17 seasons at Liverpool

Midfielder Frank Lampard has signed a two-year contract with New York City

The aforementioned names' imminent arrival is just one reason why the MLS is achieving a greater resonance on the other side of the Atlantic.

' I think English people are fascinated with America,' says Heath. ' You see the baseball, American football and basketball and wonder whether football can take off here. I'm glad to say I think the only question is how big it becomes.

'Perhaps we have slowly had to educate some of the media. One of the things that has kept football down a bit is that some of the high profile media haven't known the sport, and maybe some people are scared of it. They guard their own sports quite carefully.'

Heath's Stateside adventure began in the unlikely setting of a pub in his native Newcastle Under Lyme, where he bumped into Stoke City director Phil Rawlins.

Kaka is playing out the final days of a distinguished career on the doorstep of Disney World

'He was looking to invest in soccer over here and I had just lost my job at Coventry. I'd been with Coventry to Portland that year for a pre-season friendly and there were 15,000 people there. I thought the game was taking off and so I thought I'd try and get in early.

'I started off at the bottom in the USL in Austin, Texas. Sometimes there were less than 1,000 people in the ground, not great facilities, lot of college kids, but you could see the game growing.

'Now you look at Seattle Sounders and they would be not that far from Man United and Arsenal in average gates, getting 45,000 per game.'

His belief that in ten years the MLS will be world's 'third or fourth biggest league' is fuelled by his daily influx of emails: ' I only have to open my inbox every day to see how many people want to come out here. All the time agents are offering me players who are going to be out of contract in two years' time, big international players who will may be be 29 then.'

Orlando midfielder Kaka has the highest salary in MLS history

While Beckham is still looking for a ground in Miami – last month he made an unusually low profile visit in further efforts to resolve the issue – Orlando sold out their opening game last month at the temporary home of the Citrus Bowl.

'We got 62,000 our first game. That will not be sustained but we are building a 21,000 seater stadium with the capability of going up to 28,000 and we will fill that.'

It helps having Kaka as the club's marquee signing, a superstar in name but evidently not in behaviour, as Heath quickly discovered: 'We went on pre-season to Charleston and we hired a few vans to transport everyone around. He volunteered to drive one of them and then would wait around for the kids who are straggling and the last to leave, to make sure they're not left behind. He's a remarkable person.'

He knows what an impact the involvement of Beckham could also have if he can sort problems out 250 miles south, and admits a vested interest:' I think he has faced an uphill battle on the back of what happened with the baseball there. The city invested millions into the Marlins and they weren't happy with how it worked out with the owner.

Midfielder Heath scored 71 goals in 226 games for Everton

'There's nobody at this club that doesn't want to see David get it off the ground in Miami. Rivalry makes sports, and we could get that going with Miami and maybe Atlanta, which is also a few hours up the road.

' I think David will do it there, it's very difficult for a city to turn down a major league sport over here with all that it brings. One of things that has helped in Orlando is that it's a young city and they want to show it has a lot more to offer than Disney. The city has united behind this.'

Gerrard and Lampard will be coming sooner and, he says, there will be a few culture shocks. ' They will have to get used to the travel for an away game. Six hour flights leaving on Thursday and not arriving back until Sunday night. The time difference, sleep patterns.

'I think they'll be impressed with the athleticism in the league. Six years ago coming here in your mid thirties you could get away with coasting but those days are gone. Frank will be fine and so will Steven because they've got great football brains.'

Heath helped Everton lift eight trophies during his six years at Goodison Park

And they will find a much more level playing field.'The great thing about the MLS is because of the salary cap there is parity and you don't know who is going to win the league. The Premier League is exciting in many ways but you know only three or four teams can win it.

' Nobody is more patriotic than me and I'm very proud to have played for the likes of Everton and Man City. But the thought that Everton might never win another trophy doesn't sit well with me. They were level five years ago with Man City. It's unthinkable that Everton might not win anything again.'

Heath is that rare bird in English football, the traveller, having also spent a season at Espanyol as a player. It has made him a better coach, although he admits his Spanish excursion was not about self-improvement.

'I earned more money going to Spain, one of the reasons we don't export any more from England is that we are the gravy train. If you want to earn a lot of money you stay in England. If you go back to the likes of me, Mark Hateley, Glenn Hoddle, Michael Robinson, the truth is we all went for more money. But it does help you learn.'

Now he is doing something very unusual, having to effectively build a team from scratch after Orlando's 'promotion', working all the time within the salary cap. They currently lie third in the Eastern Conference after six games.

'The bottom line is we have got just under 4 million pounds to work with for 28 players (one of them is his son Harrison). You get three of them outside the wage cap but they count as 400 each against it so there is a lot of juggling.'

Heath never gets homesick, and there is a constant flow of football people passing through from England, usually taking their children to Disneyland.