And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
In 1899 Lomas Athletic failed to win the Argentine League, in reality the Buenos Aires league, for the first time in five years. It would finish third of just four, reduced from seven the previous season, behind the winners, Belgrano, and Lobos, a mainly Irish team from a provincial town about 65 miles outside Buenos Aires. The reasons were threefold. Arnot Leslie, the managerial inspiration for the club had stepped down, returning to the family home to Scotland, both Leslie boys, his brothers, had transferred allegiance, to Lobos, William playing centre-half, Scottish centre-half, and finally the team had failed to fulfil two fixtures.
However, far from the league as a whole reducing in size it was actually expanding; the contagion was taking hold. The four topped by Belgrano and playing each other twice were the First Division. The new Second Division would be won by Banfield but runners-up and effectively promoted would be a new, young team of school children emerging from
Alexander Watson Hutton's English High School that in essence would be the future of Argentine football for the next decade.
1899 would also see a first manifestation of Argentine football politics. In the closed season Lobos would be excluded from the league officially on that grounds that it was from outside the Buenos Aires area. However, the reality was that the other teams found it too costly to make the journey from the capital to fulfil fixtures but did not want to default and thus lose points. The response in 1900 was for a number of Lobos players to join or rejoin other teams. The expansion of the league continued. A third division was added. It would be topped by English High (Youth Division) further ensuring a conveyor of young talent. Banfield would again take the second division title and the First Division would be won by English High's senior team consisting of:
J. McKechnie; Jorge Gibson Brown, Walter Buchanan; Andrew Mack (captain), Charles Buchanan, Ernesto Brown; H. Jordan, Eugene Moore, S. Leonard, John Moore and W. A. Jordan
It was a families' concern. The two Moores, the Buchanan brothers and McKechnie had all come from Lobos. Added to them were two Brown brothers, Jorge and Ernesto, George and Ernest, the Jordans and 24-year old, Anglo-Irish, Andrew Mack, nicknamed El Colorado after his red hair, who had arrived in Buenos Aires in 1897 and was teaching at the school. Between them they had the championship won with two games to spare and it would be the starting point for league wins in nine of the next eleven years under the name they would be known by from the following season,
Alumni.
Jorge and Ernesto Brown’s grandfather, James, had been among the first British immigrants to arrive in Argentina after its independence. It was he and his wife, Mary, with two hundred and twenty others, mainly Border Scots, who had arrived on the Symmetry from Leith in 1825 destined for an agricultural project just south of Buenos Aires. It had failed but the family had remained in their new homeland and prospered. Eight of Scots-Diasporan James and Mary’s grand-children, seven the sons of their youngest boy, also James, and his equally Diasporan wife, Eliza Gibson – Jorge, Ernesto, Eliseo, Alfredo, Carlos, who had learned his football in Britain, Tomas and Diego, the eldest, and their cousin, Juan – were to play for Alumni, with the first five of the brothers and their cousin over almost a decade and half also representing Argentina.
Jorge had begun playing as a young teenager for the English High second team, had joined Palermo in 1896, when English High had stuttered and dropped out of the league, then Lanus in 1897 before returning, aged 20, in 1900, to the old-boys’ team and remaining for twelve seasons. From 1902 he would also go on to play for Argentina twenty-three times.
Eliseo, with Alumni the top scorer in the league from 1906 to 1909, would play ten times for the national side. Carlos would play twice for his country. Alfredo, who would be league top scorer in 1904, would feature in nine internationals. Ernesto, a left-back, played twelve times, whilst their cousin, Juan, with thirty-six caps over a decade, would have the most appearances of all, his last being in 1916.
In 1901 Alumni was to win all its games, conceding just one goal and already had the trophy with three games to go. It was also the year of the first, if unofficial, friendly against Uruguay, won 3:2 by Argentina. The winning national team was entirely British. It consisted of Robert Rudd in goal, the two Leslie brothers, A.C. Addecott, plus Edward Duggan, Harold Ratcliff, Andrew Mack, Spencer Leonard,
John Anderson, the captain, and Charles and George Dickinson. There were no Browns. They were perhaps too young or even too native.
In 1902 Alumni drew one of its eight games, won the others and again took the championship with three games to go with much the same team that saw the addition of Patrick Dillon and a third Brown, Carlos. It also saw the début, before he left for schooling in Britain, of Arnold Watson Hutton, now aged 15, the son of Alexander Watson Hutton, English High’s principal, and his first wife, Edinburgh teacher, Margaret Budge and the first game ever played by an official Argentinian, international team. Once more against Uruguay Argentina won 6:0 away with a line-up all drawn from Buenos Aires. It was a team consisting of one of the Leslie brothers, William, the Buchanan brothers, John Moore, the captain, Edward Morgan, Ernest Duggan, John Anderson once more and Charles Dickinson, players born in Scotland, England, perhaps a Welshman in Morgan, now captained by the Irishman. In addition, for the first time it also included both a non-British player by either birth or background and two Argentine-born, Diasporan Scots; Spanish-born Jose Buruca Laforia was in goal with both Jorge and Ernesto Brown outfield.
However, that year Buenos Aires did not have it all its own way. In the Tie Cup, a trophy donated by the then Argentine League president, Frank Boutell, the final was between Alumni and Rosario Athletic with the provincial team winning by the odd-goal in three but only after three replays. Rosario was for the first time on the national footballing map in a year that saw the foundation of the Argentine Football Association, incorporating its and the Buenos Aires’s leagues, with on the one hand affiliation to the Football Association in London, but on the other, as legally required, the drafting the new organisation’s rules and conducting of its meetings in Spanish.
In 1903 Alumni won the Buenos Aires league once more. Seven of its squad were also included in the Argentina team with the first players of Italian and German origin, Emilio Firpo and Gottlob Weiss. However, it lost at home to Uruguay, 2:3; a defeat that was perhaps the first sign of what was to come as a first generation of Argentine players, including those from Alumni, began to age. In 1904 Alumni, defeated in two games and drawing three, would lose the league title for the first time, to Belgrano.
However, in 1905 status quo would be restored but only in the last game of the season and by Alumni ceasing to have any pretence of being an Old Boys team. It was now playing five Browns and had recruited, with Gottlob Weiss playing up front and Buruca in goal.
1906 domestically produced much the same result but with a different format. The First Division was formed of eleven clubs and was split into two sections, topped by Lomas and Alumni respectively with Alumni winning the play-off. Just two Browns played in that final match but they were joined by Arnold Watson Hutton, now twenty and returned from his studies. He had been doing a degree in medicine that he was never to complete.
Internationally too there was success. With a nineteen player squad that included at least ten Alumni players, including four Browns and Watson Hutton, and Zenon Diaz, the first Argentinean player of non-European descent and the first from
Colin Bain Calder’s Rosario Central Argentina won both the new Lipton and Newton Cups against Uruguay. The former was donated by
Thomas Lipton, the Scottish tea magnet. Bain Calder would live just long enough to see it, dying in 1907.
It is also with Zenon Diaz's début in 1906 that the slow Argentinian-isation of football in the country in general and its governance seems to have begun. The first Argentinean-born president of the Argentine Football Association, Florencio Martinez de la Hoz, was elected that same year but football politics seemed again to have reared its head. Just as quickly he was replaced by Emilio Hansen, not British but half-Danish and half-Irish and definitely still Northern European.
On the field 1907 saw not only the most emphatic, but also perhaps most Scots-Diasporan Alumni team of all. In goal was Duncan, a replacement for Buruca. Six Browns were playing, plus William Ross. With the addition of Charles Lett, Henry Lawrie and still Gottlob Weiss together they won the league by six points as well as the domestic Jockey and Tie Cups. It was also the year that saw increasing crowds and therefore money and Ferro Carril Oeste joined the league; in the Second Division as Argentina won both Cups, the Lipton, in front of crowd of 7,000, and the Newton. In doing so a new name – 20-year old Colin Campbell of Estudiantes, was added to the list of Argentine internationals, before too moving on, to Chile.
After 1907 it might have been expected that the Alumni crown might slip once more but the extent must have been something of a surprise. They were beaten both home and away by first Belgrano and then Estudiantes with the former winning the league with Alumni only runners-up. Belgrano was a good team but, as John Harley, the Scot, newly arrived in Argentina, who was to become one of Uruguay’s great players, took the field with Ferro Carril Oeste, it was perhaps the rise of Estudiantes with their “non-British players”, including the now regular international, Maximiliano Susan that was to prove more significant in the longer term. It marked the beginning of the end of British dominance.
Four international games were played in 1908, three against Uruguay and the first ever against Brazil. Two captains were used, both Brown brothers. In the Lipton Cup, it was Jorge with the honour. Alfredo still played, as did Ernesto, joined by four British players, plus Susan of Estudiantes and three more non-British including, Jose Viale, the first international from Rosario’s Newell Old Boys. The result was a 2:2 draw. In the Newton Cup Argentina were to win 2:1. Alfredo Brown resumed the captaincy in the game where the national team wore blue and white vertical stripes for the first time. Ernesto Brown also played but Jorge was not there, replaced by his brother, Eliseo, joined by cousin, Juan Domingo – four Browns with the Diasporan Scots-German combination of Watson Hutton and Weiss up front.
Against Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in July 1908 five Browns – a returning Jorge, Juan Domingo, Alfredo, Ernesto and Eliseo - and Browne and in goal, William Campbell, all from Alumni were to play. They were joined from Belgrano by Charles Dickinson, plus Susan, Amadeo Vernet and Lucio Burgos. Burgos was to score two and Susan the third in 3:2 victory for the visiting side in front of 3,000 spectators.
In the Premio Cup, in the last international of the year, Uruguay was to win 1:0. Of the Brown brothers only Eliseo dropped out as, perhaps surprisingly after his Brazilian brace, did Burgos. Two Susans played; Maximiliano joined by Jose, perhaps a brother, as other players were rotated and Watson Hutton and Weiss returned in attack.
In the 1909 season normal league service seemed to be resumed. It was won at a canter by Alumni, by eight clear points, one part of a clean sweep. It also won the Tie Cup and defeated Newell’s Old Boys in the Jockey Club Cup. Tottenham Hotspur, just post-John Cameron, played Everton in an exhibition match in Buenos Aires, 2:2 draw, Everton beat Alumni 4:0 and Hugh Wilson, Argentine-born but likely to be another Diasporan Scot, took over the presidency of the Argentine Football Association from Emilio Hansen.
In the Lipton Cup that same year Argentina were to win 2:1 with a team not hugely changed from the final international game of the previous season, the one of interest being a name, Edward Rothschild, resonant with an elitism that in Argentina was on the wane. The Newton Cup was to be drawn and used as a chance, with three Browns in the team, to blood or give more experience to several British and Argentine players from a squad of 18.
Alumni was to win the league title again in 1910 but by a smaller margin and Estudiantes the Cup in a year that should perhaps be regarded as a turning point for the Argentinian game. In the annual Argentinos, including the Browns, versus Britanicos game the result was an emphatic 5:0 win for the former. And in the same year the once mighty Lomas was also beaten 18:0 by Cup-winners, Estudiantes. The verdict was that the Britanicos could no longer field strong enough teams. British player-power had diminished and off the pitch it would soon follow, never to return.
When it came to international matches in 1910, however, with a squad of twenty-seven players, the change was not wholly apparent. In the Honour Cup four of the Brown brothers played, with only three non-Britons in the team. Much the same was true of the South American Championship game against Uruguay that was lost 4:1. Three Brown brothers played, plus Watson Hutton. Four Argentinians were included including two from Newell’s Old Boys but there was also a third player from Rosario, 19 year-old Anglo-Argentine, Juan Enrique “Harry” Hayes of Bain Calder’s Central. Both he and his brother, Ennis, known in Spanish as Ernesto, were to a feature in Argentina’s international team over the next decade.
And Hayes must have played well. He was retained for the next game, the Lipton Cup. The three Brown brothers were also there, along with Watson Hutton and Susan in what, alas, was second defeat, Uruguay winning 3:1.
The two defeats in succession seemed to produce a reaction. The team for the next Cup game was radically different, perhaps reflecting disquiet but also being the first indication of the shifting, domestic footballing plates affecting internationals. The only Brown brother on the field was Juan Domingo. Watson Hutton retained his place and Rothschild was recalled. However, the captain was changed and there was only one other Briton in the team, one of just three, and for the first time a minority. Improvement seemed to result – the match was drawn – but it was not to be sustained. In the next international Cup game, as ever against Uruguay, the last of the 1910 season, the same team was beaten, and well beaten at that, 6:2.
Alumni won the Buenos Aires championship again in 1911, but only after a play-off against Porteno. Rosario had a flourishing league of its own and where Newell’s Old Boys would take one of the cups. Understandably too there were changes to the international team. Jorge Brown was restored for all of that year’s five games, alongside Juan Domingo. For two of them there was also a recalled Ernesto and for one, Alfredo. Six Britons returned, two more were blooded and there was some improvement. Uruguay still won the Lipton but Argentina was to take the Newton Cup by the odd goal in five.
Then two of four Browns would be dropped. The dynasty was coming to an end and there were other, major changes just over the horizon. The year would see two retirements; Arnold Watson Hutton from playing and critically his father from English High, with the result that at the beginning of the 1912 season as a club Alumni was gone. It withdrew from its first game. Its remaining games were annulled and problems that had been there for some time both for the club itself and for Argentine football in general fairly rushed to the surface.
Those problems might be said to have started in 1905 when the San Isidro club had suggested the name of the AFA should be changed to the Spanish ‘La Asociacion Argentina de Football’. The suggestion was ignored until 1908, when it was formed not to replace but as a rival to the AFA. It attracted some smaller clubs but did not last long. There were also financial arguments, which had resulted in the setting up of a third body, the Federacion Argentina de Football, which proved less fragile. By 1912 clubs in Greater Buenos Aires were truly split between the two, effectively between not "British" and "Crillo", remembering that many of the "British" players were Argentine-born so crillo too, but between "English" and "non-English", that is Spanish with Italians. It might seem strange that there should be such a distinction but remember that with Britain forces having invaded Buenos Aires and been repulsed not just once but twice in 1806 and 1807 and planning to invade again probably the following year there was historical animosity to British control that with the Falklands-Malvinas continues to this day.
So in Argentine football in 1912 there was on the one side Hugh Wilson and on the other, Dr. D. C. Aldoa, respective presidents of the two organisations. And as if problems off the pitch were not enough there were others on it. In a game between the two Estudiantes teams, from Buenos Aires and La Plata respectively, both in the Argentine Football Association, the referee was assaulted. The La Plata team was blamed and its ground closed by the powers-that-were. It promptly withdrew from the AFA. Porteno followed in sympathy and this on top of Alumni meant Hugh Wilson's AFA had lost three clubs in short order, of which Alumni was no more than just the best-known.
There were said to be two main reasons for Alumni’s demise. The first was a shortage of players, not yet because of the War, this was still 1912, but due to the fact that, although it did admit players, who had not attended the English High School, it was rare and new blood was clearly not coming through. The second was that Alumni was losing money because very much amateur in ethos it donated its income to charity. There also seems to have a lack of will and this simply have been the result of the Watson Hutton Snr's retirement. Arnold, his son remained an Alumni member but with father’s departure the glue that had held the club together seems to have failed. Active players moved on, the Browns to Quilmes, and Alumni very rapidly became a sad shell of what it had been. On 24th April 1913 it was dissolved. All members would be invited to the dissolution assembly but only seven attended.
With the footballing demise of Alumni in 1912 the Argentine Football Association also disaffiliated from the English FA and became an independent member of FIFA. Its league consisting of just six teams, in comparison to the Federacion Argentina de Football’s eight, was unsurprisingly won by a Quilmes, bolstered by Browns. In that same year five international games were also played, all against Uruguay. Argentina was to lose three, draw one and have just one win.
In the first Jorge Brown was captain, playing alongside Ernesto and Juan Domingo. Harry Hayes was also included with Wilson in goal but there were five more non-British players in front of him and the final team member, with an Irish-Argentine sound to the name, was William or Guillermo Dannaher from Rosario’s Tiro Federal. Then in the two that followed, Cup games, it looks as if there was agreement, tacit or otherwise, between the two rival leagues to allocate one to each. It was a good sign. There was cooperation but there was also dilution of talent and both were lost. Some improvement was then achieved in the next game, in the Newton Cup – it was a 3:3 draw – but it was with a team that reverted to a core of British players, including Watson Hutton, tempted out of retirement, and now two players from Rosario Central, Harry Hayes plus Pablo Molina. And the improvement in the Argentine performance was continued in the next and last game of the 1912-season – the Copa Montevideo. The away team from the south side of the River Plate was to win 3:1 but with a line-up that seemed to revert but actually would ring the changes everywhere. Jorge Brown was no longer captain. In fact he was not even in the team and had played his penultimate game for his country. His cousin, Juan Domingo, took the arm-band, there was a new goalkeeper and five completely new faces.
The international changes were in a way mirrored in Buenos Aires club football. Perhaps the Argentine Football Association decision to distance itself from the English FA and join FIFA was the was the catalyst for re-energisation. But whatever the cause in 1913 the AFA went from six to fifteen members, the additional nine new clubs including returning Banfield, Ferro Carril Oeste and Boca Juniors. It was won in a play-off by Racing Club, a team without a single player of British origin.
The Federacion Argentina de Football also increased in number by two and was won by Estudiantes of La Plata as the stand-off between the two organisations continued. There were still two parallel, Argentina teams. Different competitions were contested by the rivals. The Copa Roque Saenz Pena, a new one, still between Argentina and Uruguay but played over two-legs was AFA’s. Juan Domingo Brown was captain for both matches, the first drawn and the second a win for Argentina, of a team with Watson Hutton one of just two Britons. In the Lipton Cup two, again AFA’s territory Diasporan British players became one with the non-appearance of Watson Hutton. He had played his last international. The Premio Cup, however, appeared to be FAF’s. Of the Copa Roque Saenz Pena team none played in it. The eleven that took to the field was largely based on two FAF clubs, Argentino de Quilmes and Gimnasia e Esgrima, both from Greater Buenos Aires, and Rosario Central, previously with the AFA. And it was Rosario Central that supplied the captain. The honour fell for the first time to Harry Hayes and he was successful as Argentina won 2:0 in what was to be the last success of the year. Two more games were to be played. Both were 1:0 losses, seemed to be AFA’s and featured one last hurrah from Jorge Brown. He would with Juan Domingo alongside him play and captain for the last time.
At this point, however, it appears that the ridiculousness of the situation, in which Buenos Aires football found itself finally struck home. At the end of the 1913 season Wilson stepped down as President of the AFA, as did Aldoa of the rival FAF. It was a planned move as the two leagues continued for the time being but one which facilitated reconciliation. Racing Club won the 13-strong, Argentine FA’s league ahead of Estudiantes and Porteno the eight-club Federation league, at which point the two amalgamated at the end of the 1914 season. Realities had to be faced; realities with regard to the AFA that would only be exacerbated by the beginning of the First World War, with players with European allegiances returning home and just one international being played against Uruguay as ever and lost 3:2. Not a single British name featured in the team.
For the 1915 season Adolfo Orma took the helm of a Buenos Aires league that was twenty-five strong and retained the AFA name. He was to stay for two years, when another Aldoa, Ricardo, was to step into his shoes. They would together oversee the end of the British period of control of the Argentine game and with it thirty years of Scottish influence but not quite yet of British club and player presence. The combined league would won by Racing Club with no British input. The same was not true of international football, which once more returned with three games, the Premier, the Lipton and the Newton Cups. Juan Domingo Brown returned as captain in the Premier Cup, which Argentina won 3:2. And both Harry and Ennis Hayes also played.
Again domestically 1916 seemed to be a continuation of the previous year. There was a successive win for Racing Club of a now 22 club league. However, it was the bottom of the table that was more significant. Quilmes, the last really British club, after Alumni the second home of the Browns, was relegated with just 8 points from 21 games. Yet, internationally in spite of relegation-to-come Juan Domingo Brown, captain of Quilmes, was still considered good enough to be chosen for the first ever Copa America.
It was held in Buenos Aires. Four teams took part – Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. Three games were played by each team. Argentina beat Chile easily, with Brown scoring two penalties but would then only draw with both Brazil and Uruguay. Uruguay would win the competition having beaten both Chile and Brazil and it was an event not without controversy and significance beyond football. The controversy had come when Uruguay played Chile in the opening game. The Chileans objected to the two Black players, Isabelino Gradin and Juan Delgado, in their opponent’s eleven. The Uruguayans were accused of selecting “Africans", with Chile’s mood no doubt not helped firstly by Gradin scoring twice in the match. Nor would it have been improved when in the game against Brazil Chile faced another “African”, Arthur Friedenreich, with a German father and a Black, Brazilian mother. The significance beyond football came in the game between Uruguay and Brazil. It was the first international ever played with Black players on both sides and, as it happens, Gradin scored for his country and Friedenreich for his.
And still in 1916, on returning to the normal, annual internationals against Argentina, Uruguay would also come out overall victors, drawing one, losing one but winning two. In the first game, a 0:0 draw, Rosario Central's Zenon Diaz was Argentine captain. The Lipton Cup, won by Uruguay, saw the captaincy returned to Juan Domingo Brown. The Hayes brothers again played as did two new faces from the Hayes’ and indeed Diaz's club, Rosario Central, four in all. Then there was the two-legged Trofeo Circular. In the first Argentina was to give Uruguay a 7:2 thumping. Again Juan Domingo was captain, playing with Ennis Hayes but no Harry, but it was to be the last game for the last of a generation as Brown retired from international competition. In the second leg, the final game of 1916, Zenon Diaz resumed as captain, Harry Hayes returned in a team that otherwise had a settled look about it and no new players were otherwise introduced as the Uruguayans won.
The Hayes brothers would continue to play until 1919. The British presence in Argentine national football trickled on and would do for another three years in the shape of Edwin Clarke of Porteno. He might have been expected to have been the last in a twenty-year, unbroken line begun by Watson Hutton,
Lamont,
Leslie and others except the Brown dynasty would have one ultimate fling. Sixty years later Jose Luis Brown, a direct descendent of the Brown brothers’ and cousin’s grandfather, James, was to play professionally in Argentina itself, in France and in Spain plus thirty-six times for his country. A defender he would score at international level just once; the opening goal of the 1986 World Cup, which would see Scotland there too, eliminated in the first round with one single point. It would be gained against Argentina's oldest footballing foes, Uruguay, where football as in Argentina began with Scots but unlike its neighbour across the River Plate that influence has never gone away.