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:
Albiceleste
It is 1902. Argentina are taking on Uruguay officially for the first time ever. The captain sits in the middle of of the middle row with, as is the convention, the ball in his hands. His name is James Oswald Anderson. In fact we know the whole of the team. The two officials stand at each end of the back row. On the left is Frank Chevalier Boutell, ex-player with Lomas, its President and also the President of the Argentine Football Association. On the right is another ex-player, a former pupil of the Alex Watson Hutton's English High School, Charles Douglas Moffat. Between them are a son of Scots,
William Leslie, also of Lomas, Walter Buchanan, and one of an Irishman, Edward Duggan. In the front row is Ernesto, one of the two
Brown brothers
in the eleven, the grand-sons of Scots, the Basque-born goalkeeper, Jose Burruca Laforia, and Charles Buchanan, the son of James Buchanan, yet another Scot. That leaves the middle row of Morgan, Moore, Dickinson, Jorge Brown, the other brother, and, of course, Anderson. Moore's father was born in England. Dickinson was probably born in England. Morgan and Anderson's fathers were said to have been English. In the case of Anderson confirmation even comes from FIFA. Its states
"He was born to English parents in Buenos Aires on 18 March 1872, five years after the first recorded football matches in Argentina,"
Except that, typical of FIFA, neither part of the statement is correct. Firstly, although there was a game of foot-ball played in Argentina, indeed in Buenos Aires and in 1867, it was not 11 a-side. It was in fact eight a-side. We know the teams. Nor is there any evidence at all that it was to association rules. The consensus is that it was a hybrid or more likely a version of rules that had been formulated in Cambridge, or since many of the players seem to be Northern English, Sheffield. And what evidence there is seems also to indicate that hands could be used and there were no goals on the pitch. In addition a simple check of records reveals that in 1891 James Anderson is recorded as a student of theology, he studied at Bedford Modern School, born in Buenos Aires, but staying in Hertfordshire at the house of his Uncle Henry. The family is well-off. They have servants. Uncle Henry is a banker. And he is born in Scotland.
In fact Uncle Henry, Henry David Anderson, was born in Glasgow. His father John Anderson, his mother Frances Burn were also both Scots-born. John Anderson is himself recorded in Glasgow as a South American merchant and in 1869 his eldest son, William, Uncle Henry's brother, James's father, also recorded as a merchant in South America and doubtless part of the business, is living and married in Buenos Aires. In addition James Oswald Anderson has a pivotal place not just in in Argentinian football history, lamentably all but forgotten except among a small group of experts, but in Argentine field-sports in general. He was much more than just a prolific forward during the dawn of the game there or the first captain of the Albiceleste, the Argentine national team. His contribution went far further.
On returning to Argentina James Anderson in 1895 joined Lomas Athletic. It was a good choice. As one of the six clubs that made up the 1893 reformation of the Argentine Association Football League it was managed by Arnot Leslie
and, including two of his younger brothers in the team, had topped the table in two successive years. It would do so for three more years until 1898 with its alter ego, Lomas Academy, taking the trophy in 1896.
On the field James Anderson would play until 1902, winning three titles, and said to have scored 31 goals in 37 appearances. It would be his J.O. Anderson XI that in 1901 would face a Uruguay Select team drawn mostly from the Albion club in what was the first, if unofficial encounter between the two countries. It took place in Montevideo, a 2-3 away win. A year later he would again take the "arm-band" when the two countries met for the first time officially. It was a game organised by Boutell, was once more played in Montevideo and in front of a crowd of 5,000, perhaps 8,000, and resulted in a second away victory by six goals without reply. Anderson scored the fifth.
Then off the field he served as the AAFL Secretary and later as Vice-President. Yet at the same time he was also encouraging and organising the other football, rugby. In 1899 he had founded the River Plate Rugby Union Championship, now the Argentine Rugby Union, was its President in 1904-5 before returning to Britain. Between 1906 and 1912 he was back in Britain, during which period he played Minor Counties cricket for Hertfordshire. But he kept a football connection. In 1913, on the occasion of the jubilee, the 50th anniversary of the foundation the FA, the English FA, he would be one of two representatives of its Argentine equivalent. And he would remain in Britain until his death in Reading in 1932, a Diasporan Scot who unpretentiously had been among the main instigators of not just one but two of Argentina's great sporting passions.