Just how association football arrived in Germany is something of a mystery. As a country of many states that were until comparatively recently independent the reality is perhaps that there are as many story as can be dug up but there is perhaps one that is at the core of the story of its emergence at least in Berlin, consequently in Munich, so east and south, and by extension to the USA.

 It begins in the South London suburb of Lewisham with the birth in 1873 of a certain Gustav (Gus) Randolph Manning. He was the son of a Jewish merchant, born in East Prussia, so Germany, with the original name of Wolfgang Mannheimer, who with his family returned to Berlin in the the early 1880s. There father and sons joined the Berlin Cricket Club, where football was also played, and both Gus and his brother, Fred, from 1893, so with Gus aged 20, then were members of newly-formed VfB Pankow.

Gus Manning would study medicine in Berlin, study further in Freiburg in Germany's south-west and then work in Strasbourg, with Alsace then German. In Strasbourg he played for Strabourg FV. In Freiburg he was co-founder, player and first chairman of Freiburger FC. And in 1898-99 in his mid-twenties he was back at VfB Pankow. He would also go one to be Secretary of the Association of South German Football Clubs, represented that association at the first meeting in January 1900 of the German Football Association and became its Secretary in its first eight months, drafting its statutes along English lines.

And then in 1905 he emigrated. It was to the United States, where in 1913 he founded the United States Football Association, was appointed its first chairman, in 1948 became the first American to become a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, was inducted into US National Hall of Fame in 1950 and that same year was instrumental in the reintroduction of Germany into international football and therefore its taking part, indeed winning, the 1954 World Cup. And Lewisham's Gus Mannheimer as G. Randolph Manning is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery.

So where is the connection with Scotland? A team-mate, a fellow forward with Gus Manning at VfB Pankow was Franz John, a photographer, who in 1898 moved to Munich and joined MTV Munich 1879. However, in 1900 because of MTV's refusal to join the South German Football Association John and others left the club and set up their own, Munich Football Club Bavaria, or FC Bayern Muenchen. Indeed, John became its first president, the club itself the city's most prominent and when he stepped down in 1903 and in 1904 returned to Berlin and Pankow, becoming its president, his successor was the Dutch player, Willem Hesselink.

And it is Hesselink, who would be specifically Bayern Munich's link to Scotland and Scottish football. To find out how, simply click on
KillyMcPhersons. But once arrived football in Germany was to follow a path different to elsewhere, not least because of the two World Wars. It can even be agued that the different path continues to this day and in the form of Jurgen Klopp and others has crossed into English football at the top flight. Before the First War, the Great War, for British football coaches Germany was  an open and burgeoning market. The number of them caught in 1914 by the outbreak of hostilities and interned at Ruhleben and elsewhere is indicative. Post-War all changed. The attitude of Kinnaird's English FA with the other Home Country associations was reversed. Ostracisation was attempted. The exclusion of both Germany and Austria from FIFA was demanded and, when it was rejected by the non-British members, the FA left the international organisation and Scotland followed. It meant that for the best part of a decade contact remained minimal with only William Townley returning to Mannhaim and Hamburg from 1921 before somewhat more with the arrival of an Anglo-Scot, a Scot and an Anglo-Irishman, who was perhaps the greatest advocate of them all of the Scottish style of play, respectively in 1924 Jim McPherson at Bayern Munich, Jimmy Lawrence at Karlsruhe in 1925 and in 1927, Jimmy Hogan. He would be recruited first to Dresden and then until 1930 be advisor, basically Chief Coach, for the German FA before moving on to coaching Austria and its Wunderteam, created on his and Hugo Meissl's principles over the previous four years around the particular talents of one of the great players of the period, Mattias Sindelar, and brought to an end by the rise of Naziism and ultimately the Second World War.

And post-Second World War Germany was, of course, divided with one particular person caught still in Dresden and therefore in the Eastern zone. That person was Helmut Schoen, who had already played for his country sixteen times, would escape to West Germany in 1950 and, in going on to be West Germany's national team's assistant manager from 1956-1964 and manager from 1964-78 at six World Cups, a win, a runners-up and a third place, could be argued to be yet another conduit back to Britain of the Scots game in its most contemporary

iteration. 

Dresden