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:
Pivot(e)
"Pivot" or even "Pivote" is a word that with regard to football at least is hardly ever heard. It is not part of today's footballing vocabulary. But it is not a concept that has gone away. It is still contemporary. Let me quote you a few lines from a book written in 2013 so hence the present tense by Alec O'Henley about
Malcolm "Calum" Macdonald, one of a number of players probably denied Scotland caps by the Second World War and before that the last pivot to play for Celtic.
"Think about the pivote role Xavi Hernandez performs for Barcelona and you have an idea of the kind of player Malcolm was in his heyday although those who saw him play are quick to tell you he was even better because he could play in so many positions expertly. Not a.....centre-half, rather a playmaker who was willing to receive the ball in all kind of positions, take care of it as if his life depended on it and supply the killer passes..."
However, even in the 1930s it was a word that was rarely heard in England, as least with regard to English players, with perhaps a single exception but a notable one. The player in question was Stan Cullis, another whose career was war-disrupted, who was England's national team's centre-half from 1937 to 1939 and about whom the following has been written, by no less than Tommy Lawton, his England team-mate and centre-forward,
Calum Macdonald himself was called "The Dancing Master". Then,“He had the resilience of a concrete wall, the speed of a whippet and the footwork of a ballet dancer”
And summed up in the Englishman's obituary in The Guardian,"His (Cullis's) use of the ball......was always shrewd"
"In the era of the third back game and the stopper centre-half, Cullis was sometimes misnamed an attacking centre-half; a figure which had long disappeared from British football. But he was certainly what you might call a footballing centre-half. Though strong in the tackle and capable in the air, he was skilful and composed on the ball. The sight of him coolly holding off the challenge of several Scottish forwards when playing for England at Wembley on a snow-covered pitch in January 1942 was one not easily forgotten."
Cullis himself was not a big man. He stood 5ft 10ins tall and weighed barely 11 1/2 stone. By comparison Calum Macdonald was similar, 5ft 9ins and 11 stone 3. Neither were like the giants, who play at the back today. And the reason is simple. The light-weights played an entirely different game. They played centre-half, Calum the attacking
Scottish centre-half in front of wide full-backs and narrow half-backs, that had first been seen at Renton and then Celtic in the person of the converted inside-forward,James Kelly, who also,
whilst Cullis was the English equivalent, more withdrawn, more defensive, in front of narrower full-backs and between wide half-backs, 1-2-3-5, the Pyramid. It was a formation that had first been played at international level for England fifty years earlier, in 1884, and curiously by a Scotsman, Stuart Macrae, and more curiously too, in contrast to Scotland, would continue to be so beyond Cullis for another thirty years. In contrast this was as the Scottish centre-half virtually disappeared in the country of its birth apart from a brief but unsuccessful resurrection in the late 1950s yet continues or continued at least until Xavi Hernandez at just 5ft 7ins, who interestingly when young is said to have greatly admired John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne and Matt Le Tissier, who, whilst described as "midfielders", were not. Barnes began his footballing life as a left-winger, Gascoigne in the Newcastle team replaced George Reilly, a 6ft 4ins forward, who at Watford went on to form a considerable partnership up-front with Mo Johnston and Le Tissier was an inside-forward in all but name. In other words all three were not defenders, who stepped up, but forwards just like Kelly a century earlier, who had moved back to be attacking midfielders, much the same role just a different label."had no great height - something that seemed a sine qua non for a centre half ........"
However, I digress. The centre-back is said to have been an invention of Herbert Chapman at Arsenal and with the arrival of Herbie Roberts in 1926. It's not strictly correct. Roberts did arrive that year but he did not play more first team games than not until the 1929-30 season and by then others were already experimenting not just at club but also international level. In 1926 against Scotland England had played Burnley's Jack Hill, recruited to the club by Secretary, John Ashworth, never a professional player so with no tactical baggage. At 6ft 3ins he was said to have been the tallest professional footballer in Britain at the time, more stopper than mid-field genius. Then in 1927 he was in the team once more and his opposite number for Scotland that day was 6ft 2ins Jimmy Gibson of Aston Villa and ex. of Partick. However, both Hill, who had the sense to marry in Glasgow and die in Helensburgh, and Gilson were re-positioned right-halves. Which leaves the World's first real, international centre-back, even if he only received a single Scottish cap, albeit as one of the 1928 Wembley Wizards, and to begin with was a wing-half, as Bury's 6ft 1ins Tom Bradshaw, signed directly from north of the border by James Hunter Thompson, a Scot but with no apparent playing experience so again no baggage.
That day, the day of Scotland's 1-5 victory over England at Wembley with the home team's only goal coming almost as an after-thought in the 89th minute, Bradshaw's opposite number was the veteran Tom Wilson of Huddersfield. He was a ball-playing centre-half of the old school, winning, understandably given his age, thirty-one, and the size of the defeat, just one cap but a return to a long-line, Cullis included, of just such that would follow. It would run until 1954 and Tottenham's Henry Clarke at 6ft 3ins, called up for one of just two starts, but even he would be replaced by a certain Billy Wright at just 5ft 8ins. In fact the real turning-point was probably in 1960 with Billy Slater and then Peter Swan, Maurice Norman and Jackie Charlton, all six-footers.
Meanwhile Scotland, although after Bradshaw returning to the Scottish pivotal and attacking centre-half, even if in the form of David Meiklejohn it was the
Struth and Rangers' caliper rather than
The Cross, soon changed its mind. Although Motherwell's Allan Craig played in 1932 from 1933 onwards there was first Queen's Park's Robert Gillespie, incidentally the last amateur to captain the national team, then Kilmarnock's Tommy Smith, Rangers' Jimmy Simpson and Middlesbrough's Bobby Baxter. Simpson and Baxter were both tough-tacking six-footers, Gillespie a robust 5ft 11ins. And the trend continued after WWII with Willie Woodburn, George Young, both again of Rangers and Newcastle's Frank Brennan. It was only interrupted by Partick's 5 ft 10 inch or soJimmy Davidson in 1955 and from 1958 to 1960 Celtic's Bobby Evans, good in the air, 12 stone but chunky at only 5ft 8ins and once more a converted right-half, before with the appointment as manager of Ian McColl the big men returned in 1961 in the shape of Billy McNeill, again of Celtic, and have stayed ever since.
And at club level it was much the same. At Celtic the arrival in 1935 of Willie Lyon as the replacement for Calum Macdonald seems to have signalled the culmination of more extensive permanent change. The tall centre-back, there to tackle and head the ball, had arrived at Parkhead and at other clubs timing was much the same or even earlier. At Aberdeen, also very successful particularly from 1935 to 1939, in 1932 Hugh McLaren, 5ft 9ins and a solid 12 stone 10 ins, wore No. 5 shirt. In 1935 Charlie Gavin was the same height and a stone lighter, whilst by 1939 two of the now four centre-halves in the squad were new-style at 6 ft or thereabouts and two still old-style. And this was whilst at Ibrox Macdonald's Rangers' equivalent, David Meiklejohn, had already been replaced by Jimmy Simpson by 1932, when both played but with Meiklejohn moved to right-half until retirement in 1936. However, this is not to say that the new bigger men did not have ability on the ground. Jimmy Simpson is still referred to as a pivot in the Press of the time. Bobby Baxter is described as a stopper, a great tackler, good in the air but was nevertheless two-footed and would join attacks. Yet equally truly their role became rather to stop attacks than, as before, to defend to a certain degree but more still to create.
But for all that Scotland seemed to accept and adopt the new centre-back philosophy with such alacrity its haste to abandon its traditional style of play based around its old-style, attacking centre-half, its pivot, has since proved to be an almost unmitigated disaster. The national team results since the Second World War have with two periods of exception been simply awful. In the late 1940s and early and middle 1950s with the big guys in the win ratio against the acid test of England was a poor 37%. But not only was it no better in the late 1950s but considerably worse still. It was actually zero. Only when Ian McColl took charge between 1960 and 1965 did it return, to 72%, more or less what it had been in the 1920s, since when it has never been half that figure with only 1974-77 with Dalglish, Rioch and Masson playing and not substituted offering any relief. Frankly Scottish football appears to have lost its way yet, whilst modern managers complain about genetics and the lack of giants, the exported small-man pivot elsewhere has gone from strength to strength. In the 1920, 1930 and 1950 it had been the
Harley influenced Uruguay and even the USA of
Bob Millar. In the 1950s it was perhaps Hungary and Bozsik, said to be,
Although as he,"one of the best attacking half-backs in the world, possessing good technique, flair, tactical nous, passing accuracy and creativity".
"suffered from a lack of pace"
and it might be argued he was more Cullis than Macdonald. Then in the early 1970s it was the Total Football of Ajax with Cruyff, of course, but also Arnold Muehren and of the Dutch and from 2006 Spain for a decade with not just Xavi and Barcelona but from 2014 Real Madrid with, of course, Ronaldo as its spearhead but also all 5ft and almost 8 ins, 10 stone and a bit, "footwork of a ballet dancer" and "killer passes" of Luca Modric at its fulcrum, "pivot" by any other name."was often used as a deep lying playmaker where his tackling ability was also helpful."