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:
Rosario
Rosario was and is Argentina's second city, population a million and some but still a fraction of Buenos Aires. It's a port but not one on the sea. It lies two hundred miles north of the capital on the western bank of the mighty River Parana and for a hundred years from its foundation in 1793 it was the gateway, really the only gateway to the northern Argentine interior, an interior opened up by the railways.
And in the middle of the 19th Century railways worldwide meant the British and with the British came football. Rosario was not immune.
There are three figures associated with early football in Rosario, or a least two figures and the son of a third. The two are Scots. The son of the third in Argentine-born, his father English. And it is the third's surname, Newell, that is the most instantly recognisable. One of Rosario's two great teams is Newell Old Boys, Lionel Messi's first club.
Football came to Rosario in the 1880s. The railway, the Central Argentine Railway, started in 1863 had been extended into the interior. It had connected with Cordoba in 1870. But the decisive moment came in 1886 when the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway was completed, offering a service that cut travel time between the cities from three to one day. Almost immediately there were friendly games played between representative teams from the British communities in the two cities, in Rosario's case based on the cricket club.
Alex Watson Hutton, the Buenos Aires-based "Father of Argentine Football" and Glasgow-born was one of those to take part. In 1891, when the equally Scottish,
Alex Lamont, became Secretary of the first Argentine Association Football League (AAFL) one of the teams was the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway, admittedly the Buenos Aires end, was one of the teams. And two of the first committee were also from the company, including F.L Wooley, the league's first President.
Alex Watson Hutton had arrived in Buenos Aires in 1884 to teach at the St. Andrew's Scotch School. In 1886 he set up his own school, the English High. Soon after he recruited again from Scotland and Aberdeen-born teacher,
George Robb. He did not stay long but soon was clearly offered a new position, at the St. Bartholomew's School in Rosario. It was a position he took up in 1888, with no apparent acrimony with and from Watson Hutton, and taking a belief he shared with him. The belief was in sport in education with, as Scots, football at its core, one which would be passed on to a generation of school-boy players.
It seems the joining of Buenos Aires and Rosario by rail produced further investment in the Central Argentine Railway. It had been recruiting and one of those to arrive to a growing town of about 50,000 inhabitants was a young Highlander. He, the first of our Scots pioneers, had been born in 1860 in Dingwall and came to paint the railway stock. He soon became the manager of the Central Argentine Railway paint-shop in Rosario, was clearly one of those who played football informally, calling themselves Tallares, Workshops, and who took part in discussions about forming a formal club. A meeting took place just before Christmas 1889. There was discussion as to whether it should be a more general sports club or a football club. The Highlander spoke up forcibly for the latter and when his view won through he was appointed President.
The Highlander was Colin Bain Calder.The new club, then known as Central Argentine Railway Athletic and confined to employees of the railway company, would become today's Rosario Central, playing in Argentina's top division. However, it was not Rosario's first. From Rosario Cricket Club, also formed by railway men, but more managerial than shop-floor, there had in 1887 already emerged a football team, which would become known as Rosario Athletic. Indeed, when in 1893 the AAFL reformed, with Lamont still Secretary and Watson Hutton as President Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway was still involved but finished in last place, dropping out the following season it was replaced by Rosario Athletic, if only for one season more.
The drop-out, despite finishing as runners-up, seems to have been because of the journeys involved, the time and cost, and from that point Rosario's clubs then seem to take a different, more insular course. Bain Calder was still CAR President. He would remain in place for a decade as friendly games were played between Central and Athletic and crews of passing ships. Indeed in 1897 in just one such Central-Athletic encounter in the Athletic XI was a certain Claude Newell, who within a half a dozen years would be the instigator not of Rosario's third team but its fourth.
In 1869 Isaac Newell, born in Kent, had arrived in Rosario aged sixteen and found work with the Central Argentine Railway. In 1876 he married Anna Jockinsen, a German immigrant, and that same year his son Claudio, Claude, was born. In 1884 he had started his own school, the Anglo-Argentine Commercial College, where like Alex Watson Hutton and George Robb for Isaac Newell football was an integral part of the curriculum. Then in 1900 Isaac Newell, quite possibly already not in the best of health, made Claude and his wife directors of his school, whilst the following year in Buenos Aires
Alumni was created by a name-change of Watson Hutton's English High School former pupils' team. Perhaps it was that which set Claude Newell thinking. Coincidentally or not he proposed the creation of a not dissimilar organisation for the the Commercial College, by then known generally as Newell's, and in November 1903 the Club Atlético Newell's Old Boys was founded with Victor Heitz as its first president. It is a team that today plays in the Argentine Premier Division.
In the meantime the first attempts had been made to try to join up Argentine football. Francis Chevalier-Boutell, had in 1900 become President of AAFA and immediately taken the first step in what would lead in time to the creation both in the country of a national game and South American international football. He would donate the Tie Cup, a knock-out competition to be played between two AAFA clubs, one from Buenos Aires, one from Rosario and one from the Uruguayan Football Association. The first final that same year would be between Belgrano from Buenos Aires and Rosario Athletic, Belgrano winning. Indeed Rosario Athletic would be the city's representative for at least the next five seasons. However, Newell Old Boys' formation and perhaps also the Tie Cup produced a response. In 1904 the until-then closed Central Argentine Railway Athletic club both opened its doors to non-railway employees and the name-change to Rosario Central took place, which in turn seems to have set other wheels turning. In 1905 Victor Heitz would invite both Central and Athletic, Newell's and a fourth team, Atletico Argentino, formed in 1902 as the Estudiantes Football Club and also still in existence now playing Argentina's fourth tier, to form a Rosario League. It competed for the first time in 1907, Newell Old Boys would win and Isaac Newell would just live live long enough to see it. He would die in October 1907. Colin Bain Calder would not be so fortunate. He had died the previous January. His team would only take the new league the following year.
And as for the third of the Rosario pioneers,
George Robb, life had been more difficult. St. Batholomew's School was by the beginning of the new century in considerable financial difficulty and its contribution to football declining. It ceased entirely in 1904 when he left to found his own school but leaving a vacuum that the other teams, notably Newell Old Boys, would readily fill. Moreover Robb would eventually leave both Argentina and education, returning to live in Edinburgh and there work as an accountant until retirement and his death in 1928.