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:
Cups and Characters
They were two gentlemen of Alba, two Tommies. Both were very much of their times, magnificently mustachioed, seen as characters, described as "flamboyant", which in Edwardian Britain was often code for homosexual, when being gay was, of course, illegal. Indeed neither ever married, although, confusingly both may have fathered children. And each became immensely rich but were very much "new" money, one completely self-made, the other with a wee foot up. The two were brand creators, brands which continue., were salesmen par excellence, used football as a means to their ends but at the same time helped to make it what it is and both were Scots. One was born in Glasgow, the son of a shopkeeper, the other in Perth, the grandson of a crofter.
The first,
Thomas Lipton, sold tea and very much more besides, Liptons Tea. Travel abroad and you see it everywhere, even though in Britain you could die looking. The second,
Thomas Dewar, peddled hooch, but at least it was a proper drink, Scotch whisky, Dewar's Scotch. It may even have been him, or alternatively his father or brother, who took single malts and created not blend itself but consistent blend. It was certainly him, who for the first time would market it globally.
So how does all this affect football? Simple. Beverages need Cups or at least trophies and in that regard it was Thomas Dewar, who set the ball rolling. In 1897 he became for the year one of the two Sheriffs of London, one who might simply have been feeling philanthropic but as a man perhaps already with political ambitions also with a mind on the future. The following year Dewar would stand for parliament for the near-by, working-class constituency of Walthamstow, where the electorate might have noticed cricket, rugby might have just stirred their radar but football, London hospitals and charities, were a different matter, a difficult combination to ignore, hence The Sheriff of London Shield. Call me cynical but even from this distance it was political marketing from the ace marketeer.
Tommy Dewar's proposal was that The Shield be played between the country's best professional and its leading amateur teams, profits going to City charities. By "best" it appears it was assumed to be either the English League or FA Cup winner, with where Celtic and Rangers and any of the other Scottish League teams figured is unclear. By "leading" London's Corinthians was usually meant but Glasgow's Queen's Park also got a look in. And the competition proved to be a success, conceptually if not necessarily in physical form. The Shield itself would be played for annually until 1907 and then for reasons of internal football politics only
intermittently after that. However, the idea would become from 1908 until 2002 the FA Charity Shield with a new trophy and from then to now the FA Community Shield with a third. And whilst we are on politics Dewar failed to win the Walthamstow seat, four years later won the St. Georges seat in still more working-class Stepney but by 1906 appears to have fallen out of love with Westminster, perhaps it with him too, and stepping down.
In the meantime Tommy Lipton had also thrown his hat into the ring, even if it was more bolero than Tam o' Shanter. In 1905 he had commissioned the creation in London of a Cup. That same year Arnot Leslie Jnr. travelled from Glasgow, where his father, Arnot Leslie Snr. had just died, to Argentina, where Arnot Snr. had lived most of his life and Arnot Jnr. had been born. Whether he carried the trophy with him is not known. It may have been sent on later. But he did carry certainly a notion, probably the suggestion and possibly a command, which in Buenos Aires became the Lipton Cup, a curious trophy, not in physical form but in philosophy. Despite being sponsored by an individual with no obvious connection to South America from the beginning it was to be played for by Argentine and Uruguayan national teams, but ones which could include only players born in those countries, i.e. not immigrants, whether born in Britain or elsewhere, but their Diasporan children.
The distinction made by Lipton, or was it Leslie, between immigrant and natives and native-born Diasporans is a curious and subtle one. It suggests one of two things, or indeed both combined. The first is that between the two groups was a degree of footballing animosity and the second a concern there had been a number of foreigners already arriving in the two countries, if not necessarily to play football, but ending up doing so. Indeed there were such players.
James Buchanan was one.
John Harley would be another. However, it was a distinction, which must surely have gone over Tommy Lipton's head, had to come from elsewhere and that elsewhere could only have been the Leslies. Arnot Leslie had never played for Argentina. However, he was not without importance or kudos. His contribution had been to play in 1891 in the first Argentine football league and from 1893 to 1898 manage the Lomas club to top place in the Argentine league six years in succession. But his brothers, George and William, both also born in Buenos Aires had and he or they must have had concerns, enough at least to become involved and involve Lipton. And the connection between the Leslies and Lipton was simple. Arnott Leslie Snr. and Tommy Lipton had been been born and grew up just a few years and fewer streets apart in the Gorbals and their parents must have known each other. Leslie's father was a tailor. Lipton's was a grocer. Each might have clothed and fed the other.
The Lipton Cup, the Copa Lipton, continued to be played for until 1992. However, it could be said to be the trigger for a competition, the South American Championships, that would become a model to be replicated world-wide, not least as the European Cup, first played in 1960. The first of what is now known as the Copa America and therefore official was played in 1916 between Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil to celebrate the centenary of Argentine independence. But it had been preceded in 1910 by an unofficial competition not involving Brazil but all three others similarly to mark the Argentine May Revolution. The sequence is obvious - first the Copa Lipton with two countries, then the May Tournament with the three, the 1916 South America Championship with four and so on. In 1921 it became five with Paraguay, in 1926 six with Bolivia. In 2016 it was sixteen.
Nor would the Copa Lipton be Thomas Lipton's only footballing, indeed innovative, footballing contributions. In Southern Italy between 1909 and 1914 the Lipton Challenge Cup was played for between teams from Sicily and Naples. It origins perhaps lie in another personal friendship, between Lipton and founders of Palermo and Messina football clubs. This was whilst in Northern Italy in Turin in 1909 and 1911 two competition were played. Called the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy it replaced a similar competition from 1908 in the same city and involving clubs from France, Germany, Switzerland and, of course, Italy. It is even sometimes called The First World Cup. In fact it was much more the precursor of the Champions' League. Germany and Switzerland again sent two of their most prestigious clubs. Turin formed a combined side of players drawn from both Torino and Juventus. No team came from France. The Football Association of England was also asked but refused so Lipton simply by-passed them, as was his way. Instead he invited West Auckland FC, from County Durham, a team mostly made up of coal miners , which not only won the tournament but also returned to Italy in 1911 to defend their title. Its team was Jimmy Dickinson, Rob Gill, Jack Greenwell, Rob Jones, Tom Gill, Charlie ‘Dirty’ Hogg, Ben Whittingham, Douglas Crawford, Bob Guthrie, Alf ‘Tot’ Gubbins, Jock Jones, David ‘Ticer’ Thomas and Tucker Gill. You can draw your own conclusions about their origins but one, Jack Greenwell, would become a major figure in the early European game. He would in Turin be watched by Barcelona's Joan Gamper, go on to play there in Spain and manage at Barcelona itself, Espanyol and Valencia and later in Peru including the Peruvian national team.
Which leaves Tommy Dewar's second and final contribution, a trophy that is still played for today. Once highly prized it faded as the game struggled around it but now is competed for more fiercely than ever before. It is the Sir Thomas Dewar Cup. It was first awarded in 1914 and must again be seen at least part as advertising. It certainly did the Dewar's whisky brand no harm, promoting it to a sporting public that was working-class, immigrant, permeated with Scots and Scottish-ness but not in Scotland but the USA. Moreover, although its first winner was the Brooklyn Field Club and its most recent Houston Dynamo, in four of the next six playings after its first victory went to America's "Scots" team of that era,
Bethlehem Steel. Which begs the question. What do we raise to its wins, to continuing footballing charity, to European club football and also to the World's competitive, international game. It might, it seems, be tea or whisky, Scots-blend either way, or perhaps a bit of both.