Neymar celebrates after scoring for Brazil (Twitter/CBF Futebol)
Scottish tacticians are credited with introducing the fluent passing game first to England, then Brazil followed by rest of the world.
It’s said that one can really understand football only when looked through Brazil’s eyes. Not many know, though, that the Brazilian vision is Scottish in origin. Not just the introduction of the game and organising the early matches but the playing style itself. In fact, football, as we know it today, owes gurudakshina to Scotland for it was the Scottish who invented and introduced the ‘passing style’ in football. Arguably, it was England who found the game but their style was a spillover from Rugby in many ways; a scrummage of sorts, kick and run, long-balls, but an early proto-type of tiki-taka was Scottish’s influence. Pass the ball, the to-and-fro’s, the wing-game and so on and so forth.
“What’s that song? The cup is coming home, eh? Then it should come to Glasgow to Queens Park in particular,” John Litster, football historian and an editor of a football magazine, laughs. “Scotland should be football’s real home as the game, as we know it today, comes from here,” Litster tells The Indian Express.
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So what was happening in the way-back machine in the late 1880’s? “Kicking was natural, of course. And English football came from the public schools, the Old Boys teams who were used to Eton, Harrow and the prevailing rugby style. They just carried on similarly.
In football lore, it came down to 1870 November to a game between an unfancied Scottish side and England at West of Scotland Cricket ground. The Jogo Bonito owes small debts to cricket as well, then. In fact, even in Brazil and Argentina, cricket first took roots with cricket associations formed ahead of football. “Take a sip of water, and let’s resume talking about the better sport – football, shall we,” Litster chuckles.
The Scottish held England to a draw in the game, which itself was credible, but what attracted the eyeballs and the real estate in newspapers was Scotts’s passing style. The moment of birth of modern-day football.
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“Something else of monumental importance emerged from those 5 unofficial games. It was the first time that people paid money to watch football games here. International football in many ways began there,” Litster says. “And the passing style, of course, was noted and spread through England.”
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We shall come to Brazil, but a bit more about the tactical passing style and the football rules of the day.
‘Scrummage style, Early England’
We have to zero-in to Law Six, the earlier avatar of the offside law: “When a player has kicked the ball, anyone of the same side who is nearer to the opponent’s goal-line is out of play, and may not touch the ball himself, nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so, until he is in play…” The forward passing was cut out in some ways by that – “and English weren’t too subtle, you see, to do side-ways touches!” Litster says. “The physicality also came into play. The English were huge, rugby-physique, towering over the Scottish, who had to invent their way to cope with the scrummage.”
The Law Six had been amended in 1866 with the proviso that at least three members of the defensive team are prowling between the recipient of the pass and the opponent’s goal when the ball was played. “The Queen’s Park Club in Scotland was formed in 1867, and they ruled that a player was in foul only if he were ahead of the penultimate man and inside the last 15 yards of the field,” Litster says. “Obviously, that encouraged forward passing a lot more.”
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These days Litster is pouring over archives to write on the 1927 Scotland’s tour of Canada. “Interesting, that, the Canadian press of the day writes glowingly about the difference in Scotland’s passing style as compared to the English way.”
The football writer Jonathan Wilson has traced the football lineage of Barcelona’s style of play to Scotland. He writes how different Scotland managers who learnt their trade at Queens Park started to spread out to the world. From Tottenham to Middlesbrough to Spurs to West Brom to Ajax. A manager in this line, Arthur Rowe gave debut to Johan Cruyff and instilled his ethos to his successor Rinus Michels, who would inspire Cruyff.
“It’s no coincidence that the last two Englishmen to manage Barcelona are also of that line: Bobby Robson was heavily influenced by Buckingham at West Brom and Terry Venables played under Nicholson at Tottenham. The modern Barcelona and tiki-taka, which has had a profound influence on how football is played, is the most recent iteration of a proud tradition stretching back through Ajax to Tottenham to Newcastle to Queen’s Park. Modern football looks as it does because of a tactical decision taken in Glasgow in 1872,” writes Wilson. That tactical decision to pass the ball.
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Brazil’s football debts to Scotland
As Litster says, it was cricket which first took roots in Brazil but soon came along two Scotsmen: Thomas Donahue and Charles Miller in 1894. Donahue organised the first football game, his club Bagu Athletic Club, formed in 1904 of textile workers, was also the first to allow black footballers. In 2013, in gratitude and tribute, the townsfolk of Bagu erected a statue of Donahue. Miller too concurrently started football club Sao Paulo Athletic Club and was a star player as SPAC won three league championships, and later a referee and an administrator who did much to make Brazil forget cricket.
Then came two other Scotsmen Jock Hamilton and Archie McLean to whom Brazil owes the beginnings of their short passing style.
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McLean, a textile engineer from Scottish lowlands Paisley, played for Sao Paulo state side – the highest honour for footballers before the creation of a Brazilian national team, and introduced the Scottish short-passing tactical style. As an outside left winger, he would conjure short passes on the run with his inside forward to woo and awe the onlookers and players. The Brazilians called this ‘Tabelinha’ (little chart) and took to it.
Hamilton, who had played a lot in England, for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Bristol City, Fulham and others, would turn out for Atletico Paulistano, a Brazilian club in 1907. He played, coached new training methods and introduced what is known as ‘System Ingleza’ – the short passing game, and his club would win the League soon.
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In his book ‘The Scottish World: A Journey Into The Scottish Diaspora’, Billy Kay writes that “the fluent passing game that allows Brazilians the space on the park to express their talent is a Scottish creation that we took first to England, then South America and the rest of the world”.
The Brazilians would, of course, as the great Ronaldinho would once say infuse their charismatic ‘Ginga’ (the sway) to elevate the game even further. Ginga infused the moves from a martial art called Capoeira (its elements were dance, acrobatics, music) and Samba (the solo Brazilian dance where the body is straight but the legs and feet move rhythmically).