Études écossaises 11 | 2008 L’Utopie « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland » The Strange Case of Scottish Football Bill Findlay Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/100 ISSN: 1969-6337 Publisher UGA Éditions/Université Grenoble Alpes Printed version Date of publication: 30 January 2008 Number of pages: 261-273 ISBN: 978-2-84310-110-6 ISSN: 1240-1439 Electronic reference Bill Findlay, « « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland » », Études écossaises [Online], 11 | 2008, Online since 30 January 2009, connection on 07 September 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/100 This text was automatically generated on 7 September 2020. © Études écossaises « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland » 1 « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland1 » The Strange Case of Scottish Football Bill Findlay The intimate connection between sport, leisure and national identity has been recognised and stressed by commentators and historians alike for some considerable time. As early as the 1830s Joseph Strutt, in his groundbreaking study of popular recreation, stressed the fact that: In order to form a just estimation of the character of any particular people, it is absolutely necessary to investigate the sports and pastimes most generally prevalent among them2. 1 Participatory sports, and football arguably more than any other, seem to confirm this precept and, over the years, have given rise to a variety of “insights” and clichés about national identity traits which can be drawn from them, some of which even lay claim to “universal” meaning. One such popular if non-attributable conviction among British football pundits is that: In soccer, more than in any other sport, the way you play is the way you are. Different soccer styles did not occur by accident… the Renaissance happened in Italy, and the Industrial Revolution in England – and when either country plays soccer, that’s the way it tends to look. 2 Certainly the influence football is believed to exert over the popular mind is well beyond the realms of the leisure activity. Surrogate symbols of nationalism and, to the popular mind, prowess are often seen as an indicator of national status. English socialist thinkers in the latter part of the nineteenth century certainly did believe that the hold the game had taken on the working class was far greater than that of a mere recreation or pause in the life cycle of the nation. In 1902, during the Boer War, the Bristol Christian socialist paper, Commonwealth expressed its despair at the negative influence the sport was having on the nation’s youth: War rages, great social changes are toward, disasters intervene, there are discussions on bread and education, but the adult male population of England and Scotland is watching its football matches. The sight is a portent, a hundred thousand young adult males, all in black roundhats, small moustaches and short Études écossaises, 11 | 2008 « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland » 2 pipes, gazing with painful intensity at the twenty-two combatants they have hired to compete before them. So long as the Saturday afternoon is preserved, and the sixpence for the match secure, England need never fear revolution3. 3 But what then of Scotland? What lessons, if any, can the study of the social history of Scottish football hold for us about the nature of Scottish society, given the tempestuous relationship which “recreation” has had with canons of Presbyterian austerity?4 What popular images of Scottish culture is the “beautiful game” supposed to carry? 4 When we turn to the history books and the annals of international sporting excellence, Scotland figures in a prominent position and is indeed intimately associated with a variety of activities. To most aficionados, Scotland, and in particular St. Andrews, is the “home of golf”, the place of its birth, where the sport has been played since the early part of the 15th century and where the sport’s governing body is located5. Sporting Scots have distinguished themselves at the highest levels in a wide variety of other fields such as athletics, baseball, boxing, curling, cycling, snooker, swimming, and, of course, F1 motor racing with Jim Clark et Jackie Stewart6. 5 Football, however, is not one of them. On the international scene, Scottish football has always appeared a colourful but rather insignificant figure with occasional flashes of genius amid a sea of mediocre, indeed sometimes quite embarrassing, results. Scotland has never won, or even come remotely close to winning a World Cup. Only on one occasion has a Scottish club won Europe’s highest trophy and never the FIFA Club World Cup. Indeed, if FIFA International rankings are anything to go by, one would be forgiven for thinking that football was a minor recreational activity to the Scots and not one that they were particularly good at or interested in, as it figures in 86th position alongside Albania, and only a short distance above countries such as Togo, Uzbekistan and Iceland7. This lowly position might of course be attributed to the fact that Scotland is a small country with limited manpower resources, yet other similarly small European nations occupy much higher ranks in this classification: Denmark8, for instance, lies in 14th place and Sweden9 in 13th. Indeed, in the British Isles, the Republic of Ireland10 is to be found in 12th place while Wales, with a population of fewer than 3 million inhabitants lies in 68th position, although Scottish football supporters have on two occasions won the (coveted?) FIFA Fair Play Trophy11. 6 Nor has Scotland produced individuals of exceptional ability who have shone on the world stage. A few players, like Denis Law and Kenny Dalglish, did reach legendary status during their playing careers in English club football but none has ever won the sport’s highest accolade, the FIFA World Player Award. Ironically, perhaps, Scottish football’s greatest achievements have been created off rather than on the pitch. Scotland, it can be said, has produced its own brand of football manager of exceptional ability. In the 1950s, for instance, Matt Busby transformed Manchester United from a relatively ordinary league club into a team of legend, “The Busby Babes”, and set it on its way to becoming the most financially successful club in the world. In the following decade, Bill Shankly reached the same levels of greatness with Liverpool FC, taking the club from the shadow of its local rivals, the “millionaires” of Everton FC, and transforming it into one of the giants of European football. Arguably even more remarkable is the career of Alex Fergusson, who in the late 1970s transformed the lowly Aberdeen FC into dominant force in Scottish football, with the team going on to defeat Real Madrid in 1983 to win the European Cup Winners’ Cup. Ferguson has since confirmed his place in the annals of world football by managing Manchester United for Études écossaises, 11 | 2008 « It’s a Dutch invention, but we started it in Scotland » 3 over two decades and leading them to domination both in Europe and in England. Yet no doubt the greatest achievement of them all is that of Jock Stein, manager of Celtic in the 1960s. Stein not only dominated Scottish football, but was also the first manager to win the European Cup with a British team, when his “Lisbon Lions” defeated Inter Milan in Lisbon in May 1967 and reinstated the values of all-out attacking football12. These impressive achievements were no doubt made all the more so by the fact that none of these managers were renowned footballers in their own right, their skills lying elsewhere. 7 On the basis of these facts and other similar statistical evidence, it would be tempting to draw conclusions about the role football plays in Scottish life and how it affects the Scottish sense of identity. Football is undoubtedly much more than a mere “game” played between two competing sets of players on the field of play. Arguably it has always remained a participatory sport for those who watch as well, whether in an official capacity or merely as “punters”. In fact, football occupies a special place inside Scottish culture, and in the eyes of most observers it today constitutes a “national obsession”, a “lovely incurable disease”, as it has done for a very long time13. 8 As far back as the early 15th century, in fact, the Scottish nation seems to have been fascinated with what was called this “most reprehensible obsession”. On the very day of his coronation at Scone, King James I introduced tough legislation to counter what he believed was the threat to national security that the game represented. Hence it was decreed: That na man play at the fute-ball, under the paine of fiftie schillings, to be raised to the Lord of the Land, als often as he be tainted or to the Schireffe of the land of his ministers, gif the Lordes will not punish sic trespassoures. 9 Five days later, on 26th May 1424 the Scottish Parliament took the issue a stage further by banning the playing of football altogether, and in subsequent years other Acts were passed to combat the spread of this and other “useless” sports which were believed to be damaging Scotland’s ability to make war or protect itself14. 10 However, by all indications, these laws had little impact on the fascination the game held over the Scottish people and football matches became prominent features of popular recreation in the following centuries. By the mid 16th century, for instance, football tournaments had become regular annual occurrences in many places15 and served a variety of social purposes well beyond their recreational dimension, from matrimonial fairs to occasions for a social protest and riot and even a convenient pretext for assassination16.