An Argentine Debt?
I write this in a France awash with round-ball tears but as a Scots-Irish MacAllister strode the park on Sunday and a Border Brown scored the opener in 1986 perhaps it is time for a little debt recognition from the victors. No Scots, no Argentine football. For the first twenty years of its existence we, Scottish-born and Diasporan, made it and ran it.
Alex Watson Hutton is known there as the Father of its game. Alex Lamont was it its first administrator, Arnot Leslie its early Alex Ferguson. Two of his brothers played for the first and second Argentine national teams. John Anderson was the Albiceleste’s first captain in an eleven with a total of six of us. There were the Buchanans, even earlier but same Border Browns, six of whom would play for their adopted country, John Caldwell, whose family still stay in Glasgow, and others.
And that is just Buenos Aires. In the second city of Rosario, Messi’s hometown, its two teams are Newells and Central, first president Colin Bain Calder, born Dingwall, and early star player his brother-in-law, Miguel Green, family from East Calder. But to the point. As payment for the debt can we over the next four have the World Cup on display for a week a year at Hampden. That is before the contest restarts in North America, with the US’s first ever World Cup team including five Scots and a Scots manager reaching the semi-final to be defeated by…. Argentina. But then that’s another true story.
Cordialement
Iain Campbell Whittle
Tigh na Tilleadh
201 Polbain
Achiltibuie
Scotland IV26 2YW