The origins of the beautiful game ft. Chris Lee

How did football - a game played by upper class gentlemen in Britain - become the world's most popular sport? How did it shift to becoming a game of the workers and the masses? And what social and political impact did the success of the game have? Co-hosts Guy and Francesco speak to friend of the pod, Chris Lee, and host of his own podcast and football-related blog, Outside Write.

Chris, who wrote the book Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World, explains how the game became so popular in many parts of the world, describing many of the characters and teams that have contributed to football's journey around the world, and busts some of the myths about the origins of the game.

Transcript

The origins of the beautiful game ft. Chris Lee

Guy Burton 00:18

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Football Podcast, where football meets politics. I'm one of your co -hosts, Guy Burton, and I'm joined by my other co -host, Francesco Belcastro. Francesco. How are you doing today? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:27

I'm all right, Guy. There is something very important that we've forgotten to do. I think we need to do. We need to thank someone who has been helping us with some of the episodes, your good friend Julio. 

Guy Burton 00:40

Ah, yes, yes. We're talking... Oh, we're going back a couple of months now, aren't we? But yes, you're absolutely right. You know, Julio has been fantastic in helping us with, you know, doing a bunch of voiceovers or helping dub some of the Italian and Spanish translations that we've had in, you know, episodes from the previous season, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:01

So listeners should go and check out the episodes from the previous season, and whenever there is a dubbing, that's your good friend Julio that we are really grateful for, and we want to thank for that. 

Guy Burton 01:12

Yeah, exactly. There you go, Julio. Name check. So, okay. Now, let's talk about... What about today, Francesco? What are we talking about today? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:21

We're talking about... Well, first of all, more than we were talking about, we've got a good friend of ours coming back to visit us, Chris Lee. 

Guy Burton 01:31

Yes, Chris. Chris, welcome back. Hi, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? 

Chris Lee 01:35

Thank you for having me back on. I must have done something right first time around. 

Guy Burton 01:38

No, no, no. It's great. And Francesco, tell us, tell the listeners, what's Chris going to be talking about with us today? 

Francesco Belcastro 01:44

The topic today is going to be the roots and social origins of football clubs. Chris has published widely on this topic. He's got a book that came out in 2021. 

Chris Lee 01:56

The Origin Stories: The pioneers who took football to the world. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:58

So, we're going to go back to the history of the game and talk about the connection with today as well because Chris is very good at doing that, listeners already know. Can I also say that we have an excellent episode in the first series with Chris and listeners should really go and check it out. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:14

I can't remember when it was, but you'll find them on the first series. 

Guy Burton 02:18

Yeah, it was back in January, so January 24, in which we talked to Chris about his book, The Defiant, A History of Football Against Fascism, and we talked more generally about football against fascism, both in Europe and Latin America. 

Guy Burton 02:31

But can I also just before, you know, just because maybe there are also listeners out there who haven't heard that episode before, and so don't know who Chris is. So let me just give you a quick intro to Chris again. 

Guy Burton 02:40

He's the editor of Outside Write, which is a blog and podcast that explores the relationship between football and culture. Now, Outside Write is actually, it's spelt W R I T E. 

Chris Lee 02:50

It started out as a blog basically, so it was a play on words. 

Guy Burton 02:55

And amongst all... Chris also has his own podcast, but he also blogs about the football experience, ground hopping. And he's also got a content and copywriting company, 8 Moon Media. And he's also written with various publications out there. 

Guy Burton 03:10

So that includes the City A .M., Football Weekends, The Gentleman, Ultra and others. And as we've mentioned, he's also the author of a couple of books. The first one, which was back in January, which listeners should go check out. 

Guy Burton 03:21

And then, of course, this one, which we're going to talk a bit about today. Chris, can we get started then, please? Because one of the things I want to talk, one of the things I'm curious about and it comes through in the book, but maybe listeners will want to know more about: can we talk about the codification and organization of football, the sport that we know as association football? 

Guy Burton 03:40

I mean, who were the people behind it and what was their background? And what does that tell us about the character of the game and society in that period? 

Chris Lee 03:46

Yeah, thank you for highlighting this association football, because there's lots of places that claim to be the home of football, everywhere from China to Mexico. 

Chris Lee 03:54

There's games in France, there's games in Italy, the Romans were playing in Italy and in Greece as well. And in Britain, there was always folk football, which was banned in the Middle Ages in England and Scotland by royalty. 

Chris Lee 04:07

And basically, it's not that massive leap of logic to want to kick something and find a way of scoring it out of it. It's a very natural piece, but weirdly, it took until 1863 to codify this particular game that we all call football, soccer, depending where you are in the world and what happened in the kind of mid 19th century to various private schools or public schools. 

Chris Lee 04:30

It's also known in the UK that had their own sort of codes of football. So it's all about Charterhouse, Eton, most famously Rugby, of course. And then when they finished at school, these gentlemen players wanted to keep playing, but they couldn't agree that the rules. 

Chris Lee 04:44

So you get an example, say, in Cambridge University of a place called Parker's Piece in the central of the city where in 1848 they they posted the the rules on a tree which might have been the first time that something that ended up being included in the association rules was kind of like published effectively. 

Chris Lee 05:01

There were football clubs before that, famously in Edinburgh but they weren't the same football code that we're talking about today and they weren't you know there's no overlap. In the 1850s there's the Sheffield rules we see coming around from Sheffield FC which is officially recognised by FIFA as the world's first club. 

Chris Lee 05:19

1857 they were founded by some cricket players who actually wanted to play or to keep fit over over winter and you see there's a big overlap between cricket and football at this point because cricket's a big open space it's already used for sports so they're available in the winter you get the oval for example hosting the first FA Cup final in 1872 of course the Oal is where the Ashes were burnt famously. A massive cricket ground also hosted England football internationals. 

Chris Lee 05:45

The first football -  official international - between Scotland and England. It's held at the West of Scotland Cricket Club in Glasgow, at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, which is now obviously known as the home of Sheffield United. 

Chris Lee 05:56

That started off as a Yorkshire cricket ground. So they, you know, these big spaces are being used by chiefly gentlemen, as you mentioned it, and these codes are floating around in England and Scotland at this time. 

Chris Lee 06:10

But it wasn't like I said until the solicitor Ebenezer Cob Morley, who's from Hull originally, but he got some clubs together on the 26th of October in 1863 at the Freemason's Tavern. There's a blue plaque there if you go there. 

Chris Lee 06:23

It's Queen Street, just off Queensway in Holborn, near Covent Garden. And over a series of meetings, they agreed rules and consensus to what we now call association rules, right? They found the Football Association. 

Chris Lee 06:38

There's a number of clubs there that decide, they're discussing the rules. They decide, actually, do you know what, we prefer handling and we prefer really hard rough tackling. So they go off and they continue to play the rugby code and the Rugby Football Union isn't founded until 1871. 

Chris Lee 06:53

But the sort of split of the codes is happening at this point in 1863. Sheffield have their own rules and they bring to the party various things that we know today, like the centre kick, corner kick, throw in the free kick, the crossbar. 

Chris Lee 07:05

That doesn't enter the rule book until 1866, but that's a Sheffield FC invention. But they weren't present at the original meeting. This is all very much London based at the time. But it's not an easy start. 

Chris Lee 07:16

Got some of the key figures. You mentioned the sort of gentleman, but one of the key figures is a guy called Charles Alcock. His club Wanderers win the first FA Cup. He invents the FA Cup, he suggests it. 

Chris Lee 07:26

And it's this point you see in the 1870s where the difference between football, association football and rugby happens because football is a lot easier to play than rugby. In terms of understanding the rules, having the space to kick it. 

Chris Lee 07:41

And also rugby, as we mentioned before, is pretty much within the schools and the upper classes at this point. The FA Cup gives it jeopardy and an appeal. It's attracting crowds into their thousands for the first time in the 1872 or so sees the first international as I mentioned before. 

Chris Lee 07:57

So it's this is a really pivotal year at the same time rugby staying amateur football goes professional in the 1880s after some kind of what they call shamaturism which is basically underhand payment or giving players jobs while they play for them. 

Chris Lee 08:09

It's getting into the workplace it's you know we'll talk about those in the sort of in the next question but at this point is where you see the split happen. Football becomes popular it's got the jeopardy of the league and professionalism and the FA Cup by the late 1880s. 

Chris Lee 08:24

Rugby doesn't have that rugby has a debate around professionalism and it splits into league and union. League goes professional, union doesn't for another 100 or so years. So that's kind of where that happens but rugby could easily become the most popular had it maybe gone head to head really. 

Francesco Belcastro 08:39

Now one dimension that emerges clearly in your work. And it's really interesting is the one of class. So there is this idea that football starts as a sort of upper class gentleman's game, and then kind of quite quickly spreads or becomes a working class game in many ways. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:02

So there is this debate, you know, I think we spoke about with Matt Taylor as well, and last year, sort of who owns the game in a sense, you know, what kind of culture is behind it. And people often point that Blackburn Olympic's 1883 FA Cup win as a kind of a bit of the almost a dividing event, between before, which is a gentleman upper class game, and then the sort of, you know, broader class dimension to it. 

Francesco Belcastro 09:32

Would you agree with this analysis? And what can we say about class there? 

Francesco Belcastro 09:36

Oh, basically, if you look at the first 10 and 12 winners of the FA Cup between 1872 and 1883, they're all, you know, Eton, Oxford University, whatever it is, Royal Engineers, Wanderers, these are gentlemen's clubs. 

Chris Lee 09:51

In the 1870s, you're seeing new legislation come in, the invention effectively of the weekend, people getting sat the afternoon off for the first time. So the factories and the mills, they're thinking, well, how do we spend our time? They're setting up clubs, churches also are setting up clubs. 

Chris Lee 10:05

So see some of the famous names that we know today are um... come around from out of that. So the arsenal, of course, Royal Arsenal in South London or Woolwich Kent as it was in those days. Manchester United came out of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, Newton Heath. Who came out of the church? Manchester City, Southampton and St Mary's, of course, Wolves, Everton from St Domingo's, Queen's Park Rangers came out of a merger of two clubs, 

Chris Lee 10:30

which was St. Jude's and Christchurch Rangers. And they're my team and I like the fact that St. Jude's is the patron saint of lost causes! There's something in that, I'm sure. It's the same in Scotland. We see Hibernian being founded in the church in Cowgate in Edinburgh for the Irish community. 

Chris Lee 10:48

Predominantly that's the first I think ethnic club that we can point to anywhere in the world. And because you had Palestino who recently didn'tyou on your podcast earlier this year and I think Hibernian is the first sort of ethnically focused foundation, of course. They inspired in Celtic in Glasgow to be founded and various clubs including what is now Dundee United. So we see we can draw this route back to the sort of social route and this doesn't happen exclusively here. 

Chris Lee 11:11

This happens across the world as well so Cluj of course with Romania was a railway team. Although anyone called Lokomotivo in their communist era. Peñorol the most famous club in or successful club in South America in the 20th century. El Club del Siglo - the club of the century - they started out as the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club, so an Anglo -founded, Anglo -German founded club playing cricket which decided to play football.

Chris Lee 11:36

Likewise, Rosario Central, Ferrocarril de Buenos Aires, the railway clubs of Argentina. So, you know, this is not exclusive to the UK, but this is where we see anyway, just workplace creams. They're basically getting these clubs together to keep their workers fit, to keep them out of trouble, stop them rebelling, partly as well. 

Chris Lee 11:54

And they get good. And they do have, like I said, the amateur elements. And anyone who's seen The English Game on Netflix will see an interpretation of that [1883] cup final. It wasn't, there wasn't anything called - just Blackburn. 

Chris Lee 12:03

And the guy in question, Fergus Souter actually played for Blackburn Rovers, who... They lost the 82 final to Eton. Eton then take on Blackburn Olympic, who's a very short -lived team who was a victim of professionalism. 

Chris Lee 12:16

I tried, I was up in Blackburn the other week at the time of recording, and I tried to find their ground, actually, or any kind of remnant of them. And I think there's a school now built on where they used to play, but they were going for like 10, 15 years, not very long. 

Chris Lee 12:28

Professionalism have killed them off, and Blackburn Rovers became sort of the key team in Blackburn - and a founder member of both the Football League in 1888 and the Premier League in 1992, and even a couple of other clubs have done that, which was, of course, Aston Villa and Everton. 

Chris Lee 12:42

But the significance of that is that no team after 1883 from the amateur, yeah, the gentlemen game, even Corinthians, who are really strong. Now they don't think they entered the FA Cup, actually, because they didn't agree with competition. 

Chris Lee 12:56

But, well, some of it, at least. But yeah, it's all working -class teams. The north takes over. So Blackburn Olympic is a huge kind of sea change in that regard. 

Guy Burton 13:08

Yeah, and if we can, because you're talking about the expansion of the game from the upper classes to the working class, can we talk a little bit about the women's game as well? 

Guy Burton 13:18

Because, of course, there actually is this ban that is imposed on women from around the 1920s. So prior to the 1920s, there is this sort of growing game being played by women. But to what extent does the women's game mirror the men's game in the sense that... Does it start as initially being played by, you know, sort of elite, elite, upper -class aristocratic women and then, you know, disseminate into, into the working class or does it start at the working class level? 

Chris Lee 13:47

It very much starts exactly the same way as the men's. So it's an aristocratic game. So the first women's team was a suffragette named Helen Matthews and she went under the pseudonym Mrs Graham. Mrs Graham's 11 in Stirling in 1881. 

Chris Lee 14:01

So they had a Scotland versus England game again. Scotland won 3 -0 and that was in Edinburgh and the press were particularly, as you can imagine at the time, very much against it. It very challenged social norms and it's another 15 or so years before we see the British Ladies' Football Club founded by someone called Mary Hudson and she went by the name Netty Honeyball and they had a North v South [game]. 

Chris Lee 14:26

We see the first - Emma Clarke - the first, black female footballer. 

Francesco Belcastro 14:31

That is a fantastic nickname. Is it Netty? 

Chris Lee 14:35

Netty Honeyball. 

Guy Burton 14:36

Pseudonyms, pseudonyms! 

Chris Lee 14:38

Yes. And yeah, so it's great. I mean, this is around this time that women are becoming, I mean, Wimbledon lawn tennis is accepting women. 

Chris Lee 14:46

Women are cycling. You know, so it's becoming very kind of the social norms for women are changing. Of course, the big sea change comes in the First World War. So it's men off, working women going to the factory, take those traditional male roles who are in the field. 

Chris Lee 14:58

And it's at the Dick, Kerr Munitions factory in Preston, again, in Lancashire being a hotbed football. It was the, that there's a team that comes out of it called the Dick, Kerr Ladies. And they started playing a charity match at Preston North End's Deepdale Ground for wounded soldiers. 

Chris Lee 15:15

And they had 10 ,000 crowd turn up in 1917. And this continues after that. They're drawing like 50 ,000 plus crowds in the early 1920s. And there's this point, the FAO kind of game, some would say they see women's football as a threat, so a challenge to win if they can attract 50 ,000 crowd at Goodison Park. 

Chris Lee 15:35

But yeah, that's when in 1921, they said it's quite unsuitable for women to play football and that banned all them using FA affiliated grounds that to go elsewhere. So they did continue playing, but it's, you know, took half a century, very important half century at the game, really. 

Chris Lee 15:54

So yeah, yeah, it's very, very similar to the men's game in that it's mostly upper class. And then it does sort of work its way into the working classes. 

Francesco Belcastro 16:02

Now, Chris, can I ask you one thing on the sort of spreading of the game? 

Francesco Belcastro 16:06

Because the kind of traditional narration is that, you know, it starts in Britain and then kind of from there, it spreads further afield, you know, Europe, Latin America. And then after that, it sort of goes even further. 

Francesco Belcastro 16:21

Is that, first of all, is that like a narrative that you find convincing? Is that how it worked? And would you say that when it does, it replicates the same kind of social dimension? Or are we sort of oversimplifying the way that the game spreads here? 

Chris Lee 16:36

No, I think it's quite a broader simplification especially. There's two ways basically that the game leaves Britain. So there's either expat British communities living in places, you know, which typically port cities. Le Havre in France being the very first that sort of sets up a crosscode game. 

Chris Lee 16:53

It's not quite football or rugby, it's something between the two. There's Genoa of course, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, these are Sao Paulo, these sort of, you know, port cities are linked to a port and it makes sense there. 

Chris Lee 17:06

Those that come through there. So it's usually either through expat communities, typically English or quite a lot of Scots as well involved, or students have come to the UK and gone, oh I like this game, I'm going to take it back with the rulebook and then they have to educate local people. 

Chris Lee 17:20

That's what happened in the Netherlands with a guy called Pim Mulier, that's what happened in Hungary as well. And also it's kind of... Germany is an interesting case because it's a mix, through the Dresden English Football Club. 

Chris Lee 17:33

Whereas at the same time, there's a school, there's a guy called Konrad Hoch, who's teaching his students how to do it. And in Germany, who love turnen and which is like, you know, group gymnastics. 

Chris Lee 17:43

And they call football the English disease, which is not the last time I've heard that expression used by continental Europeans to do with football. But the it does start similar to upper classes. So if you go to South America, which is the first place to really sort of take to it, I guess, in the 18 sort of 80s and 90s as locals, you can see, they're calling them ingleses locos - the crazy English. 

Chris Lee 18:05

And again, if they say English, they, that's a rather lazy way of saying English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish at that point as well. So there's a big mix at that point. And yeah, you see this kind of like taken off, usually, like I said, in the upper classes, it starts in the workplace again. 

Chris Lee 18:19

So we have already mentioned the CURCC, which is the Central Uruguayan Railway Cricket Club. In Argentina, one of the very early leagues comes in 1891, which is like one of the worlds. But it was the first league outside Britain and Ireland, certainly. 

Chris Lee 18:34

That's pioneered by chiefly Scotspeople from this sort of education expat community that has got schools down there. Just upstate as well, up in Rosario we have a guy called Isaac Newell from Rochester in Kent. He teaches his students at schools, you know, again, pay fee paying schools, so quite exclusive class of people. 

Chris Lee 18:56

And his son Claudio decides to form a football club to, to credit his father. And it's called Newell's Old Boys or Newell's as it's known in Rosario. So you see them coming out of schools outside the workplace again, so it's sort of a similar sort of thing. 

Chris Lee 19:10

And then one of the sort of catalyst for this in this area is that when the British clubs come to tour. So you see Southampton, pretty first in 1904, Nottingham Forest, which makes a massive impact. Everton, there's several clubs named after Everton down there, most notably in Vina del Mar in Chile. 

Chris Lee 19:28

Liverpool. There's a Liverpool in in Uruguay. But yeah, Corinthians is the most famous one. So Corinthians, the English team went in 1910. And the team that they inspired were actually sort of local guys, they weren't like upper class, they were railway workers. 

Chris Lee 19:40

And so Corinthians started out as a railway working team. So you see by 1910, it's kind of changing. One of the first sort of clubs among some local founded criollos, as they're known, the sort of local born players in South America, usually of Spanish or Italian descent chiefly in either side of the River Plate in Uruguay. 

Chris Lee 19:59

They're sort of taking it up, they start getting good, and they start overtaking. And we see this reflected within a generation when Uruguay win the gold 1924 Olympics, the 28 Olympics, and then because of their success, they awarded the 1930 World Cup, the very first World Cup, which they host, and they win. 

Chris Lee 20:16

And one of the key catalysts is a club called Nacional, in 1899, they become the big rivals with Peñolol, I think everyone knows that. That's sort of the big rivalry within Montevideo. And the term, the name Nacional is something that we can see it's quite self -explanatory means national. 

Chris Lee 20:32

And we'll see that later as we when we come to talk about Egypt, for example, where you've got Al -Akhly, which is also means the national in Arabic. So you can see this is like football for local founding clubs takes on that nationalist element. 

Guy Burton 20:45

Yeah, and actually, that's something I wanted to to pick up on on with you, because when I was reading the book about The Original Stories, a striking theme for me was this, you know, there's almost sort of two reactions that seem to exist, you know, as the game spreads outside of the UK. 

Guy Burton 21:01

And for want of a better word, I can only sort of just call it either Britophilia and Britophobia. So you have some of these places, as you've talked about, you know, sort of in Latin America, where sort of, you know, the game seems to be, you know, it catches fire, because there's almost a sense of, oh, you know, Britain's here, you know, let's emulate this game, you know, you we're enjoying...

Guy Burton 21:21

You know, sort of, this is this is something that we, you know, this is British, this is modern, let's let's let's let's take it, let's let's also join the bandwagon, as it were. And yet on the other side, and I think that you alluded to this a little bit by referencing the national, is there's more sort of like critical view of the British, because of course, Britain at the time, you know, has an empire and has imperial influence, 

Guy Burton 21:42

whether formally or in the case of Latin America, informally. And so there are some of these clubs that sort of start to develop. And I'm thinking, particularly in Turkey and India, where, you know, it's more of a tension, more of a confrontation with the British rather than sort of, you know, a desire to emulate them. 

Guy Burton 21:58

I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, do you see that as as, you know, sort of a similar theme? And do you think that actually affects the development of the game in these countries, in any shape or form? 

Chris Lee 22:09

It's very interesting. The difference between the two is where there's Britophilia, as you'd call it, is in countries where you said that, as you mentioned, they've got industrial influence. You see that in Spain, in Bilbao in particular, so British things are popular. 

Chris Lee 22:22

So Athletic Club, Anglo founded, you know, eventually. very famously Basque now but it started out as a sort of like English creation. Likewise down in South America where it's linked again to the railways and industry, yes it was like sort of seen as something to aspire to. 

Chris Lee 22:40

The countries you mentioned where there's the perhaps kicking against it is typically within you know the empire so to speak. So occupied Egypt because obviously the interests were in the Suez Canal. Occupied India of course and at the time after World War I Britain and France had occupied Turkey what is now Turkiye that the kind of the end of the Ottoman Empire basically kind of ends after World War I. 

Chris Lee 23:10

You see the Nationalists start rising out into Ataturk and so that kind of eventually the British and the French leave in 1924 so a good five years after the end of the war. But there's this there's this match towards the end where you know they have... I think the colonel that's leaving doing the sign -off is called Harrington, so they play for the Harrington to come up with it. 

Chris Lee 23:30

It's a team of British players, including, not bad players, one of them played for Chelsea and Queen in the South, against a team which we all know now as Fenerbache, and Fenerbache win that one 2 -1, and the cup is actually in their museum, I think, but.. So Fenabachi, along with, you know, Galatasaray, the famous club of Besiktas, they're playing these sort of like occupying teams effectively, 

Chris Lee 23:56

and it is very much like a leveler almost, and for India, the big catalyst is the 1911 IFA Shield. the India Football Association Shield, which is likthe FA Cup. And a team called Mohun Bagan, which is still going, they win, they're playing in bare feet at this point. 

Chris Lee 24:11

In fact, India played in bare feet even in up to the 1948 Olympics in London, they were playing in bare feet, so this is kind of like a thing there. And they beat a Yorkshire regiment to win the 1911 shieldion, as it seems this big moment gives a lot of confidence to the independence movement, which is growing, and sort of gains in, you know, after World War I, there's lots of broken promises against, 

Chris Lee 24:34

much like in Egypt, and it sort of gains a lot of momentum in that time as well. So yeah, you do see this dynamic, and it still played out in Egypt, for example, in Cairo, where Al -Ahly is the national team, it's like, you know, the authentic Egyptian team in Africa, again, like Penarol in many ways- Africa's most successful side, and their big rival is Zamalek, and Zamalek was founded by a Belgian, 

Chris Lee 24:56

so they kind of have that sort of, you know, feeling of like, oh, we're the true Egyptian team versus, you know, foreign founded upper class type team, so it's, you know, you do have that still within, you know, the modern dynamic, even with somewhere like Cairo. 

Francesco Belcastro 25:11

Now, an element that seems to be present in your research, but in your work, and in the work of other people that look at this same historical period, is this kind of tension between, so the one great man in every country that you know, when they are with a football and set of rules and brought these to the country, versus kind of a more kind of structural approach almost that sees the country, you know, 

Francesco Belcastro 25:37

developing football more organically. Is there a tension that you see? So having looked at these yourself, where do you stay? Where do you stand on this particular debate? 

Chris Lee 25:49

Yeah, I think everyone... it's interesting with football, there's a lot of debate and a lot of who was the first to introduce this and where's the home of football. 

Chris Lee 26:01

I sort of alluded to this in the very first question, you know, Sheffield claims to be the home of football, Glasgow, sometimes two, and also who introduced football to various countries. So there's a great plaque at Cliftonville, which is Ireland's oldest team. 

Chris Lee 26:17

So now in Northern Ireland, obviously in Belfast, and it's for a guy called John Macredy McAlery. He... is credited with introducing the game... He was certainly pivotal because he set up Cliftonville and he also helped set up the Irish Football Association. 

Chris Lee 26:32

But he said, you know, it was I alone basically introduced it. And he wasn't, it was lots of different people involved. He was certainly pivotal. But you do get this and I noticed when I was looking through that it is typically a key character in some places. 

Chris Lee 26:47

But you know, again, their scope is sometimes kind of limited. So if I look at Spain, for example, William Alexander Mackay is very important. He's the guy who founds Spain, Spain's oldest club, Locotivo de Huelva down in the south. 

Chris Lee 27:00

But they were limited very much to their area. So yes, he was the first. Yes, he did that. They had the first match against Sevilla. And there's a debate whether the current Sevilla is the same as the Sevilla FC that was played in the 1890 match, the first game in Spain. 

Chris Lee 27:16

But they were very limited with in Andalucia. You imagine Spain was very disparate at that point, didn't have this incredible network that it's had since it joined the European Union. But the, you know, Bilbao and Madrid and Barcelona, this is where the game was really taking off. 

Chris Lee 27:31

And there's no sort of one person, there's like certain people. And it's certain sometimes you need royalty to help you. And this is where Alphonso XIII was big in Spain. He's the one the guy who's the sort of like the patron of a lot of clubs. 

Chris Lee 27:43

That's why a lot of them have to prefix Real, as in Royal. And he, you know, had the first first cup in Spain in 1902, the Coronation Cup, run by the team that is now Athletic Club. If you go to Holland, Netherlands, I should say there's like one pioneer, Pim Rulier. I mentioned him earlier. 

Chris Lee 28:02

France is a mix of people. Italy is quite an interesting case, very late to the game, surprisingly, given where they are in the world now. But it wasn't until 1897 that Genoa starts playing football. 

Chris Lee 28:14

Genoa was Athletic Cricket Club, became Genoa Football and Cricket Club. Or Cricket Football Club, I should say actually. And the guy called James Richardson Spensley, which is an interesting name because James Richardson, for those who grew up in the 90s, was the name of guy who put guitar to football Italia on Channel 4, and introduced a lot of us to the contemporary Italian game. 

Chris Lee 28:32

The actual original guy who pioneered both the foundation of the Italian League and also what is now the future chair, the Italian F .A. His name was James Richardson. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:41

So, he's not one guy that had a very, very long and healthy life, and it spanned three centuries isn't it? 

Chris Lee 28:47

Well, he was important in Genoa. 

Guy Burton 28:48

You know, the Italian diet does help you live very long, doesn't it? 

Francesco Belcastro 28:51

Possibly the Mediterranean diet, yes! 

Chris Lee 28:53

Yes, well, he was killed in World War I, actually, but there's a guy, meanwhile, in Milan, there's a guy called Herbert Kilpin, who's from Nottingham. 

Chris Lee 29:00

He's founds Milan Cricket Club, a Nottingham connection, obviously, in Turin, with a guy called John Savage, who introduced the Nottingham, the Notts County kit to Juventus. and Eduardo Bossio, who's another guy who was working in a textile industry in Nottingham, started playing the game in Turin. 

Chris Lee 29:18

So there's a big connection between the two. One of the people that's really important, both in Italy and South America, is a tea magnate called Sir Thomas Lipton. He might be familiar with the Lipton tea brand. 

Chris Lee 29:29

He sponsored yachting tournaments, but he also sponsored football tournaments. In South America in particular, he was a Scotsman, but his parents were Irish that left Ireland during the famine and got him more of the great hunger and moved like tens of thousands of Irish people did to Glasgow. 

Chris Lee 29:45

And that's where you get Celtic eventually. But he made his money in tea, and basically he sponsors these tournaments. But he insists in the River Plate that it's local -born players that play in the tournaments. 

Chris Lee 30:02

And the Uruguay versus River - Argentina kind of rivaly is very, very important in pushing each other along. And it's a really interesting international between the two in about 1910. But if you look at the Argentine team sheet, they're all English or Scottish or Irish surnames, and the Uruguayan one is mostly Basque, Italian, Spanish. 

Chris Lee 30:26

They already got to that creoshelfification, so to speak, at the international level. So there's no one pioneer, but every country, or a lot of countries, have one or two individuals who really help push it forward. 

Chris Lee 30:38

And then one of the key ones I want to mention as well is the French in this as well, because the French are very important at founding FIFA, a guy called Robert Guerin, who's the journalist who sets that up. 

Chris Lee 30:50

He's also the coach of the French national side at this point. The French also established, of course, through Jules Rimet, who set up a club called Red Star back in 1897 in Paris. It's still going. 

Chris Lee 31:01

He set up the hopes for the first World Cup. Pierre de Coubertin, of course, on the Olympic committee. He preferred rugby, apparently, but he allowed football to be used within the Olympic tournament. 

Chris Lee 31:14

And, you know, also behind the European Championships and now so... It always makes me laugh when people mistaken use "It's coming home" for England, you know, potentially winning as well because all those of you remember your 96 and it's coming home is referring to the sport coming back to England for Euro 96 and somehow has become associated with winning a tournament and bringing back the trophy. 

Chris Lee 31:36

Well, actually, if it were either the World Cup or the European Nations Championship was to go home, it would be to France because this Frenchman invented those trophies. 

Guy Burton 31:45

Okay. Well, that's been fascinating. 

Guy Burton 31:48

Thank you so much, Chris, Chris for that, you know, widespread, almost encyclopedic survey of how football got going. Can you just remind us again where the where listeners might be able to read this book that you wrote? The name? 

Chris Lee 32:02

Sure, my first book is called Origin Stories: The Pionners Who Took Football to the World. It's Chris Lee, that's L double E, you should find it online or in any you know decent bookstore and it's out by Pitch Publishing. And you can follow me on social media. Just look for Outside Write. So that's Outside Write with the W, so W R I T E. 

Guy Burton 32:22

Exactly yeah well listen Chris thank you so much for taking the time it's been really informative and I hope and it actually provides I think almost quite a nice sort of like basis on which you know a lot of the other discussions that we have about football and and the politics around it. So you know thanks again for taking the time to come in and speak to us again. 

Chris Lee 32:38

Thank you so much and just as a final point to make is that it just kind of a whole conversation kind of illustrates how far we've come from and how distant now the game is from the working man or woman to you know this massive... 

Guy Burton 32:52

I do sometimes wonder what you know Charles Alcock and the others would think if they were you know to come back to to see football today whether they'd even recognize it! So. 

Chris Lee 33:01

Indeed.

Guy Burton 33:01

Yeah. And Francesco that's - So well we've got to do something before we go don't we there's the usual kind of stuff that I always force you to do. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:11

Well of course well there are two things right that are important I do happily don't say you force me to do it because I'm always happy to remind this to our listeners. The first one is that we really really appreciate listeners help and suggestions and advices on potential guests and topics. We've just started a new season so we've got a lot of episodes to do please get in touch and then... 

Guy Burton 33:37

It's not a sprint it's a marathon! 

Francesco Belcastro 33:39

It's not a sprint it's a marathon and and we are we are we are in this marathon together with the listeners so we want to want to hear from them whether they want whether they like it or not! 

Guy Burton 33:52

Whether well you know they reach the end of this marathon reach the end of the season whether it'll be joy or tears I don't know!

Francesco Belcastro 33:57

Okay well we shall see we shall see so they need to get in touch with us and they can do that with suggestions advices. So they can do that on X, Twitter, on Facebook we have Blue Sky although it's a bit quiet on there.

Francesco Belcastro 34:12

Both of us are on LinkedIn individually. 

Guy Burton 34:16

Yep. Francesco really wants you to message him on LinkedIn. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:19

Please do. So I remember to check my LinkedIn in there now and then. And then the second thing is that we also would like listeners to please rate, share our podcasts, whatever they're up there doing it allows them to do. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:36

So if it's on Spotify, please rate us and like us, talk about it with friends and colleagues, help us push this podcast as much as possible. 

Guy Burton 34:44

Well, listen, it's been great. And of course, we will have another episode as well out next week as well won't we, Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 34:50

Yeah. Let me just thank again, Chris, for a fantastic chat. And we've really learned a lot on the history of the game and some of the of the impact on the impact on today's game as well. 

Guy Burton 35:02

Yeah. Thanks again, Chris. 

Guy Burton 35:04

Cheers. Thanks, guys for having me on.