Ronaldinho indebted to Scottish pioneers of passing football

WITH the ball static just outside the 18-yard box, and defenders bearing down on him, Ronaldinho shimmies to the left and to the right, sending opponents in both directions, and with the space created, places the ball perfectly in the corner of the net.

I would love to claim sublime skills like his as influenced by Scots, but no, Ronaldinho's movement is a rhythmic blend of Africa and Portugal, of samba and batukada. But the fluent passing game that allows Brazilians the space on the park to express that talent is a Scottish creation which we took first to England, then South America and the rest of the world.

With adjectives like Ingls, Anglais, Anglichanin used in most parts of the globe to describe British pioneers of football in their country, the great propaganda machine of English football is delighted to repatriate these pioneers, translate Ingls as English and claim that it was Englishmen who took the game round the world. There is compelling evidence to back the claim of Scotland as the home of the world's greatest game.

My own interest was kindled a few years ago, when I spoke to Lennart Persson of Gothenburg University about the first ever game of association football played in the city. One of the teams was made up of Scottish workers from a curtain factory near the Orgryte sports club. When I got home the reference to the curtain factory made me turn to one of the books on my native Irvine Valley, and there in A Pictorial History of Newmilns by Jim Mair was the astonishing answer - the curtain factory had been owned by Johnston, Shields & Co of Newmilns who also owned another factory abroad, La Escocesa in Barcelona ... and there they were, lined up as Escoces FC in 1899.

In the 1890s Ayrshire textile firms also had factories in Copenhagen and Philadelphia, so the game undoubtedly followed the workers there as well, but it was in the Catalan capital that we can trace the extent of their influence. The factory had been opened in 1893, so the Scots would have been playing among themselves for a good six years before the sport began to be organised in 1899, and we see the emergence of FC Barcelona, one of the giants of world football. From its very beginnings, FC Barcelona was an international select, absorbing the best of the Swiss, French, Catalan, Castillian and English players in the city into their ranks. The third game played in the history of FC Barcelona was against the Ayrshire works team Escoces FC.

I delved deeper into the record books, and what I found was that several Newmilns and Darvel boys earned cup winners' medals in Spain, but they did so playing for Catala, Hispania and FC Barcelona, rather than Escoces.

As the game and teams became established, the Scots were cherry picked by the emerging teams, so in a Barcelona v Hispania derby in 1901 you find Hamilton, Gold and Black playing for Hispania with the other Black brother, and Geordie Girvan, the future provost of Newmilns, playing for FC Barcelona. The Scots were essential team members until they came home in 1903. Interviewed for an article in the local paper many years later, Girvan recalled the innocence and naivety of those early years of Spanish football: "The game was so new to them, that when a Scots or English player did anything unusual with the ball - say back-heeled it or made an overhead kick - the Spanish players became so excited they would stop the game and rush up and shake the hand of the player in question."

Now, given the huge advantage in population England enjoyed over Scotland, it is often assumed that in most places it was in fact the English who planted the roots of the game. I would accept that this was the case in many areas. I would also accept that it was the basic rules laid down by the FA in 1863 which codified soccer and created the conditions for expansion. But the game that developed in England and was planted in far flung places by Englishmen abroad in the decades following 1863 was a kick and rush, leader of the pack type game where you dribbled until you lost the ball. Meanwhile in Scotland from 1867 onwards, teams like Queen's Park were evolving a short-passing style that became recognised as the characteristic Scottish way of playing the game ... recognised in the international football section on FIFA's website: "It was Scotland's revolutionary passing tactics that proved the more effective ... and the country north of the border went on to claim eight victories in the first 12 England-Scotland encounters."

Our history is something we can take pride in, but we also have to acknowledge the dramatic decline of our prestige as a footballing nation in the past 20 years. We need men of passion and vision back running our game, like the hugely influential Scots who took the game to the world - men like Alexander Watson Hutton in Buenos Aires, Archie McLean in So Paulo and John Harley in Montevideo. Their influence is recognised in these cities to this day. In the history of Uruguayan football, the chapter introducing Harley has the simple headline 'Harley changes the way we play'.

I would argue that the Scots created the modern passing game, we converted England to it, and eventually it was our style that prevailed everywhere the game was played. Today, we just have to get back to our roots.

• Adapted from the chapter It Wes Us in Billy Kay's book The Scottish World