England
England is the birthplace of football. Of that there can be no doubt. The exact location was the Freemasons' Tavern on Great Queens Street between Holborn and Drury Lane in London. It might even be said that it was the birthplace of not just one football, what would become known as the Association variety, but also a second and a third, Rugby of either code. It signified the definitive break between the game of the pass-back through the hands and our game of the feet, then still and briefly with only the pass-back but now embracing every which way including forward.
Football came in more or less the same form officially to Scotland, or at least Glasgow, four years later in 1867 having crept over the border in the intervening years. But that is not to say there was no direct Scots involvement from its very breath. Scots were amongst those who sat together to create the first rules of the game. Scotland was then one of the only four countries, the four Home Nations, that through the International Football Association Board from its London base evolved those rules from 1886 until 1912. The base might now have transferred to Switzerland but Scotland remains one of the still only four countries, the same Home Nations, plus FIFA, which since 1913 have continued the evolution. These are the stories of the many Scots, Diasporan Scots specifically in England, who, collectively and individually, have played their part in the making of the club and international games south of the border and without whom football as we know it would not exist, indeed, might not exist at all!
History