Mexico
Note: This page, indeed the whole site, is the result of ten years' work, a very large part completely original. So, if you are seeking source material for articles or programmes for the coming World Cup and you are minded to try to rip it off, don't. Talk to us, ask us politely before metaphorically putting pen to paper or film in camera, make an agreed donation to The Scots Football Historians' Group's funds, which we will use to promote proper Scots football history and preservation and all can be happy. Otherwise do your own research or as we have already with the BBC, you will be taken to task.
Football came to Mexico not from Spain but by ship and rail in the feet of British "gentlemen", Cornish miners and Scottish factory workers. The gentlemen were firstly merchants and British government officials in Mexico City. And they were followed by railways engineers and from all four old countries the staff required to carry out business, amongst whom was a certain James McNabb, the new country's first footballing forward of note. The miners were transferring their skills from Cornish tin to the ores in the mountains around Pachuca to the north-west of the capital. The Scots were bringing theirs from the jute mills of Dundee to the Santa Gertrudis mill to the south-east in Orizaba at the foot of Mexico's highest peak, the Citlaltépetl volcano. The factory is still there, a ruin, yet, whilst the Scots that made up ten of the eleven in the works team are long-gone, faded into obscurity, for a footballing season in 1903 under the guidance of one Duncan Macomish they won the first ever Mexican football league.