Portugal
The history of football in Portugal, the coming of the game to the country says that it was introduced by Portuguese returning from schooling in "England", for which read perhaps Britain. It isn't true or at least is only partly so. Portugal needs to be considered as having several distinct parts, perhaps four. The first is the Algarve, the part of the country in the south that was once occupied by the Moors. Then there is the central portion from the Atlantic Ocean to the Spanish border to either side of the River Tagus that rises to the east of Madrid and reaches the sea at Lisbon. And it was football's arrival in Lisbon that is assumed, not least by the people of Lisbon itself, to be sufficient not just for them but also their countrymen, indeed their country. Lisbon's two greatest, present-day terms, Sporting and Benfica, officially Sport Lisboa and Benfica, were founded in 1906 and in part in 1904 and finally in 1908 respectively. However, the first football said to have been played on Portuguese territory was not there or even on the mainland. It was on the Atlantic Islands, specifically in 1875 on Madeira, today fittingly also the birthplace of Cristiano Ronaldo, and brought by a local of British origin with the first football on the mainland officially thought to be fourteen years later. It is said to have been in early 1889 in Cascais, close to Lisbon, between Portuguese and "English" elevens, followed in 1894 by a match between Lisbon and Porto. Which begs the questions when and how football reached Porto, Portugal's second city and the capital of its fourth region, north of Coimbra to the Spanish border and inland?
And it is with football in Porto that the picture, at least the Scottish picture, of the Portugues game becomes interesting. It was not Lisbon, which in October 1893 invited Porto to the 1894 game but the other way round. It tells us that Porto already had football, the Football Club do Porto was formed in 1893, and that it was organised, at least to the extent of being in the position of issuing such an invitation with confidence. Furthermore, although the Cascais "English" team of 1889 had perhaps four Scots in it, Govan and R.W. Watson, J. Fraser and C. Anderson, and the 1894 Lisbon team also maybe two, C.D. Rankin and J. Thomson, it is the the Porto team in that same game, which strikes a real chord. At its spine it had three Macs. In goal was MacGeock, probably McGeoch, at centre-half McMillen and at centre-forward, MacKechnie. They were seemingly the first of several more Scots, including Douglas Grant, Alex Caw and possibly the mysterious "Hamilton", who over the next two decades through wine and thread would be intimately involved in the city's two major teams, at FC Porto, as today the Football Club or Futebol Clube do Porto is now known, and from 1903 at Boavista, from across the Douro estuary in Vila Nova da Gaia, both of which notably would be up and running before today's rivals from the capital.
Charlie Bell