Between Manaus and Rio de Janeiro there are 4,000 miles of RiverAmazon and Brazilian coastline dotted with great port cities; Belem, Fortaleza, Natal, Recife and Salvador de Bahia.
In Pernambuco, the state of which Recife is the capital, Sport Club do Recife was founded in 1905 by a Brazilian, but one who had lived and studied in England. Its first match was that same year, against an “English” eleven. And 1905 was also the year, in which football was first played by Nautico Clube Capibaribe, to this day Sport Club do Recife’s city footballing rival. It had been founded in 1901 by the merging of rowing clubs with football, introduced later by Britons into what was very much an elite institution, seemingly practised but not played against outside opposition until 1909 when the first Recife derby took place. Won by Club Nautico, 3:1, it featured amongst others H. Grant Anderson, visible travelling from Brazil to the UK at the time and later, MacPherson and A. and C. Chalmers, probably two Scottish engineers, probably brothers born in Fife.
In Bahia immediately to the south the pattern of development was also similar to that in Pernambuco if a little earlier. Organised football came to its capital, Salvador, with the foundation again in 1905 of the Bahian Football Federation consisting of four clubs; SC Bahiano, Sao Paulo Clube, Sport Club Vitoria and the Clube International. However, these last two had both been formed in 1899, the latter as the International Cricket Club, a team originally made up of sailors from the British ships visiting the port, the former as the Victoria Cricket Club, founded by Brazilians educated in Britain and the city’s British community. Today known as Esporte Club Vitoria the former played its first football match, regarded as unofficial, against outside opposition in 1902. International's first official match was eighteen months later, against the Sao Paulo Bahia Football Clube, an offshoot of Sao Paulo Clube made up of Paulistas, natives of Sao Paulo, living in Salvador. It was also not until a year later that SC Bahiano saw the light, as the first club formed expressly for football and in that same year the first Brazilian representative game, effectively Brazil's first international, is said to have taken place, not in Rio or Sao Paulo but also in Salvador. On 7th June 1903 the Bahian eleven drew 0:0 with a British XI. The fixture was repeated three weeks later and was followed in August by a third game, this time against a North American selection. Bahia would win 2:0 but its team would, perhaps drawing on the British XI for the greatest expertise, have Orr in goal, Douglas McNair at centre-half with Robert McNair, his elder brother, alongside him.
Douglas and Robert McNair were sons of a Glasgow-born merchant; part of a family based in Rio but with business interests in other Brazilian ports. Douglas, born in Brazil, would return to the then capital to live and work but Robert would remain for a while in Salvador and continue to play for Vitoria before he also returned to Rio. With him in the team the club would take the Bahian Football Championship in 1908. The win was repeated in 1909 and the club itself continues to play, now in the Brazilian second tier.