Spain
As in recent years perhaps the best team in the World, certainly on the field the easiest on the eye, Spain and its football had a triple start, in all three of which Scots input directly in terms of men and machinery and indirectly through tactics was decisive. The part of Spain where direct Scots influence was least has been the Basque country. Its iron and steel furnaces drew expertise and men more from Northern England than North of the Border. Yet it was there Scottish football thinking, albeit through a surrogate, stylistically changed not just the local game but would do the same to Spanish football in general. However, in both Andalusia and Catalonia it would be different. Iron, oranges and mining drew men of all classes from all parts North of the Border to Southern Spain. In its North-East it was textiles, thread and lace, that brought in principally the working men of Paisley, Glasgow and Ayrshire first to the region's interior and then the booming city of Barcelona. And although with the new arrivals to both Southern and Northern Spain came the love of not just one game, golf and cricket where also indulged in, it was football that caught the local imagination and took hold; football that in both regions, in the Basque cities and gradually in the rest of the country became the passion it is today.