Our Tartan Army's foreign legion

who give us all a reason to cheer

on the USA against Portugal today

IT'S the controversial Scottish question for this year's World Cup finals: lacking tartan representation at the biggest sporting event on planet earth, who's a Scot supposed to support?

There's been much nigglesome hoo-hah over whether or not we should support the auld enemy, England, with magnanimous souls like the SNP's Andrew Wilson suggesting we should set aside traditional antipathies to

our erstwhile colonial oppressors - symbolised still by Jimmy Hill's subjugating chin and Clive Tyldesley's

babbling tongue.

Most Scots, though, have tended to the other extreme, feeling an innate affinity with whichever nation England is facing. Aye, it's World Cup 2002,

and whether we're from Grangemouth or St Vigeans or Nairn, we're a' Argentinian gauchos, Swedish Vikings, and opportunist Nigerian banking services agents the noo.

Further muddying the World Cup waters, the Rangers half of Glasgow's Old Firm divide has latterly come out in support of England, if only to rile Celts who follow the Republic of Ireland.

Today, however, The Herald can provide a definitive answer. There's only one World Cup team every Scot should support: the United States, whose campaign opens today against Portugal in Suwon, South Korea. With cathode ray-driven support from our heathery Scottish hearthsides, maybe the US's rank outsiders can go places. But why should we support the USA?

Because five Scots played for America in the first World Cup, in Uruguay in 1930, carrying a Caledonian banner considerably further than any official Scottish World Cup team has managed since. They actually reached the semi-finals before losing to Argentina.

Theirs is Scotland's greatest World Cup story, and it's one that until now has been little told. Furthermore, whenever this tale of Scottish-American derring-do has been related, it's been widely disparaged by the English media. Scottish sportsmen being ignobly scorned by English commentators - who'd-a thunk there was a 72-year-long history of it?

From the annals of the US Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, in upstate New York, the facts of Scotland's role in the first World Cup are very simple. Five Scots played in all three US games

at that small initial 1930 event:

Andrew Auld, Jimmy Gallagher, Bart McGhee, Jim Brown, and Alexander ''Sandy'' Wood.

This quintet's couthy Scottish names are at present enshrined in the US Hall of Fame alongside those of such global giants as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, and Giorgio Chinaglia, legends whose playing careers all included a similar period of American export.

In addition, Oneonta's pantheon has places for the emigre trainer and coach of the 1930 side: Bob Millar, a Paisley Buddie, and Jack Coll, born in Downpatrick, County Down, but thereafter raised in Glasgow.

Lochgelly-born Sandy Wood is the only native Scot recorded as having become a naturalised US citizen before 1930, although all five made their lives there, ultimately dying on American soil, the last as recently as 1994: Jim Brown, in New Jersey, aged 85.

Like countless Scots of that era, Sandy Wood had emigrated with his parents as a 14-year-old in 1921. Before arriving in America when he was 19 in 1927, Ayrshire-born Jim Brown grew

up in Troon. Nephews left behind by soccer-playing Broon fae Troon would go on to achieve their own sporting

successes, incidentally, Peter and

Gordon Brown becoming well-kent Scottish rugby internationalists.

Jimmy Gallagher was born in Kirkintilloch, arriving Stateside with his mum as a 12-year-old in 1913. Likewise Bart McGhee, born in Edinburgh, crossed the Atlantic at the age of 13 in 1912.

Andy Auld was born in Stevenston, Ayrshire. Emulating four other adult Auld siblings, and accompanied by his young family, the 23-year-old set off to seek his fortune in America in 1923. Auld's Scottish relatives can still be found in Stevenston.

In particular, Bobby Auld fondly recalls his uncle, not least for his footballing prowess. ''As a kid, I remember him coming back here to visit a good number of times,'' he says. ''I can't say then that I was really aware of his success in the World Cup - not that the World Cup has the status it does now,

of course.

''I gradually learned that there'd been five footballing Auld brothers, with my father being the eldest by 15 years. They'd all played junior football with Ardeer Thistle. On one occasion, in fact, all five Aulds were picked to play together for Ardeer simply to set a record.

''Oddly enough, the most talented Auld brother gave up football in his teens soon after winning Junior Scotland caps - he'd fallen for an Ayrshire girl who belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, and football then was against her religion.

''My uncle Andy wound up playing for the Providence Gold Bugs in Rhode Island. He'd been spotted by chance in a kickabout with other Scots near his sister's home in Niagara Falls - he'd actually just been visiting en route to returning to live in Scotland again.

''The Providence team was funded by a wealthy local businessman. He employed Andy in his firm, training him as a sheet metal worker. He was earning very good money for those days, with wages from the sheet metal works and the football.

''His widow, Meg, continued to visit Scotland after Andy's death in 1977, and I remember her telling me that for the month-long duration of the World Cup they'd been paid $40 a week, the

equivalent of (pounds) 14.''

Official US Football Association records reveal that their players were on (pounds) 21 a World Cup win, with (pounds) 17.50 for a draw. At the conclusion of what eventually proved to be a three-month-long sojourn in South America, each player had earned (pounds) 86 per month. This was at a time when the average British weekly wage was (pounds) 2.50.

Indeed, at that time America's professional east-coast soccer leagues provided handsome rewards for a range of soccer-playing Brits, often via clubs associated with local industries. Teams like Providence, Fall River Marksmen, Bethlehem Steel, New York Nationals, Detroit

Holley Carburettor, New Bedford Whalers, and Brooklyn Hakoah featured a number of seasoned British professionals - thus giving rise to the English media scorn which has long greeted the US's success in 1930.

For in half a dozen World Cup encyclopaedias, English authors have alleged that all five of the USA's 1930 World Cup Scots - plus one Englishman, George Moorehouse - were chosen by Uncle Sam because they were seasoned British pros. In fact, only Moorehouse had any professional experience before going to America - two games with lowly Tranmere Rovers.

Not that this stopped England's

re-writers of history. American soccer's five founding Scottish fathers were ringers, soccer carpetbaggers, they claimed. This retrospective criticism was born out of English pique after their unexpected defeat by the US at the 1950 World Cup, England's first.

Plainly, the English soccer establishment of the time was in need of a scapegoat. Having deigned to attend Johnny Foreigner's bally World Cup shenanigans 20 years after first being invited, England were miffed at being immediately bested by Yankee upstarts. There had to be funny business going on, the FA felt. Ringers, those Scots . . .

It didn't help when Wood's World Cup exploits in Uruguay led him to return to the UK for eight years as a pro with Leicester City and Nottingham Forest. Likewise, Brown joined Manchester United in 1932, later appearing for Brentford, Tottenham Hotspur, and Clyde before going back to the US. His bid to start an English players' union held his career back, Brown was later to say.

In contrast, Andy Auld plugged away in the American Soccer League, weathering its collapse during the Depression. He had his job as a sheet metal worker, with football for Fall River and Pawtucket as a reasonable sideline.

Not that fortune and relative fame ever went to Andy Auld's head. Footballers evidently kept their feet on the ground in the far-off, less knowing days before the World Cup was co-opted by global corporate consumerism, parading its brand names in front of billions of TV viewers.

This is confirmed by Bobby's Auld recollection of his uncle's last visit home to his Stevenston birthplace. ''It would have been in the early seventies,'' Bobby Auld says. ''It was the summer, and my uncle was staying with other relatives in Kilwinning.

''We were about to go off on holiday, and I remember my Uncle Andy always being a great lad for the DIY and saying to me: 'Get the tiles in and I'll have your bathroom tiled for you coming back.' He did.''

Nowadays, museums and art galleries would doubtless compete expensively for any instance of home improvement ever undertaken by David Beckham. More rationally, Uncle Andy's Ayrshire tile-work has long since vanished. More lastingly, Bobby Auld's nephew, an English emigre himself, guards great-uncle Andy's commemorative World Cup medal.

Another football memento remains in the possession of Andy Auld's daughter, Pearl Mullins. Now aged 80 and resident in North Carolina, she's the proud inheritor of one of her father's elderly leather footballs. She's proudly aware of her dad's posthumous induction into the US Soccer Hall of Fame in 1986, alongside all his 1930 World Cup comrades. She's even more proud of the fact that her brother's two children, her nephews, still bear the Auld name in the Providence area.

The Rhode Island Robert Auld is a Baptist minister. When I phone him, he recalls childhood visits to his grandparents' house where he was shown photos of grandpa Andy in World Cup action for the US against Argentina in front of a packed stadium. There were 112,000 spectators there that day in Montevideo, July 26, 1930.

Unlike his brother, the Rhode Island Andy Auld can boast an active interest in soccer. For 30 years, he's been a high school teacher. During that time he's coached a couple of Burrillville High's teams to state championships.

''I played soccer at a local level in my youth,'' the American Andy

Auld tells me. ''The New England Revolution are our nearest professional soccer team - if they can truly be called professional.

''The Revolution draw crowds of maybe 20,000 to the 80,000-capacity stadium they share with our far more successful American Football team, the Patriots. Soccer's problem here is that there are so many big sports: basketball, baseball, ice hockey.

''What's encouraging is that soccer

is really popular with young American kids. But I can't see us doing

very much this World Cup. . . especially against Portugal.''

Andy Auld has never visited his Scottish homeland, but, as he laments America's chances at World Cup 2002, I sense his genetic familiarity with Scotland's sad and most enduring World Cup chant, the unwieldy one that starts: ''Not until it's mathematically impossible . . .''

From today, our World Cup choice is plain: it's the US - and it's us. Go, all-action midfielder Earnie, braveheart scion of clan Stewart! And steel yourself that Luis Figo cannae tak' awa' yer fitba', young McBride, Brian of that ilk!

THE STEWART DYNASTY

CONTINUING an American World Cup tradition which seems to have begun at the event's very first staging in South America in 1930, midfielder Earnie Stewart, left, is a US internationalist who was born outside the country, in the Netherlands.

A starter in every game that the US have played during their last two

World Cup campaigns in 1994 and 1998, Stewart

was born on the USAF airfield in the Netherlands where his American father was an employee.

Having spent part of his childhood in Point Arena, California, Stewart returned to Europe when his father was again posted to the Netherlands. His professional career has subsequently unfolded in Dutch football. Stewart is the US player of the year, as well as being the national side's all-time top scorer. His Scottish antecedents are, frankly, somewhat dubious. But as he plays in the top Dutch league, for NAC Breda, we should claim some credit for him.

Brian McBride hails from Arlington Heights, Illinois, near Chicago. He scored the US's only goal at the 1998 World Cup. His links to any famous former Scottish footballing McBrides are tenuous. However, Brian McBride does have very nice blond hair in the great Caledonian tradition of Colin Hendry. He would thus be sure to get a plate of soup at any Scottish door.

THE YANK FROM THE TAIL OF THE BANK

WHEN the US competed in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, famously gubbing the English, they were managed by Bill Jeffrey, who had been born in Edinburgh. Among the US team that year was another Scot, Ed McIlveney.

McIlveney had only been in the States for just more than a year

by the time he was picked to

play for the US, having left a

British professional football career that was going nowhere with Wrexham to join his sister in New York in 1949.

McIlveney played in all three 1950 World Cup games, captaining the US in their momentous victory over England. Having been born in Greenock, McIlveney's Scottish status was eagerly seized upon by contemporary Scottish newspapers, who dubbed him the Yank from the Tail of the Bank.

A number of other Scots feature in the US Soccer Hall of Fame, among them the son of 1930 World Cup hero Jim Brown, George. Despite having had the misfortune to be born in Ealing, London, George Brown made amends by being raised in Troon.

He accompanied his dad back to the States, and played for the US national team in 1957. He played for a number of professional American teams, ultimately becoming a coach, and settling in retirement

in Oneonta, near the Hall of

Fame itself.

Other Scots lauded in Oneonta's hallowed corridors include Edinburgh-born George Barr, another boyhood arrival in the States. Barr's American success with New York Brookhattan in 1936 led to an unsuccessful Scottish trial with Hearts.

On returning to America, Barr had a long footballing career, at one point facing a touring SFA team as well as taking part in indoor football at Madison Square Garden,

New York.

Dundee-born Jock Ferguson played for Arbroath, St Johnstone, Dundee, and Leeds before joining the emergent American Soccer League with Bethlehem Steel, missing only one game in eight seasons until 1920. Ferguson died in Bethlehem in 1973, aged 86.

Interestingly, a sixth Scot should have taken his place in the American line-up for the 1930 World Cup - Archibald MacPherson Stark. Born in Glasgow in 1897, Archie Stark travelled to the US as a young man.

Having had his American soccer career interrupted by the First World War, Stark became a professional with New York in 1921, playing in the American Soccer League and the Eastern Soccer League.

By the time his career effectively ended in 1932, when both professional leagues disintegrated, Stark had scored more than 300 goals in the States.

This remains the US record to this day. Stark's goalscoring prowess is such, in fact, that he ranks 43rd in the world rankings of first division scorers.

Why then did he fail to go to Uruguay to compete in the

World Cup?

No-one, not even the US Soccer Federation, is entirely sure. ''Business reasons'' is what is listed as an explanation for his absence in Stark's entry in the US Soccer Hall of Fame.

Could Stark not get time off his work, or was he demanding more money than US officialdom was prepared to pay?