I've been compelled to tell you there's two words you absolutely must take away from this piece.

The phrase 'Scotch Professor' may provoke little more than a shrug as you sit down to gorge on another feast of World Cup action - but chances are you would not be doing so without them.

Today, in a quiet corner of Glasgow, one of football's most significant - yet least talked about - milestones will be remembered and commemorated on its 150th anniversary. On November 30, 1872, Scotland met England in a fixture recognised by FIFA as the world's first ever international football match.

But not only did it give rise to a concept that now plays out as one of sport's biggest events every four years, but it also set in motion a journey towards the very essence of the football we take for granted.

“Here’s the thing," says Ged O'Brien, author, teacher and founder of the Scottish Football Museum. "Cuthbert Ottaway kicks off, first person to kick a ball in international football is Ottaway of England – who cares? The ball will go to a Scot. English player comes up to tackle the Scot, and the Scot kicks the ball away. Now, the English players must have thought ‘what the hell was that?’"

But why would they? "That’s because," O'Brien explains, "in England, unfortunately, you had the malign influence of the posh school boys from the South.

“In their game, you dribbled the ball until you were tackled. Passing the ball was a form of cowardice.

“Why would you pass the ball? You’re supposed to be tough and learning how to be ready to run the empire."

These days, we obviously take for granted how the beautiful game is played, because none of us have ever known anything else. We debate tactics, systems, philosophies, but the basis of football as a game where you pass to your team-mates remains constant.

But it wasn't always so. At least, not south of the border. The game itself finished scoreless, but the course of history had been changed forever.

"It’s dodo-ball," he says of the English approach. “Their football is dead; they just don’t realise it yet. You have the intelligent, logical, scientific, Scottish combination seen on the international football pitch for the first time ever in the world.

“The English will have gone back down to their clubs and will have spoken about this strange thing the Scots were doing. They were moving up and down the park, it’s clearly planned, and they’re moving the ball with quick, fast, short passing from one to the other."

And so it was born - the Scotch Professor.

“We’re watching Qatar at the moment, we’re watching a whole horde of teams playing the Scotch Professor game.

“No matter where you go in the world, irrespective of the ethnicity or culture of the teams you’re watching, you are watching the ghosts of the Scotch Professors from 150 years ago, who took that football around the world."

John Harley, a railway engineer from Springburn, is credited as one of the founding fathers of Uruguayan football; Hugh MacColl, another engineer from Glasgow, was a founding member and first captain of Sevilla; Thomas Donohue, a textile worker from East Renfrewshire, has a statue in his honour in Rio de Janeiro, such was his influence on the game there.

The list goes on and on, but it all started on that day in 1872.

In 2023, Scotland and England will meet again at Hampden in a friendly to mark the birth of the international game. But today, an altogether more low key gathering will pay homage on the very ground upon which the game was played.

Organised by the Hampden Collection and first revealed in The Herald, the family of Joseph Taylor - who played for Scotland in the 1872 match - will visit the cricket ground to watch a recreation of the original game. This time, it will be local children from Hyndland Primary School taking to the pitch, ably assisted by current Scotland goalkeeper Craig Gordon and watched by representatives from the SFA and Scottish Football Museum.

“This is the story we’re trying to get out," O'Brien says. "We’re basing it on that game, where Scotland showed England for the first time at international level ‘this is the scientific game, boys’ and this is the way the game was played."

So, when the sound of Three Lions' proclaiming 'it's coming home' next passes your eardrums, you can say 'well, actually...'

“I used to say this to people in the 90s, when I was finding the money to build the Scottish Football Museum," says O'Brien, who is in the midst of writing a book on this very subject. "I would talk to people and say ‘I’m sorry, your football is not football, it’s Scotland who invented football’. You would think I had just insulted their mother."

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