The first international match

The international match between Scotland and England on 30 November 1872 is recognised by FIFA as the first official meeting between two national football teams. It was arranged between the English Football Association and the football clubs of Glasgow, and was played at Hamilton Crescent, the West of Scotland Cricket Club ground in Partick. The result was a goalless draw.

The fixture mattered for more than its result. It established that football could be played between national teams as well as clubs, set a precedent for an annual fixture between the two countries, and pointed the way to the wider international game that grew through the next century. Almost every later development in international football — FIFA, the World Cup, the continental tournaments — traces back to the format the 1872 match introduced.

By the early 1870s, football was being played by enough clubs in both Scotland and England that a representative national team from each was viable. The English FA had been governing football south of the border since 1863, and Scottish clubs had been playing under similar rules for several years. No other country yet had the depth of football to put a national team together.

The match was arranged by Charles Alcock, secretary of the English FA, who wrote to clubs in Glasgow asking them to put up an opposition team. Alcock had organised five earlier matches in London between 1870 and 1872, in which an England side had played against a "Scotland" team made up of London-based Scots. Those earlier matches are treated as unofficial in modern records. The 1872 match in Glasgow, with a Scotland side drawn from Scottish clubs in Scotland, is the one FIFA recognises as the first international.

The kick-off was at two o'clock in the afternoon on a heavy, muddy pitch — the West of Scotland Cricket Club had agreed to host the match on its cricket ground, with goals set up temporarily for the occasion. The crowd was estimated at four thousand, large for an English club match at the time and very large for any Scottish football fixture. Tickets cost a shilling, with the proceeds split between the organisers of the match.

The football itself reflected the styles of the two sides. Scotland played a passing game between players that was already common at Queen's Park but unusual in England. England played in the more typical English style of the time, with individual dribbling runs by forwards and less interplay between team-mates. The match finished goalless, but several reports noted that the Scottish style had been more effective in keeping possession against a heavier English side.

Between March 1870 and February 1872, Charles Alcock arranged five matches at The Oval in London between an England side and a team representing Scotland. Each was billed as an international fixture and reported as such in the press. The Scotland sides in those matches, however, were drawn from Scots living in London rather than from clubs based in Scotland, and were chosen by Alcock himself rather than by anyone in Scotland.

Modern records treat the five Oval matches as unofficial. They were important in building demand for a fixture between the two countries, but they were not played by a Scotland side drawn from clubs in Scotland. The Glasgow match of November 1872 was the first recognised match between teams representing Scotland and England, and it is the one that the FA, the Scottish FA and FIFA count as the first official international.

England and Scotland made the fixture an annual part of the football calendar, with later interruptions during wartime and changing competition schedules. The fixture became one of the highlights of the football calendar in both countries and remained a central match in British football for over a hundred years. Wales joined the regular international calendar in 1876, and Ireland in 1882; from 1883-84 onwards, the four British nations played each other every year in what became the British Home Championship.

The 1872 match created the basic idea of international football: one country's representative team playing another. As national associations developed, they took over selection, eligibility and fixture organisation, creating the model used for later international football. As football spread to mainland Europe and South America, the same broad format spread with it, and the structures built on top of it eventually included FIFA, the World Cup and the continental tournaments.

The British Home Championship ran in some form from the 1883-84 season until 1984. The four British associations — England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, later replaced by Northern Ireland after partition — played each other in a round-robin tournament each year, with the winner taking the title. For most of its history, the Home Championship was the leading international football competition outside major tournaments, and it gave the British nations a regular international calendar long before continental Europe had one.

The tournament ended in 1984 as international football's calendar grew more crowded and as fixtures between the British nations became less central. The annual Scotland-England match continued as a separate fixture for some years before becoming an occasional rather than yearly meeting. The Home Championship's role as the first organised international tournament, however, is the part of its history that has lasted.