Unimaginable now, especially with tickets in short supply during the coronavirus pandemic, but when England and Scotland first decided to play each other in a soccer match they weren’t sure if there would be much demand.
How wrong they were. The West of Scotland Cricket Club was packed on Nov. 30, 1872.
“It was a big social success and a financial success,” soccer historian Andy Mitchell said. “So that was the stepping stone that made them realize that there was a market for football and the potential for them for the game to grow.”
More than 2,000 spectators watched the 1-1 draw, generating a profit to fund travel for a return match in England and set international soccer’s oldest rivalry in motion.
The 115th installment of the meeting of neighbors within Britain comes on Friday at the home of English soccer, Wembley Stadium — 149 years after the first.
“Historically, it’s an incredibly important event,” Mitchell, the author of “First Elevens — the birth of international football,” said by telephone. “It helped football as a game to develop because even at that time, there were two different styles. Scotland had the passing game, teamwork. England had their sort of dribbling, head down and run kind of game.
“It was quite apparent very soon that the teamwork and passing game was far superior to what the English were playing.”
That was clear within the first decade of encounters with Scotland enjoying five-goal victory margins of 7-2 and 6-1.
“So the Scottish style,” Mitchell said, “was soon absorbed by the English game.”
Scotland having such an influence south of the border seems incongruous in the modern game.
A gulf between their domestic leagues has also grown over this century as the Premier League in England has cemented its status at the world’s richest league and the second-division Championship is even able to offer salaries comparable with — or exceeding — those on offer in the Scottish Premiership.
“They’ve got a population of 55 million, we’ve got a population of 5 million,” Scotland midfielder John McGinn said. “They’ve got worldwide superstars all through their squad, so we’ll always be underdogs. But hopefully that will suit us.”
While 2018 World Cup semifinalist England opened Euro 2020 with a win over Croatia,Scotland lost to the Czech Republic on home soil in Glasgow in its first men’s tournament game of the 21st century.
