McGregor, the visionary who set football's league era in motion | OneFootball

Real Sociedad's meeting with Aston Villa underscores William McGregor's legacy, the Scot who reshaped the sport.

According to Diario Vasco, Villa are 1982 European Cup winners and central to Birmingham's 'Second City Derby', played since 1875 against Birmingham City, founded that year as Small Heath Alliance.

McGregor was born in 1846 in Braco, Perthshire, trained as a merchant, and moved in 1870 to Birmingham to build a family textile business. He had been intrigued by an early form of the game after watching a match in Ardoch, then followed Calthorpe in the Midlands, a club founded by fellow Scot Campbell Orr.

He expanded his clothing trade by selling football kits, notably for Aston Villa after the club built a ground beside his shop. Rising in influence, he became a Villa director, with the team already contesting the FA Cup by 1871, then seen as an amateur competition that also mixed elements of rugby.

During the Second Industrial Revolution, friendlies often fell through as players returned to factory work across the British Isles. McGregor proposed that 10 or 12 leading clubs should organise home and away fixtures each season, replacing friendlies to identify the best side, a plan he set out in a letter to the owners of Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion.

After an initial meeting in London, a decisive gathering in Manchester saw the Football League formally founded at the Royal Hotel on 17 April 1888, the first of its kind. That September, Bolton Wanderers against Derby County was the inaugural league match.

In part thanks to McGregor, Real Sociedad have two league titles, won a century later. They face Villa in Walsall today, even if McGregor is no longer the man kitting anyone out.

Source: Diario Vasco