AHC: UK National Soccer Team

That's gonna be a problem. The reason England got organized sports first is the industrial revolution which gave people disposable income and leisure for the first time.

People had significant leisure time before the Industrial Revolution - and that includes football. Organised sports had a fair bit to do with the Victorian notion of social improvement via "healthy mind, healthy body."

That said, codified rules also require a literate population.
 

kernals12

Banned
People had significant leisure time before the Industrial Revolution - and that includes football. Organised sports had a fair bit to do with the Victorian notion of social improvement via "healthy mind, healthy body."

That said, codified rules also require a literate population.
Before the Industrial Revolution, people, including kids, spent almost all their time farming. They only took Sunday off. And they certainly didn't have the money to attend professional games.
 
Before the Industrial Revolution, people, including kids, spent almost all their time farming. They only took Sunday off. And they certainly didn't have the money to attend professional games.

Um, no they didn't.

They worked very hard at certain times of year - other times, not so much. And "village football" was certainly a thing.

Professional sport came after organised sport, when the working class pointed out that they needed to be recompensed for time off (this was the basis for the eventual split between rugby league and rugby union).
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Re the non-happening of Rangers and Celtic in the English system - remember that both bum cheeks of the Old Firm run on "success" which attracts "gloryhunter" fans. And they feed off their mutual rivalry.
Once they rise to the 2nd tier (Championship) - a level where their current attendance will easily get them - they will most likely be stuck there for a few trophyless years. Here they no longer compete against teams with budgets at best one third of their own - they now compete against peers. Even if they do climb to the top level - still they win fuck all. And they no longer play one another on average five times a year, but twice. Three times if they are lucky!
So IMO they both see their support outwith Glasgow plummet.
 
You could have a POD with the Acts of Union or sometime after James VI took the throne of England which results in a much more centralised UK. As it happens having two separate legal systems in one country is always gonna foster division. Perhaps Cromwell uses his position to make the entire British Isles a single nation with 1st level administrative divisions going straight to counties. And then after his collapse it stays that way cause the MP's all have their seat and don't want to rock the boat.

The special Olympics 2012 squad had 5 non-English players in a squad of 18. Illustrates it perfectly.

Yeah and England has 84% of the population, they should have had 15 players. The rest of the UK is over-represented. All you have to do is encourage English regionalism so people see 13 English players as actually 4 Londoners, 5 Northerners, 3 Cornish, etc. No one in Occitain is thinking about all the Parisians dominating the sport
 
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And do those leagues have traditions of large numbers (in thousands & occasionally tens of thousands) of travelling fans to every away game?

[Currently sitting on 113 different League venues visited & counting...]

and two games a week, plus Europe

All that being said, the only time you could have even in a small percentage chance have achieved a UK League would have been after WW2. The English, Scottish and Irish Leagues stopped for the War and had to be re-established afterwards.

And the wartime leagues started, Jackie MIlburn made his debut in 43.

People had significant leisure time before the Industrial Revolution - and that includes football. Organised sports had a fair bit to do with the Victorian notion of social improvement via "healthy mind, healthy body."

That said, codified rules also require a literate population.

True, what they did not have was trams buses and trains to get them to the games
 
All that being said, the only time you could have even in a small percentage chance have achieved a UK League would have been after WW2. The English, Scottish and Irish Leagues stopped for the War and had to be re-established afterwards.

One of the most bizarre consequences of the Unmentionable Sea-Mammal: the Nazis establish a unified British football league. :p
 
And the wartime leagues started, Jackie MIlburn made his debut in 43.
The wartime leagues weren't national leagues though with both England and Scotland reverting to regional leagues. After the war, they were reconstructed back to national set-ups due to wartime travel restrictions. Even then, I did say this was highly unlikely and would take intervention to happen.
 

hipper

Banned
Quite bizarrely, Britain has 4 seperate soccer teams, one for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Considering how these "nations" have been ceremonial until very recently with the advent of devolved parliaments, this just seems odd and harmful to the quality of each of the national teams.

Even more bizarrely, they have 4 seperate soccer leagues. No other country that I no of has multiple top level leagues within its borders (not counting low ranking regional leagues). In fact, Major League Soccer does the opposite, covering both the US and Canada, probably because they need the economies of scale.

So how can we have a single UK National Team and a single UK Premier League?


You need to look deeper into British History,
 
Before the Industrial Revolution, people, including kids, spent almost all their time farming. They only took Sunday off. And they certainly didn't have the money to attend professional games.

I doubt if back then there was a 'professional' game. More likely part-time players. Many teams would have their ancestry back to works teams - Arsenal (the gunners) was Woolwich Arsenal - formed as a munitions workers team.
 

kernals12

Banned
I doubt if back then there was a 'professional' game. More likely part-time players. Many teams would have their ancestry back to works teams - Arsenal (the gunners) was Woolwich Arsenal - formed as a munitions workers team.
Exactly, there would've been no market for it.
 
I doubt if back then there was a 'professional' game. More likely part-time players. Many teams would have their ancestry back to works teams - Arsenal (the gunners) was Woolwich Arsenal - formed as a munitions workers team.
The game was initially strictly amateur and paying players was strictly against the rules. When it became obvious that the teams were making the works a profit(people were paying to go and watch them), the idea of professionalism began to take hold. Even with this being the case, paying players wasn't made legal in England until 1885 and shortly after in Scotland.

For anyone who doubts that players were getting paid unofficially, the number of Scotland internationals who headed south(Scotland almost completely dominated the first twenty years or so of football internationals) would indicate otherwise, as would the number of players who moved throughout England. Feelings were mixed though and the introduction of the leagues was seen as encouraging professionalism which was still seen in quarters as a dirty word, meaning several clubs, most notably Queen's Park, who were started as a football club and dominated the early years of Scottish football, initially refused to join the league set-up as they saw their creation in this light.

As for the history of the clubs, many of the histories are interesting.

I mean, in Scotland, you had Celtic and Hibernian being founded by the Catholic Church to help the Catholic poor, although both were professional(in the case of Hibernian, for a period illegally). You had Rangers being founded by four penniless teenage highlanders who initially couldn't even afford a football(there is a really good book about this I have read, sectarianism never reared it's head there until the 1920s). Dundee FC and Aberdeen FC were both the result of mergers so the cities could get teams in the Scottish League. Dundee United(initially Dundee Hibernian) were formed by a Liberal Councillor who wanted to create a team for the Irish community in Dundee. St. Johnstone were a cricket club who wanted a winter sport(the cricket club have since folded)! The best one is Heart of Midlothian, who in spite of their grand title, were named after a nightclub. Motherwell were formed from a merger of Works Teams. Another league team, the sadly deceased Third Lanark were formed by the British Army.

My knowledge of English football history isn't nearly as advanced, but from memory, Everton were founded as a church team and Liverpool were created because of a dispute in the Everton boardroom. Man United and Arsenal were works teams, Man City were also a church team(I suspect their founders would be rolling in their graves at the thought of the current set-up the club has).

Either way, the game was formed through people paying to watch, from ease of transport and people actually scouting talent. None of this was really possible prior to the rail network and the industrial revolution. Professional Football is a direct result of it.
 
Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of what the USSR would want though? They generally went for trying to erase national identities rather than encourage them didn't they?

I could be wrong on this but I think they took an approach similar to the British line of "country of countries". It was a hard line approach that sought to wipe out separatism and some aspects of national cultures but I don't think it was a simple as "we're all Russians now".
 
I can't speak to the development of professionalism in football, but in rugby, it was very much a matter of players wanting compensation for the time off work. The result was, unsurprisingly, class warfare: the upper class wanted amateurism, the working class professionalism. Hence the split into rugby union (amateur until 1995) and rugby league, which evolved into two different games, depending on one can contest the ball at the breakdown.

(As a footnote - the 1905 New Zealand side received three shillings a day while touring the British Isles. This had been approved by the (English) Rugby Union, but the Scottish upper class were furious).
 
All you have to do is encourage English regionalism so people see 13 English players as actually 4 Londoners, 5 Northerners, 3 Cornish, etc

I don't think anyone in Scotland, or Wales will be concerned with whether the English players are from Merseyside, Yorkshire, the Midlands or the South, they are Scottish or Welsh not a region of England.
Personally, I'm proud to call myself British - as well as being Welsh, many Scots though don't. depending when this supposed change is brought about - I could well imagine it strengthening independence movements in Scotland and Wales.
 
Thought about another pod. Start the Olympics earlier, like in 1800 before football kicks off.

Olympics goes on to shape the standard for international sports competition, and with a precedent of a British team the teams are combined once the first international football teams start competing

Edit : in response to the above post they would if there was no concept of England. If people thought of themselves as British then Cornish no one is gonna be complaining about domination
 
All that being said, the only time you could have even in a small percentage chance have achieved a UK League would have been after WW2. The English, Scottish and Irish Leagues stopped for the War and had to be re-established afterwards. There is no other time where it could possibly have happened. It would also give you the bonus that teams like Linfield and Belfast Celtic were playing in front of decent crowds until then.

One funny thing, I think would be that in this scenario, Belfast Celtic, the team for Irish Nationalists would probably survive in that scenario, which did not happen within the confines of the Irish League.

That is what I did in my football timeline (An Earlier World Cup of Football) as I thought that they would have an formation of the UK league after the Second World War would be easier than say thirty years down the line.
 
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