Football WI: United Kingdom Football Association

I'm surprised nobody brought up the 1884 British Football Association:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Football_Association

The BFA was set up in 1884 because the FA at the time had begun trying to restrict professionals from playing, and a lot of the professionals at the time came from Scotland (so one rule was that only Englishmen were allowed to compete in the FA Cup). As a response 31 clubs formed the BFA in Manchester as a rival to the FA. In 1885 the FA relented and legalized professionalism in 1885 but of course not everyone was satisfied and an Amateur Football Association was formed in 1907.

Now if the FA didn't relent, could there have been a rugby style split in association football almost 10 years before rugby's schism? Or perhaps the BFA would have won out and the FA would have become as irrelevant as the AFA in 1907 and today the BFA might well be the governing body of professional football in all of Britain and it may have had a different attitude to the formation of an international governing body in the early 1900s than the FA, SFA, IFA and FAW did - the international governing football body might not even be called "FIFA" if there was British participation from the get-go. Maybe it would be the "International Football Association Board" mirroring the OTL body but having the powers of OTL IFAB and OTL FIFA.

At the very least if the FA remained intransigent and the BFA won out in the battle of professionalism then the "BFA Cup" would probably be open to Scots since a lot of professionals were from Scotland. Eventually other BFA competitions/leagues would come about and probably be open to all Britons.
 
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