(CNN) -- Modern football is a melting pot of cultures, as
players from a variety of ethnic backgrounds share top billing
as superstars. It is not always a comfortable mix, as can be
seen by the recent racism rows involving John Terry and Luis
Suarez. But football's pantheon of stars has not always been
such a rich multicultural tapestry. Far from it. Back in the
sport's infancy in the late 1800s, in its homeland of white-
dominated Britain, there were no official leagues and only a
handful of domestic cup competitions. International matches were
the pinnacle of competition, with England and Scotland
contesting the first in 1872 -- and few were played outside the
UK and Ireland until the formation of FIFA in 1904 . And it was
Scotland which, in 1881, provided football with its first black
international player -- British Guiana-born Andrew Watson. "He
was the son of a Glasgow merchant who traded out in the West
Indies and parts of South America as well," curator of the
Scottish Football Museum Richard McBrearty