Go into any football museum in Italy, Spain or Brazil and you will find a Scottish reference

World Cup and Euro 2000 double winners France, 1988 European Championship winners Netherlands and Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s formidable Soviet side of 1985-89, knocking out West Germany (1954) and the Dutch Total Football revolutionaries of 1974-78 before eventually succumbing to the 1954 Hungary team in the semifinals.

Yes, it was a bit of fun but that didn’t prevent a few raised eyebrows from some taking part in the poll who were baffled at the exit of Rinus Michels’ visionaries at the expense of a team of Victorian upstarts whose regular and only opponents were England, Ireland and Wales.

“Some were asking: ‘How is this team here? They only had to play three other nations.’ I think lots didn’t want them to win necessarily but what it did do was unite the Scottish behind them,” says Gareth Thomas, one half of The Football History Boys podcast, who conducted the poll.

Such views do the Scotland teams of that era an injustice.

The ‘Scotch Professors’ have come to be recognised as the first genuine scholars of the game; the men who exported passing football and professionalism to England, and beyond.

The individual characters Brown and McPhee selected were people of substance, too, not just brilliant footballers but men who would go on to have a lasting impact on the game for generations to come.

The team of the late 19th century lost just three times in a 20-year period and doled out ritual hammerings to England, beating them 7-2, 6-1 and 5-1 during the years between 1880 and 1882.

“It is a dynamite team,” said Brown. “Tom Vallance is the first Rangers president. He