WATCH: Birthplace of Argentina football legend Lionel Messi pays tribute to Dingwall man Colin Bain Calder days before eagerly anticipated World Cup Final
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THE memory of the Dingwall man who brought football to the birthplace of Lionel Messi has been honoured in his hometown days before the Argentinian maestro bids for World Cup glory.
Colin Bain Calder, who lived from April 16, 1860 to January 25, 1907, was the founder and first president of the Rosario Central football club.
Calder was born in 1860, the third of six children, in a house on Dingwall's High Street.
His father, Alexander, was a prosperous cabinet-maker but he died young and was buried in the graveyard of the town's St Clement's Church.
After fluctuating family fortunes, Colin's subsequent trade as a coach painter at a carriage works took him to Rosario where he became manager of the Central Argentine Railway paint shop – and a champion of football.
On a recent trip to Argentina, football enthusiast Lindsay Hamilton was presented with a poster of Colin Calder Bain by supporters of Rosario Central. She said: "This is the oldest association football team in Rosario, the city where Lionel Messi was born and played his football."
Her tour guide, Juan, was a Newell’s Old Boys fan – Messi's boyhod team and the great rivals of Rosario.He took her to visit Messi childhood home. Rosario Central. Juan's friends there showed them around the city and stadium: "It was incredible! They were the ones who gifted me the poster and asked me to take it to Dingwall Museum, specifically to Jonathan McColl. One of the Argentinan fellas had visited Dingwall on a football pilgrimage and met Jonathan before.
"They are still messaging me now to thank me, but honesty it's them that I can’t thank enough – such incredible hospitality, and such knowledge and respect for the nation of Scotland and its place in the world of football. Sadly, some 7000 miles away they know more about the birth of the game we invented than most Scots do."
