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You might expect any list of influential footballers of the professional era to include Ferenc Puskás, Pelé, Johan Cruyff, Dino Zoff and Diego Maradona. The name Fergus Suter may come as more of a surprise. However he is arguably the most influential of them all.

That is because, according to, Suter was the very first professional footballer. The pioneering Glaswegian, born in 1857, played in the amateur era but financial incentives lured him from hometown club Partick FC to ply his trade south of the border in England.

“He was the first professional in terms of he was the first to be paid a working wage for the game,” explained actor Kevin Guthrie, who plays Suter in the six-part series The English Game, when he spoke to Samira Ahmed for Radio 4’s Front Row. “The drama does explore the ideals and the conflict around that, because ultimately he was being paid in a capacity that really wasn’t legal; it wasn’t official and his teammates didn’t know it at the time.”

Suter’s moves from Partick to Lancashire club Darwen in 1878 and then a few miles north to Blackburn Rovers in 1880 both raised suspicions of nefarious payments at the time. “It was the start of that idea of a transfer fee, of the hypocrisies you see within the game,” says Guthrie, but he’s quick to point out the Victorian footballer’s admirable motives: “Personally for Suter it was an opportunity for him to pay for his mother and his sisters at the time to have a far better life away from the bully and the brute that was his father.”

The clubs had been willing to break the rules because Suter was an exceptional footballer. “Across the board football was quite similar to what it is today, but what Suter had was a peerless ability in his feet to pick the pass, to see the space,” says Guthrie, himself from the Renfrewshire county that borders Glasgow. “He pioneered the passing game as we know it and that then coined the phrase ‘the beautiful game’, so I’m very proud to say it was a Scotsman who brought that to the world, or certainly brought that to England.”

Netflix’s drama focuses on the way that Suter brought professional strategy to the football pitch, and a class divide that clarified around a rivalry between Suter’s Blackburn, a team of millworkers and a few Scots pros, and the Old Etonians, one of the public school teams who ran the game at the time.

Suter ended up with three FA Cup winners medal but by the time the football league was formed in 1888 his career was petering out and he made only one appearance in the competition. His status as the original professional footballer can never be taken away though.

And if this is all news to you then you’re not alone. “I have to admit I didn’t know an awful lot until I started the research,” admits Guthrie. “It’s not a story that’s particularly well known. I’m on record saying several times that what we don’t do particularly well in Scotland is doing well, so unfortunately Suter’s story is only now coming to light.”

Listen to Kevin Guthrie's full Front Row interview on 91热爆 Sounds.