The ‘father of Brazilian football’ had Scottish roots

In 1894, at around the age of 20, Miller returned to São Paulo. In his luggage were the two footballs and a copy of the official rules of the Hampshire Football Association.

Legend has it — a story repeated in almost every account of his return, although without primary documentary evidence — that his father, upon seeing him disembark at the port of Santos, asked what he had brought with him.

“My diploma,” Charles is said to have replied. “Your son has graduated in football.”

The sport was virtually unknown in Brazil at the time. The few enthusiasts were mainly fellow British expatriates working on the railways.

Against this backdrop, Miller organised what is regarded as Brazil’s first official football match on 14 April 1895: a team from São Paulo Railway, the British company where he worked, against the São Paulo Gas Company team, also made up of British expatriates.

The match took place at Várzea do Carmo, on an improvised pitch in the Brás district of São Paulo. Decades later, in an interview with Gazeta Esportiva, Miller recalled that his first task that day had been to chase away cattle belonging to a transport company that were peacefully grazing on the field.

His team won 4-2, with Miller scoring two of the goals.

Around the same time, Miller established a football department within the São Paulo Athletic Club (SPAC), a sports club founded in 1888 that had previously focused on other sports. It became the institutional foundation from which football developed in the city.

Six years later, on 14 December 1901, Miller helped found the Liga Paulista de Football, Brazil’s first organised football league. Five clubs took part in its creation: SPAC, Internacional, Mackenzie, Germânia and Paulistano.

Miller remained actively involved with SPAC in the following years, even playing as a goalkeeper from 1906 onwards.

In 1910, 18 years after that match in Hampshire, Miller arranged for Corinthian Football Club to tour Brazil. The English side played six matches and won them all, with an aggregate score of 38-6 — including an 8-2 victory over Miller’s São Paulo side, in a match in which he played.

Five railway workers who attended the game were so impressed by Corinthian’s style that they decided to found a club of their own. It was Miller who suggested naming it after the English team — giving birth to Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, today one of Brazil’s biggest football clubs.

Miller also represented the São Paulo state team and played unofficial matches for Brazil against Argentina in 1914. As a referee and administrator, he remained involved in São Paulo football until his fifties.

When professionalism arrived in Brazilian football in 1933, Miller — faithful to an amateur ideal of sport, closer to the ethos of England’s Corinthian FC than to financial interests — withdrew from football altogether, disappointed by the direction the game had taken.

In his personal life, he married the pianist Antonietta Rudge, with whom he had two children, Carlos and Helena. He died in São Paulo on 30 June 1953, aged 78, and is buried at the city’s Protestant cemetery.

His name also left a mark on football’s vocabulary itself: the skill of flicking the ball up with the heel is still known in Brazil as a “chaleira”, a word derived from “Charles”. Praça Charles Miller, the square in front of São Paulo’s Pacaembu Stadium, is also named in his honour.