AC Milan in 1891

Herbert Kilpin was the son of a Nottingham butcher, one of a large family raised in a city then famous for its lace trade, and he learned his football in the rough, unstructured games of 1880s England. In 1891 the young Kilpin left England for Turin, drawn by the textile merchant Edoardo Bosio into the lace and silk trade that bound the two nations together. In Piedmont he worked in the cloth business by day and became one of the true pioneers of Italian calcio — reputedly the first Englishman ever to play football abroad — turning out for Internazionale Torino and the Torino Football & Cricket Club in the fledgling Italian scene. These were the seasons in which Kilpin fell in love with the game on Italian soil, honing the passion he would soon carry west to Milan. As Robert Nieri's account reminds us, the legend rests on ordinary working-class origins: a young man of modest means who exported the game he loved almost as an afterthought to earning a living.