ABSTRACT
Various ways in which the Corinthian legacy remains apparent, mainly through the existence of successor clubs operating at various levels of the game in England since 1945, are surveyed with particular emphasis on the Corinthian-Casuals and Pegasus. Though the original club appears to have had little impact on the way the game is played today, its characteristic style and tactics having been developed before the change in the offside law in 1925, some long-term influences are discernible in the continuing importance attached to sportsmanlike behaviour. While on tour in England but also in Europe, South Africa, the United States, Canada and Brazil, the Corinthians were effectively an advertisement for the patrician brand of soccer that they had offered in their late nineteenth-century heyday under ‘Pa’ Jackson. Overseas touring has been identified as one of the significant vectors through which soccer was diffused globally, and they were committed soccer tourists, making connections and building networks, which helped soccer to diffuse globally, though their impact varied according to local conditions and became less important over time. The club was always socially exclusive, and this proved increasingly disadvantageous, undermining its credibility at home and abroad. Corinthian football, a seductive blend of social elitism and soccer excellence, helped to confer legitimacy on gentlemanly amateurism wherever they played, but their hosts learned over time that this model could be adapted or even rejected. By the end of the 1930s, it had largely been rejected.
