Sidney Pullen (14 July 1895 – 1950s) was an English

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

Midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

, who played for

Flamengo Clube de Regatas do Flamengo (; English: ''Flamengo Rowing Club''), more commonly referred to as simply Flamengo, is a Brazilian sports club based in Rio de Janeiro, in the neighborhood of Gávea, best known for their professional football t ...

, a club based in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

Biography

Born in

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

, Sidney migrated to Brazil after his father, Hugh Pullen, was transferred to a factory in Rio de Janeiro. When Paysandu closed their football department, he moved to

, and his father imported from Germany the kit known as coral snake. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he left Flamengo to fight for England. Sidney Pullen died in the 1950s, in

Career

He started his career in 1910, defending Paysandu, a Rio de Janeiro team founded by English expatriates, winning the

Campeonato Carioca The Campeonato Carioca (Carioca Championship), officially known as Campeonato Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (Port., Rio de Janeiro State Championship), was started in 1906 and is the annual football championship in the state of Rio de Janeiro, B ...

in 1912, then, after the club closed their football department in 1914, he moved to

in 1915, where he played 116 matches and scored 40 goals, winning the Campeonato Carioca five times before leaving the club in 1925. He has also worked as Flamengo's head coach.

Brazil national team

Sidney Pullen was the first of only five foreigners to play for the Brazil national team. He played five matches between 1916 and 1917, thereof three 1916 Copa América matches in July 1916. In 1917 he played for Brazil in two test matches against the club sides

Dublin FC Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 cen ...

from Montevideo and Sportivo Barracas from Buenos Aires.

Refereeing career

He worked as a referee in one match of the 1916 Copa América. The match was played on 6 July, between

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

References

* Marcelo Leme de Arruda, André do Nascimento Pereira:
Seleção Brasileira (Brazilian National Team) 1914-1922
',

Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around the ...

and RSSSF Brazil, 15 February 2014. Notes: {{DEFAULTSORT:Pullen, Sidney 1895 births 1950s deaths Brazilian footballers English footballers English football managers Brazilian football managers English football referees Brazilian football referees English expatriate footballers CR Flamengo footballers Expatriate footballers in Brazil Brazil men's international footballers Footballers from Southampton British emigrants to Brazil Fluminense FC players Men's association football midfielders British military personnel of World War I