Object of My Affection: Subbuteo

In my early adolescence, I liked to play table football. For my 12th birthday, my parents gifted me with a wonderful Subbuteo table soccer game set that I had wished for many months! This was my favorite toy until I discovered other interesting hobbies, like ham radio and electronics. So after some years, I gave away this game to other kids. I always remembered this game with pleasure and a hint of nostalgia.

But some months ago, my girlfriend gifted me with some teams, a pitch, and many vintage accessories 100% identical to the ones I had when I was a kid! An original green baize pitch, two vintage goals, flags, two hand painted teams, some balls, and also the original green fence! When I opened the package, I yelled an “Oooooh” of astonishment and joy, and also shed tears of happiness.

My girlfriend had this idea when she saw me reading threads on the Old Subbuteo Association forum on the Internet, an amateur group that intends to keep this beautiful game alive. I rediscovered this game thanks to a local newspaper, which published an article last summer about a national Subbuteo tournament that was being held in my city, Como. This article awoke my curiosity and nostalgia for a game that I thought was already extinct, and drove me to find other news about it on the Internet.

I love the ’70s version of this game because the miniature players from this decade were hand painted. I abandoned this game at the beginning of the ’80s, when the producer decided to replace them with machine-painted miniatures. This is because one of the greatest pleasures of this game is to collect teams of different colors and different nations, and to add hand painted decorations on their jerseys.

After many years of decline, in which this game had been abandoned by young people in favor of playing football on the Playstation or Xbox, there has been a slow return in the last five years, especially in Italy and England where many Old Subbuteo clubs were born. At the same time, this game recently reappeared in toy stores after an absence of some years, albeit with some fundamental changes.

In fact, in the old version of this game, the bases which support the miniature players are of semi-circular shape (see my photos), allowing you to perform dribbles and to obtain curvilinear trajectories. Meanwhile, in the modern version, the players are mounted on flat bases. These are more accurate in the long trajectories (and easier to play for a beginner) but less suitable for those who want to play with fantasy, trying adventurous dribbles like how some famous football players of the past – Stanley Matthews, Kevin Keegan and Bobby Charlton – or the present – Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Pogba – do.

Another change that came with the rebirth of this game is courtesy of the skills of some artisans and small producers, who have created miniatures and bases identical to the original ones. Now, you can find many reproductions perfectly identical to the original game of the ’70s!

As I have mentioned in my LomoGuru interview, I continue to love this game! It is very relaxing and allows me to detach myself a bit from the digital world. I’m a member of a local Old Subbuteo Club, and with my friend I have fun playing games, collecting new teams, restoring vintage ones, or even taking photos of it (analog, of course!).

If you are a Subbuteo fan, you can see from these photos that I used a pitch smaller than the standard one. In fact this is a pitch that belonged to another table football game, the T.A.F. 4-2-4. Its reduced dimensions (90×66 cm instead of the standard 120×80 cm) allow me to train to overcome the defense; it forces me to make many dribbles and precise passes.

If you are interested in the history of this game, you can visit Peter Upton’s Subbuteo tribute website. Do you want to play with me? Well, my door is open for you – you’re welcome in my home!

written by sirio174 on 2015-03-30 #lifestyle #requested-post #subbuteo #object-of-my-affection #filmphotographyday