Foosball is a wonderful hobby to pick up this
year! The popular game of foosball combines the
thrill of soccer with the relative ease of a two
player table game. All that is required to play
foosball is two players and a will to have a
very great and exciting time. Table Football has
been around for decades and was invented in the
UK in 1923. The game of foosball, alternatively
referred to as table football, is played
throughout the world and has become an
internationally sanctioned sport in many
countries. The Europeans have taken a strong
passion for football and transferred that love
for the sport onto the smaller-version of that
and now play the game of table football by the
thousands.
University Popularity
Foosball, as the game of table football is
referred to in every school of higher-learning
in the United States, is a widely popular sport
and hobby. From schools such as Purdue
University and University of Michigan, students
are known to play well into the early morning
hours and for cash and prizes as well.
Table
Football
This is
about the game using players on rods. Table
football/soccer is also a generic term of the
game known colloquially as Subbuteo.
Table
football (Bonzini style table).
Table
football, better known as foosball in America
(from German Fußball, "football") and many other
names, is a table-top game and sport that is
loosely based on association football (soccer).
History
Although patents for similar games may exist
from as far back as the 1890s, the game of Table
Football as we know it today was first invented
by Harold Searles Thorton in 1922 and patented
in 1923. The concept was conceived after Harold
had been to a Spurs football match (he was an
avid supporter). He wanted to provide a game
that replicated football that could be played at
home. The inspiration came from a box of
matches; by laying the matches across the box he
had formed the basis of his game. His uncle
(United States resident Louis P. Thornton, who
lived in Portland, Oregon) visited Harold and
took the inspiration back to the States where it
was patented in 1927. The patent eventually
expired.
In
2002, the International Table Soccer Federation
(ITSF) was established in France with the
mission of promoting the sport of Table Soccer
as an organizing sports body, regulating
international competitions, and establishing the
game with the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) and General Association of International
Sport Federation (GAISF).
The
Sport - A Goalkeeper
To
begin the game, the ball is served through a
hole at the side of the table, or simply placed
by hand at the feet of a figure in the center of
the table. The initial serving side is decided
with by coin toss. Players attempt to use
figures mounted on rotating bars to kick the
ball into the opposing goal. Expert players have
been known to move balls at speeds up to 56 kmh
(35 mph) in competition.
Ball
Control
Rules
consider "360-degree shots" or "spinning" (using
the palm of the hand to swiftly spin the bar all
around, instead of using wrist strokes to kick
the ball with a bar-mounted figure) to be
illegal. However, shots short of a full
360-degree rotation are legal. The winner is
determined when one team scores a predetermined
number of goals, typically five, ten, or eleven
in competition. When playing Bonzini
competitions the target numbers of goal is
seven.
Table
football tables can vary in size, but a typical
table is about 120 cm (4 ft.) long and 61 cm (2
ft.) wide. The table usually contains 8 rows of
foos men, which are plastic, metal, wooden, or
sometimes carbon-fiber figures mounted on
horizontal metal bars. Each team of 1, 2, or 3
human players controls 4 rows of foos men.
The
arrangement is standard. Looking from left to
right on one side of the table, the
configuration is as follows:
Row 1
Goalkeeper 1 foosman (sometimes 2 or 3)
Row 2
Defense 2 foosman (sometimes 3)
Row 3
Opponent's attack 3 foosman (sometimes 2)
Row 4
Midfield 5 foosman (sometimes 4 or 6)
Row 5
Opponent's midfield 5 foosman (sometimes 4 or 6)
Row 6
Attack 3 foosman (sometimes 2)
Row 7
Opponent's defense 2 foosman (sometimes 3)
Row 8
Opponent's goalkeeper 1 foosman
(sometimes 2 or 3)
Table
football can also be played with four people in
"doubles" style, in which there are teams of two
people on either side. In this scenario, one
player can control the two defensive rows and
the other team member uses the midfield and
attack rows. In informal matches, three or four
players per side are also common.
Competition
Table
Football on Tornado in New York
Table
football is often played for fun in pubs, bars,
workplaces, schools, and clubs with few rules.
Table football is also played in official
competitions organized by a number of national
organizations, with highly evolved rules and
regulations. Organized competition can be traced
back to the 1940s and 1950s in Europe. But the
professional tours and big-time money events
began when the founding father of modern
professional table soccer, Lee Peppard of
Seattle, Washington, United States announced a
"quarter million dollar tour" in 1975. Peppard
went on to award several million dollars in
prize monies and, ever since his Tournament
Soccer Organization went out of business in
1981, several organizations and promoters have
continued holding large purse professional table
soccer events worldwide. The ITSF regulates
International events including the yearly World
Championships and the World Cup held to coincide
with the FIFA World Cup every four years. In
2006, Austria, Germany and Belgium took the
Gold, Silver and Bronze respectively. Every
year, Heineken invites employees from offices
across the globe to compete in HitFC - The
Heineken Champions League Table Football
Competition. The format follows that of the
Champions League, with regional league winners
and runners up going into the knockout rounds.
The ultimate winners then travel to Amsterdam
for the World Finals where they will compete to
become the undisputed Heineken World Fussball
Champions.
Tables
A
Garlando-style table with a game in progress
An
11-per-side Leonhart table football game in
Berlin
A vast
number of different tables exist. The table
brands used on the world tour and official ITSF
tournaments are "French-style" Bonzini,
"American-style" Tornado, "Italian-style"
Roberto Sport and Garlando, "German-style"
Tecball. Other major brands include Fireball,
Kicker, Deutscher Meister, Rosengart, Jupiter
Goldstar, Eurosoccer, Löwen-Soccer, Warrior,
Lehmacher, Leonhart, and Smoby. There was also a
7-meter table created by artist Maurizio
Cattelan for a piece called Stadium. It takes 11
players to a side. Another unique table football
set is the Opus Table created by the Eleven
forty Company. Each table is hand-crafted, and
each foosman is made to resemble his on-field
counterpart.
Differences in the table types have great
influence on the playing styles. Most tables
have one goalie whose movements are restricted
to the goal area. On some of these tables the
goalie becomes unable to get the ball once it is
stuck out of reach in the corner; others have
sloped corners to return the ball. Other tables
have three goalies; one in the center and one in
each corner to reach the ball so sloped corners
are not needed. Another major difference is
found in the balls, which can be made of cork,
plastic, wood or even marble and metal, varying
the speed of shots a great deal, as well as the
"grip" between the man and the ball.
One of
the newest additions to the foosball table
family, the Fireball table, is manufactured in
China. It has recently become an
officially-recognized ITSF table.
Names
Polish
President Lech Kaczynski and former coach of the
Polish national team Leo Beenhakker play table
football. The most common English names are
table football, footzy, bar football and
foosball, though table soccer is also used.
Among French-style players it is known as
baby-foot [2]. Foosball can also be spelled "foozeball",
"fooseball", "Fussball" or "Fußball" (German for
football), and (though rarely) "fuseball". In
the German town Hanover, table soccer is also
referred to as "Krökeln".
The
foosball handbook tells us that we cannot hit a
ball when it is in the air
Robotic
Players
Robots
designed to play table soccer by roboticists at
the University of Freiburg are claimed to be
able to beat 85 percent of casual players. They
use a camera from below a transparent table base
to track the ball, and an electronic control
system to control high torque motors to rotate
and move the foosmen. Currently an expert player
can beat the robot 10 games to 1. Another table
football robot, Foosbot, is claimed to have
never been beaten by a human, but has not been
tested against expert players. Yet another table
football robot is under development by two
students at the Technical University of Denmark.
The robot uses a camera mounted above an
ordinary table.
Featured in Literature, Art, and Entertainment
Table
football figures prominently as a Scottish bar
sport in the short story "Kingdom of Fife" by
Irvine Welsh. There have also been several
instructional books on table football, including
The Complete Book of Foosball, and Zen and the
Art of Foosball.
Table
football has been the subject of movies such as
Foos: Be the Greatest and Longshot. The German
movie Absolute Giganten features a table
football game on film. In the award-winning
Italian movie Il Postino, which is set in the
1950’s, the eponymous character of Mario
Ruoppolo fell in love at first sight with
Beatrice Russo while playing table football. In
the classic 1993 movie Dazed and Confused
(film), the entrance scene at the Emporium takes
Mitch, Pink, and Wooderson through to find
Pickford who is playing table football - a great
scene set to the sound of Hurricane by Bob
Dylan.
Television shows have also featured table
football. The characters Joey Tribbiani and
Chandler Bing from the Friends TV show
(1994-2004, USA) often play table football. The
sitcom featured a Dynamo table in earlier
seasons, and later a Tornado (Valley) brand
table, each of which were central to many
episodes. It was destroyed in The Last One by
Monica, when Joey's pets (a chick and duck) are
stuck inside. In House and in Zoey 101, table
football is played by characters in leisure
settings. In an episode of Mystery Science
Theater 3000, Dr. Forrester and Frank told how
they took a table football table, caulked it,
filled it with water, and turned it into a water
polo game.
The
cover of the 1979 Sides album by former Genesis
guitarist Anthony Phillips features a Peter
Cross painting depicting a Foosball table in
which the foosmen all resemble Phillips.
In the
Xbox version of The Sims 2, the player is
required to beat the NPC Torin in a game of
table football in order to move to the next
house.
Shot
Types
"Pull
Shot" - Pulling the rod to direct the ball to
another man for a shot
"Push
Shot" - Pushing the rod to direct the ball to
another man for a shot
"Bank
Shot" - Intentionally aiming at a side wall to
'bank' the ball towards the net
"Snake
Shot" - When the ball is behind the man,
rotating the rod 360 degrees to hit the ball
forwards
"Wrist
Shot" - Feigning a Push or Pull shot but instead
shooting with the 'passer'
"Foos
Shot" - Shooting the ball right back at a
defender who is trying to clear it out. This
shot takes great reflexes and is often used by
the forward attackers against the opponent's
goalie.