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History of table football: who actually invented table football?

2022-06-30T12:15:12.725Z


Soccer off the shelf – absolutely! In pubs, start-ups or at tournaments, foosball tables ensure mini-format fun. But who invented it?


The beginnings of soccer, the most popular sport in the world, are quite easy to name: Even if Maya teams kicked around with a heavy rubber ball a millennium and a half ago, the triumphal march of soccer probably began in 1855. When cricketers got bored.

At the cricket club in Manchester, England, they occasionally dropped their bats and kicked around, initially as a joke and without rules.

The big advantage: you could still play the ball with your foot when it was raining and no longer allowed proper cricket play.

So you could bridge the winter gap at the summer game and stay in shape.

On October 24, 1857, cricketers founded Sheffield FC, the oldest football club in the world still active today.

Enlarge image

Tournament in Nantes: table football is called “baby foot” in France

Photo: FRANK PERRY / AFP

So that was the beginning of modern football.

But what about »Foosball«?

In the USA, this is the name of the game with a tiny ball and soccer player figures with twist grips mounted on poles.

In Hungary they say »csocso«, in Israel »cadureguel-schulchan«, in France »baby foot«, in Switzerland »Töggeli«.

And in Germany »kickern« or table football, officially recognized as a sport since 2010.

You play it in singles or in doubles, in pubs, youth centers or as a break in companies, at tournaments or in leagues.

The origins of this sport also go back a long way – but they are not entirely clear.

According to one tradition, a Briton invented table football, according to another it was a Frenchman.

A bit German too.

But actually a Spanish poet.

Foosball with Che Guevara

Little Alexandre Campos Ramirez grew up as the son of a telegrapher in the 1920s in Cape Finisterre, north-west Spain.

At first he wrote poetry, published his own literary magazine at the age of 17 and sold it on the streets of Madrid.

In 1936, when Spain was in the middle of a civil war, young Alexandre was buried under rubble during an air raid.

He survived, but due to a leg injury he could no longer walk properly, let alone play football.

Alejandro Finisterre, his poetic pseudonym, came up with an idea: "Since I liked table tennis, I thought: why not invent table football?" He had a carpenter make the first game table with figures that could be rotated on poles and allegedly even his "fútbolin" game patent in 1937.

Documents are missing, however, they are said to have been lost when Finisterre fled to France after the putsch of the fascist General Franco.

While he lived in Ecuador, Guatemala and the USA, among other places, he is said to have remained true to the construction of foosball tables and even competed against the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara during his globetrotting years, the British »Guardian« wrote in an obituary in 2007.

Finisterre did not achieve the big breakthrough with his invention in either South or North America.

Eventually he got out of the football table business and devoted himself to poetry again – with his own book publishing company.

Tricolore to go crazy

But as the US American »Smithsonian Magazine« reported, the poet was not the only one who came up with the idea of ​​the miniature football on a tabletop.

And maybe not the first.

A French inventor was probably also working on it at the end of the 1930s: Lucien Rosengart had already registered several patents, for example for the seat belt, some bicycle and railway components and even for a military rocket.

He had also worked with Citroën, launched his own car brand and produced the »Rosengart LR2«.

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The French inventor Lucien Rosengart is considered one of the founding fathers of table football

Photo: KHARBINE-TAPABOR / IMAGO

The enterprising engineer found his way from vehicle construction to table football mainly because of his grandchildren.

As a pastime when they couldn't play outside in the winter, according to Smithsonian Magazine, he constructed a gaming table on which footballer figures were moved with poles in order to kick a ball into the opponent's goal.

In his »Babyfoot« model, however, the bars were, unlike today, at the head ends of the table, not on the side.

From the Rosengart grandchildren's playroom, the tables are said to have spread to France's cafés and have been colored blue, white and red out of patriotism.

So was foosball a French game?

According to research by British author Tim Baber, no patent could be found under Rosengart's name for a kicker.

Bright invention

In any case, another draft appeared a few years earlier – in Germany: in 1934, a resourceful entrepreneur from Berlin named Fritz Möhring brought the game »Knall den Ball« onto the market.

It already looked confusingly similar to today's foosball tables, including a coin slot.

"It's really big business," is how Möhring wooed bartenders in advertisements to set up their tables in taprooms: "Always guests - always money."

Jens Kesting and Ralf Plaschke reconstructed it in their 2009 book »Kickern & Tischfussball« that »Knall den Ball« became the name »Kicker«, which is common today, because of a manufacturer who followed Möhring: the Geneva-based company Kicker also spread the game in Switzerland and Belgium.

There may have been another inventor around or before 1930;

here and there a German with the unusual name Broto Wachter is mentioned, but the references remain vague.

Foosball's Coming Home

On the other hand, there is evidence of a patent in Great Britain: Harold Thornton registered it in London with the number 205991, his foosball table largely corresponded to today's models - in fact as early as 1922, exactly 100 years ago.

His uncle Louis Thornton lived in Portland (Oregon) and was so enthusiastic that he also filed a patent for it in the USA in 1927.

However, it went out without table football being able to establish itself there.

A beautiful idea must always find the right time.

That came decades later when Lawrence Patterson brought the kicker from Germany.

As a US soldier, he got to know table football, which was already popular in Europe at the time, and introduced the first table to the United States in the early 1960s.

From then on, Patterson successfully marketed the game with advertisements in "Life" and the "Wall Street Journal" there and in Canada - under the brand name "Foosball Match".

So who was it that got the ball rolling: Britain's Thornton or Frenchman Rosengart?

The Berliner Möhring, the phantom Broto Wachter or the foosball poet Finisterre?

The kicker community is divided.

But what counts in the end is how much fun the game is.

In the golden words of Dortmund football legend Adi Preißler: "It's what's important on the pitch."

And the dwarf variant has so many advantages over the big stadium spectacle: never transfer theater, the players are all off the peg and made of the same wood.

If you give them a jerk, things get down to business quickly - no nagging at the referee, no swallows, no pack formation, no waiting for video evidence.

A goal is a goal, and nobody debates chains of threes and fours or "false nines."

There are still elegant tricks to be seen, as in this film excerpt from »Absolute Giganten« from 1999: »Goalkeeper goals count double!« 

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-06-30

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