Everywhere, people will be enjoying 'Old Subbuteo' with friends old and new.
We encourage others to join in with the concept of Old Subbuteo and encourage all to flick to their best ability and enjoy every game they play with anyone.
We encourage all to recognise and celebrate the honour of winning, the honour of drawing and the honour of losing!
We hold keynote events to encourage people from all walks of life to meet up and share their interest and enthusiasm for Subbuteo.
We run Subbuteo clubs for disabled people, providing opportunities for Subbuteo enthusiasts to help folks, who might not otherwise get the opportunity, to enjoy Subbuteo.
We liaise with the Italian Old Subbuteo community (where the Old Subbuteo community was born in 2006) to share learning and inspiration.
Old Subbuteo is a social movement committed to create a spirit of collaboration and friendship. It celebrates an iconic table football game, which was played by millions of boys in the 1970s and 1980s. These boys are now men of a certain age and in 2006 the Old Subbuteo movement was created by a number of likeminded individuals seeking to create opportunities to meet the desire for companionship and belonging amongst this community.
The Old Subbuteo community is a gathering of enthusiasts who have never forgotten the meaning of play and fun and who want to find the same spirit in others. The Old Subbuteo spirit is a blend of passion for Subbuteo, a respect for the rules and a celebration of moments of friendship and fun. The Old Subbuteo community encourages its members to create places and moments dedicated to celebrating the spirit that is Old Subbuteo in their own communities. An Old Subbuteo Club is a meeting place where the spirit that animates this community is kept alive by participating in an amateur and purely playful approach to the games.
One of the lesser known facts of the Internet era was the emergence of Subbuteo forums(!). These created the opportunity for enthusiasts who had long harboured an interest in playing the game, collecting teams and accessories and building home-made stadiums, to meet and share their interests.
A chance conversation between some of these folks in England, led to the discovery of the ‘Old Subbuteo’ movement that had started up in Italy in 2006. This growing community made up of scores of Old Subbuteo Clubs (OSC) were meeting up regularly in different towns, arranging tournaments, with a focus on fun and friendliness.
There had long been a more ‘competitive’ Subbuteo scene, made up of quality players, many achieving international honours and playing in tournaments organised by the various national and international bodies. However, these were for the serious players, and unobtainable for the enthusiastic casual player. The Old Subbuteo tournaments were perfect for these folks.
So, early in 2009, three intrepid Englishmen made the trip to Rome to take part in an Anglo-Italian tournament, with a total of 64 participants. The experience was a Subbuteopian one and gave birth to many Old Subbuteo events in England over the next few years.
The celebrated values that have evolved over time within this Old Subbuteo community can be distilled as:
The links between the English and the Italian Old Subbuteo communities remain strong, with each inspiring each other regularly. This Friends of Old Subbuteo website tells some of these stories, and is also a place for many future tales to be told…