![]() As the popularity grew, Patterson helped found some of the first regional tournaments in the late-1960s. While there, he fell in love with table soccer and imported coin-operated machines after he came home. Professional Foosball Tours Americaįoosball was first brought to the United States by Lawrence Patterson, an American military man who was stationed in Germany during the 1960s. ![]() German tables are the softest of the bunch, providing ultimate control of the ball to strategically line up shots on over-sized goals.įinally, Italian tables are a good mix of styles, well known for using either sandblasted glass to allow for faster gameplay, or plastic laminate to slow things down for precision ball handling. In contrast, French foosball is played on a linoleum surface with a “tacky” feel and a cork ball, making the gameplay much more controlled, with an emphasis on passing the ball and setting up shots, just like real football. ![]() In addition, American tables have three men on the goalie bar as opposed to one goalie in other countries, enabling the player to pull the ball out of the corner without stopping gameplay. However, to a die-hard “fooser,” there are four distinct styles, which necessitate different styles of play.įor example, American style foosball, also known as “Texas foosball,” is generally played on a dense, solid table surface like mahogany, the ball is usually thick plastic, and the foosball men are made of harder plastic, all of which makes for a fast game where power rules. To the average novice player, a foosball table is a foosball table. The only thing we can say for sure is that Englishman Harold Searles Thornton has the earliest-known patent from 1923, which looks and operates just like the game we know today. But Alexandre de Fiesterra also said he had the idea while in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained in the Spanish Civil War. Frenchman Lucien Rosengart, an automobile engineer for Citroen, claimed to have come up with the game to keep his grandchildren entertained in the winter. Some sources believe that it started as a parlor game in the 1880s or 1890s, possibly in different parts of Europe simultaneously. And in Spain, it’s "futbolín." As usual, Americans have to be different, so we’ve borrowed the German word for “football”, “fußball”, which is pronounced “foosball.” But because the game is played all over the world, there are dozens of regional nicknames for this very popular pastime. In the UK, the game is “table football.” In France, it’s adorably called “baby foot.” In much of Eastern Europe, it’s “kicker,” after one of the first companies to produce game tables. Outside the U.S., the sport where two teams try to kick a ball into the other side's goal without using their hands is known as “football.” However, when it comes to the tabletop version of the game, it seems impossible to reach a consensus.
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