Foosball
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Foosball:
Its Origins and its Olympic Objective
The first foosball table was a box of matches. The game was invented back in 1923 by the ultimate football (or, what the U.S. call soccer) fan decided that there just had to be a way to replicate soccer as a household game, to be played indoors. The London inventor was inspired to create the first foosball table after watching an intense game of football. He went home and began toying with a box of matches, wondering if he could make the idea work. Eventually, by laying the matches across the box, he realized how he could make a full-fledged foosball table work.
He patended the idea, but his patent expired before the foosball table ever saw mass production, and in 1937 the idea was picked up by another inventor, who perfected the idea, creating a foosball table that we would easily recognize today.
Looking at the origin of the game, it's easy to see the origin of the game. Of course it's not football, particularly. There are no feet involved. So they twisted the name, and created a full army of terminology. The foosball table, foosmen, and even "foos" for extreme players of the game.
Foosball, since its full incarnation in 1937, has been an incredibly popular game. You can find a foosball table in most bars these days, and a foosball table is more and more common to find in any given home. Even schools, clubs, workplaces, gyms, and the common rooms of dorms are seeing a foosball table as part of the normal furniture.
Competition has also been a popular part of the game since it hit mainstream. Organized competition has been around as early as the 1940s – and it became a "big money" sport 1975, during the "quarter million dollar tour," where several million dollars were handed out to the winners. In present day, there is indeed a World Championship for the sport (with the World Cup being held at the same time as the FIFA World Cup).
Further, the french foosball table fanatics formed a group in 2002 called the "International Table Soccer Federation" (or ITSF) to not only promote the sport, but to attempt to establish the game as an Olympic sport. That's right! Staying at home with your foosball table may make you an Olympian in the years to come.
Whether or not foosball is accepted as an Olympic sport, though, it has certainly broken its way into our pop culture. A foosball table, and the game itself, has played a major role in several movies – including "Foos: Be the Greatest." It has taken a place of prominence in TV as well. Dr. House (of television's House) is often seen playing at a foosball table with Dr. Wilson, and Joey and Chandler from Friends owned a foosball table through all ten seasons (with its destruction in the final episode creating a very emotional scene).
It was an invention that struggled to take off, but now has found its place in a huge number of homes. It continues to move on as it spreads through pop culture and serious competition. Who knows – we may well see its presence in the Olympics in the years to come. But for all it is, and all it has become – it started as a matchbox.
