Subbuteo World Cup
When SportsBooks published ‘Growing up with Subbuteo’ five years ago I became aware how popular the game is in Italy. Hundreds of thousands of small boys took up the game in Britain in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s but as with the way with games it didn’t maintain its popularity. It Italy, unbelievably, it became a professional sport.
The author Mark Adolph, whose father Peter invented the game just after the Second World War, and I were invited to Rome to attend a Subbuteo exhibition and Mark was asked to play a professional player. Astonishing.
And I didn’t realise that five years later in Palermo they have been holding the Subbuteo World Cup. Rob Smyth wrote a piece about it in today’s Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/jul/23/subbuteo-football-sport
and while he didn’t mention the book it’s spirit was writ large throughout the piece. Well worth a read – both the story and the book.
