During the first covid lockdown my biggest concern wasn’t making sure we had enough toilet roll, or even the closure of every McDonalds, but rather how busy the Lamborghini showrooms were going to be when the world opened back up.
You see when it was all over I thought everyone would emerge from their mandatory hibernations, blinking in the sunlight and a few stones heavier, as millionaires. After all, being forced to stay in your house for months on end makes you realise what a pigsty you live in, which inevitably leads to a spring clean. And if Antiques Roadshow has taught us anything it’s that every wardrobe and loft up and down the land are full to bursting with long-lost Van Gogh paintings and unreleased Beatles demos on vinyl just waiting to be discovered.
Annoyingly, I didn’t find much. The attic yielded nothing more than a few dusty paperbacks and a vintage adult magazine that the previous owner of the house had hidden away presumably just in case the internet ever fell out of fashion. Our cabinet drawers were only full of old takeaway leaflets, dead batteries and mobile phones so obsolete they may as well be two tins cans with a bit of string connecting them. However at the back of a cupboard in the spare room amongst all the clutter there was a find more priceless than the Holy Grail- my old Subbuteo set.
Now for the benefit of anyone born after 2000, Subbuteo is football but in miniature. You get a team of small plastic players on big round bases and flick them to move the ball around. It’s the same rules as the real game, but everything is 1/76 of the size. Brilliant for people who aren’t athletic (like me), or useless at football (like me), or don’t like going outside (you get the idea). Kits are reproduced in miniature for nearly every side you can think of, so whether you support Inter Milan or Tranmere Rovers you can play in your clubs colours.
I remember being introduced to Subbuteo by my dad, who told me all about the tournaments him and my uncle used to play back in the 1970’s. It was a serious undertaking, brackets would be drawn up, fingers rested before match days and squads regularly checked for injuries (the players are very prone to snapping at the ankles). Their games would go on into extra extra extra time if the score was tied, victories would be celebrated with the kind of energy and enthusiasm usually reserved for a lottery win. Or the Pools, it was the 70s after all. However, the best part of the story was that they only had three teams, meaning each new fixture required my uncle to break out the Humbrol to re-paint the squads. A World Cup could take anything up to six months to complete and any sides with striped shirts were automatically disqualified.
My dad bought me my first set when I was around 9 or 10 and, because he knew how much of a mess I made with paints, he picked up a few different teams that were on clearance in Beatties so we could get a little league going. I remember many an hour replaying games that we’d watched, trying to replicate the goals in 00 scale. This made me nostalgic, and also made me think what it would be like years from now when I could introduce Subbuteo to my children. Even though they’d probably lift their heads up from their iPhone 25s just long enough to call me embarrassing before going straight back to 3D TikTok.
That said, it probably would be embarrassing if we tried to play. I suggested to my partner that we should have a game to while away the long lockdown hours and never realised there was so much to explain. When I said Subbuteo is football in miniature, I wasn’t joking, the regulations take up a full side of A4 and cover everything from possession to throw ins. You can only touch the ball three times with one player, you can’t knock over the opposition (even though it’s really funny) and to score a goal you have to be in the ‘shooting area’, meaning no screamers from 40 yards out. I’m guessing that one was written after one too many Malteser-sized footballs went missing underneath couches.
The next hurdle came after laying the pitch out on the table and realising that it had more creases than Alan Sugar’s forehead. Fearing that I might lose my wife’s attention altogether if I broke the iron out, the decision was made to just play on. I’ve had real games of football on worse pitches after all. At least this one wasn’t uphill.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when we started putting our squads into formation and I realised Robbie Fowler was missing from my team. I couldn’t play without ‘God’ and while I searched for him she got bored and went to play Mario Kart on the Switch instead.
I suspect that games consoles are the reason that younger generations never fell in love with Subbuteo. As soon as the Playstation arrived, all of a sudden there was no need for so much faff to set up a game of football. Every match no longer needed a Morphy Richards to flatten the pitch and miniature Robbie Fowler would never be lost. You could play in peace without the dog trying to eat the ball and painting the teams was a thing of the past when any squad in the world from Premier League to Turkish second division is at your fingertips with a simple press of ‘X’.
However, I do feel like technology could also gift Subbuteo a potential resurgence. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they realise they’re getting old- maybe it’s your first grey hair or making a noise when you stand up from the couch, but I realised that I was exactly one million years of age when I downloaded FIFA 21. The main menu is a riot of neon colours and music exclusively from artists I hate. The wealth of options are baffling, and every time I tried to play a simple friendly it would lead me to an online match where I would inevitably lose 16-0 to a teenager in Kansas who would use racial slurs that would make even a Klan member blush. Every slide tackle I attempt gets me a red card, while my dribbling looks like someone staggering out of a Wetherspoons at closing time. My shooting is accurate…if my aim is to hit the International Space Station. It’s also widely acknowledged that each generation of FIFA is worse than the last and Pro Evo is for people who get hot and bothered about spreadsheets, so where else are you supposed to get your indoor football fix? Head to eBay and pick up a Subbuteo set before they sell out.
Or alternatively, just dig around in the back of your cupboards because you might find your old one. And if you find that lost Van Gogh, I’ll see you at the Lamborghini showroom.
Kit For Brains 
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