Week 2 - Button Football

A cool game to try, but the endless 0-0 draws whilst conquering the learning curve would likely get boring quickly.

The second new thing I tried this week by chance was the Brazilian game of Button Football. Known as "Futebol de Mesa" ("Table Football") or "Jogo de Botões" ("Button Game") in Portuguese, it is a table top football game similar to the classic Subbuteo.

I got the chance to try the game in the Tabard pub in Turnham Green - our usual post-football pub - however this week there just happened to be a football table set up in the corner on top of one of the pub tables.

My curiosity sparked, I asked the barman what it was all about. However, he simply dodged the question, encouraging me to go and speak to the guy standing by the pitch - a dodgy Frenchman by the name of Sebastian. Peculiarly (or maybe not), everyone in the pub seemed to be giving him a bit of a wide berth and he looked a little lonely in his corner, but upon talking to him he was a really nice bloke and was certainly very excited at the prospect of someone playing his game. He happily explained the game and invited to play.

The game centres around disks (or buttons) that moved around the table using other disks in the opposite way that tiddlywinks are - so the disks slide rather than jump (see the image to the left). 

There are 11 on each team similar to a regular game of football and are split into attackers and defenders - with defenders being slightly larger than attackers. The game plays very similarly to football with the aim to score in the goals by 'kicking' the ball using your disks. 

For a full breakdown of the rules I would recommend checking out Wikipedia, as there are quite a few nuances to the game.

Although quite good fun - taking me back to my childhood playing Subuteo, I have to say it is very tricky, much trickier than I remember Subuteo ever being. It takes quite a bit of getting used to applying the right pressure to make the ball go anywhere near where you want it to. We played for nearly an hour and still failed to score a single goal - although there a few that came close, including one effort that bounced off the wood(plastic)work and one that was saved by the goalkeeper. I think this is the biggest barrier to getting into this game - as with a lot of things I can imagine the better you are at it the more fun it would be.

Check out some pictures of our game below, and look out for a button football league (potentially) starting at the Tabard (or a pub near you) in the coming weeks.