The Edinburgh club hoping to bring the Subbuteo world to the capital

“The more that I speak to people, the more they’ve got the same story as me, which is they used to play as a kid but they found playing on the carpet was a little bit frustrating,” Marco Bevilacqua said, speaking of his relationship with Subbuteo.

“You'd flick, and then just they would fall over. So you never really got into it that much, but more liked the idea, and then just totally forgot about it and then obviously girls and drinking in a bush somewhere kicks in, and then you move on to whatever, try and become a rock star and forget about it for 30 years,” he said.

However, according to Marco absence can make the heart grow fonder. “Your friend and yourself find it in the attic again one day and get it out, and then realise, you know what, it's actually pretty fun.”

Subbuteo figures can be painted to represent your favourite teams - including this Scotland National Team kit. | Subbuteo Edinburgh

Subbuteo, the tabletop game where players flick miniature footballers from their favourite teams around a pitch in a simulation of real game, was launched in 1947 by Peter Adolph - a former Royal Air Force serviceman who was searching for a new business opportunity after being demobbed at the end of the Second World War.

Adolph’s creation would go on to become the Premier League of tabletop football games, beating out competitors like Newfooty in the 1960s. Eventually the game would sell 300,000 teams per year at its peak.

However, as the years passed, enthusiasm for the game waned and by 2003 just 300 kits were being sold per year. The game has lived on though, through collectors and clubs where people meet to play the game. Marco is one of those people continuing the tradition at Edinburgh Subbuteo. The club was formed in 2019 and, until recently, met to play on a Monday evening at the Cramond Inn.

“It was actually a point where my mum had just passed away. And so I was kind of feeling a little bit lost in myself. I thought it'd be good for me if I actually tried to find a group. And so I kind of just kind of had to look on Facebook, and there was a guy who just put something up saying, ‘Oh, I'm looking to start the club again in Edinburgh. Let me know if anyone's interested’. So I just kind of thought it won't be anything serious. It will just be a couple of guys having a good time,” Marco says.

However, what he was greeted with was “totally different” to what he had experienced during his youthful days of playing the game on the carpet.

“And it was just this flood of nostalgia coming back. But not only that it was everything that you kind of wanted it to be as a kid, but your dad wouldn't build you,” Marco explains. “But all of a sudden you're 40 years old, you're like, ‘you know what? I can do this myself’”.

Building the group was welcomed by those who had played in the Scottish circuit in the 1970s, with a keen appetite for an Edinburgh club in addition to those already operating in Dundee and Glasgow - “basically everyone just kind of came out of the woodwork”.

The group now runs with around six to eight regular players - “When someone new turns up, you'll generally get someone that falls away”. But they are keen to introduce new members to the sessions.

The recent closure of the Cramond Inn means that the group are now on the hunt for new premises to host their sessions - however, Marco says that this could be a chance to kick on and bring the Subbuteo world to Edinburgh.

“I think what we're probably going to do now is, we've got enough people that we'd actually like to host bigger tournaments. There's the Scottish Subbuteo Association. Dundee and Glasgow host a lot of the circuit events for qualification, the World Cup and stuff, and we've never done that,” Marco says, but in order to do that, the group will have to find premises that can accommodate more tables and more people.

Edinburgh Subbuteo are currently involved in the World Amateur Subbuteo Players Association (WASPA) “basically that’s just a guy called “Vincent who lives in Belgium, and he can organize it all,” Marco explains. “He just allows you to have tournaments in your pals house, in a pub, and just to take it to a level, where you know what? People are actually having fun”.

Edinburgh's Subbuteo club are keen to find the balance between compteitiveness and fun | Subbuteo Edinburgh

That is in stark contrast to the “big boys”, as Marco, calls them at the Federation of International Soccer Table Federation (FISTF). This is where people take the game very seriously, he explains.

“The problem with the FISTF ones is that they're so serious. It's really funny, if you actually sort of Google Subbuteo or Calcio del Tableau, and you watch some of the Italians play, for example, it's a half an hour game,” Marco laughs. “And honestly, 20 minutes of it is taken up with folks screaming at each other and screaming at the referee. It is proper mental.”

Edinburgh are much happier taking part in the WASPA rankings where they can be competitive without the histrionics.

“We actively joined the WASPA rankings, and it’s just to try and have a bit of fun with it,” Marco says. “And we seem to be doing quite well at the moment in the rankings of that, but mostly it kind of gives that little competitive edge, but also still maintaining that it is just a bit of fun.”

Whilst other countries may be working hard on youth development, Marco suggest that it’s a bit more difficult in Scotland - where the player base is relatively unchanged over the years.

“It's funny, actually, in Scotland, we've had the same base of players for quite a while now, and if you look at other countries, there's a real push to get kids involved,” Marco explains. He says he tried to get involved with professional clubs in the city but didn’t get far. So now it’s down to members bringing their kids along. “One of the guys, Andy, his son, Arthur, plays with us, and he's nine years old.”

For Marco, the group is as much about the game played with little plastic men as it is about preventing isolation, “the older you get the more you sort of just stay home,” he says. The group have gone on away days and to football games together. “It is nice to have a club where you've got a group of guys that are interested in football and stuff, and could just chit chat and speak about whatever issues they've got.”