Origins

Alejandro Finisterre was injured during one of the fascist bombings of Madrid during the Spanish civil war. Seeing many children injured like himself in the hospital, unable to play football, he thought of the idea of table football, which was borne from the concept of table tennis.

Finistere credits his friend Francisco Javier Altuna, a Basque carpenter, for making the first table football following the directions he gave him. Although the invention was patented in 1937, Finisterre had to escape from the fascist coup d'état to France, and he lost the papers of the patent in a storm.

Table football is also known in the US as Foosball (from the German Fußball "soccer"). In German itself it's called Kicker or Tischfußball. The Spanish for table football is futbolín. In Argentina it is called metegol. In France, the game is called Baby-foot. In Turkey it's called langirt, the omoneapethic word describing the sound when playing.