Subbuteo and nothing else E-Book

Stefano Bolotta

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint Self-Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

English version of "Toglietemi tutto ma non il subbuteo", a book about amatorial subbuteo and table soccer world. Quarrels, laughters, rivalries and follies from guys becoming adults.

Leseprobe

Stefano Bolotta

Subbuteo and nothing else

Youcanprint Self-Publishing

WELCOME TO THE NORTH-WEST

First of all, the introductions. Nice to meet you. We are a group of friends: we have known each other all life, say twenty years, more or less. Some time ago we made a dream come true, turning what is commonly a utopia for many young people suddenly - and unwillingly - become “adult”, into reality. That is to say, we decided to meet one or two evenings a week to play subbuteo.

And there’s more: we created a real no-profit organization - it actually costs us some money - which allows us to set up an entire season each year: championships, cups, prizegivings, Internet website, videos for every single match played and followers from all around Italy. A tiny little “empire” built from nothing that survived through catastrophic events, the forming of new families and the consumption of time.

A dream, I said. Yes. The same dream that other people follow in the most diverse fields, not just subbuteo - luckily it’s back in vogue these days - but also football, basketball, board games, poker, videogames, fantasy football and other useful means to escape everyday boredom for a second.

We managed to do it, making the utopia come true. And now we want to tell the story of the small miracle occurred in a little village on the shores of Lake Lecco, fifty kilometers from Milan, a stone’s throw from the places described in Manzoni’s novel “The betrothed”. If it’s true that Don Lisander invented the historical novel, we created and still continue to create - hopefully as long as possible - fictionalized history. We now want to report it, explaining why we are proud and in love with it, and how it has somehow changed our lives. Subbuteo is our religion and we trust it with our souls as if it were a God.

Telling this story is quite easy: you just have to cut yourself off from reality, becoming an attentive - and merciless - spectator, pointing out the humanly weakest aspects for better or for worse. Because an enterprise such as ours makes everyone’s qualities and flaws stand out incredibly, giving way to paradoxical situations and almost grotesque behaviors. This book invites you to take yourself not too seriously, making fun of the most bizarre aspects, just as any group of friends would do while looking back on their (dis)adventures.

ESCAPE FROM REALITY

The dream manifested itself for the first time in the summer of the golden year 2006. A group of friends, bored by the obsessive repetitiveness of nights spent at the local bar, drinking pints of useless beer or smoking tons of cigarettes, decided to preserve liver and lungs. Or, at least, this is what the friends thought at the beginning. Over the years they had ventured upon soccer and basketball fields or tennis courts, usually with mediocre results, willingly or even in need to kill time.

Talking half-seriously as usual, at some point on an August day, someone mentioned the magical word “subbuteo”. At the time the game was in sharp decline if compared to the glory of the Seventies and Eighties, killed by the explosion of videogames and the growing tendency for young people to spend less time at home (smartphones still had not caused their epochal mind revolution, but they soon would). Why stay at home with your hands on a table instead of going out and strike out with some pretty girl? Or instead of meeting at the bar, talking about sterile topics, pumped by coffee, alcohol and juvenile elation?

Here it is. This is where we started from. Retaliation. Because in the early 2000s the group of friends felt the opposite desire. Tired, bored by the same old situations, they immediately understood how that magical little word could solve part of their problems.

For some of them, though, subbuteo was an unknown concept, almost foreign. Maybe it was some Vietnamese typical dish, or some huge streaked bird living in the Amazon rainforest. For others, it was the blurred picture of an advertisement page in some at least twenty-year old Mickey Mouse magazine, one of those you would find on a shelf in your grandmother’s house or in the apartment of a cousin grown up in the Seventies.

«I have a soccer field at home. In the basement, actually» they hear others say. «We play every now and then. It’s not bad». The bait is laid and the fish are quick to swallow. They try once, twice, some days they would rest and then they would make another attempt in the basement. The competitive and carefree side of the game soon emerged, taking over all lack of experience. «Why don’t we arrange a championship?».

Like any other project designed while sitting at a table, it evolved in a few days. Teams, soccer goals and balls were exhumed from the attic of those who used to play subbuteo in the past. Blown off the dust, they were as good as new.

So this is how the adventure started in the summer of 2006. And in the same way it happened for many other people with similar interests, caught by the indiscreet fascination of miniature-sized soccer, or by the chance to score a goal against your best friend, and, especially, by the desire of escaping reality. Yes, because when a match that deserves to be called “official” starts, at a friend’s house or at the Champions league final at the Old Trafford Stadium, no other thought crosses your mind. Families, girlfriends, wives, work: everything becomes second rate. This drug is only apparently harmless, as we’ll see, and doesn’t require huge economic sacrifices. On this day and age, overwhelmed by obligations and time devouring all life expectations, everything could be taken from us but subbuteo.