When speaking with the Institutions that have supported us and whom I sincerely thank, we focussed our attention on how educational Subbuteo was for a number of generations, from 1947 to the present day. An totally unchangeable symbol of British Fair Play just like its birth and progeny.
But we have omitted the number of arguments and fights it caused between children and young people. We remember them now. They were sincere arguments, as chivalrous as the football that we love, often irreconcilable with the amount of time necessary for laughing about them. Friendships and family ties broken and mended in the time needed to eat a good slice of bread and oil (for the more greedy of bread and sugar and for my brother both) and to want to play again. A bit like having a fist-fight with the same style with which people duelled in the past, leaving the rival, the challenged party, or the weakest, the honour of the first blow.
This was Subbuteo for so many young people that by now are not so young anymore.
Altogether, a magical world made up of on the one hand fair play and on the other indisputable reasons for sparking off hate and threats....
For example, the rules were one of the greatest reasons for friction between the players of Football in miniature. And for discrimination. I remember unbelievable rules, the result of a free interpretation that resulted in heresy. The few who read the little book with the real rules had the same value in our eyes that the Fathers of the Church had for Christianity. And the convinced heretics, that were difficult to flush out and condemn to the stake, were considered by us to be on a par with the most hardened Lutherans. Followers of their own church that had nothing in common with the True Church of Subbuteo, that of Our Father Peter Adolph. Who as well as being man unfortunately was not also God and did not transfer his earthly powers and sacred bonds to descendants elected by traditio legis.
This meant movements of Subbuteisti that preserved, extended, repudiated, revisited and corrected the message of the old Subbuteo. Looking for ommunities of fans of the game on Internet, I found quite an extraordinary number. And again, like used to happen when we were children when we fought with one another, each one against the other. And boy do they fight! With the same zeal and stubbornness that we had as children. There are those who refer to the purity of the game and still organize tournaments with the teams produced up to the Seventies and then there are those who have invented table soccer and its federations; there are those who preserve and those who renew. Valiant defenders of Tradition propose their reasons against the progressives who counter with their Ancien Regime type truths.
There is really something for everyone. And all who in the name of Subbuteo invoke blessings on their own hosts and curses on the disciples of the Satanic adversary.
It will be hard to see them united under a single ecumenical flag, but it would be good to see them united – having laid down their arms – on the occasion of an event dedicated to the game that everyone loves and which inspires them.
Without having to enter the intricacies of such a serious problem, Action Now – Play old style and the undersigned feel they must demonstrate their absolute loyalty to an immortal game, by celebrating its golden years, like a good ancient time as described by Dante and like a Golden Age that, before the many trials of Kali Yuga, will make us feel closer to our Fathers.
And to my grandfather who has passed away but to whom with gratitude I dedicate our exhibition.
Charlotta Smeds, who knows Subbuteo really well, decided to dedicate her shots to some pieces that she herself chose and which form part of a small private collection. A collection of sweet memories and images.
It is not a question of following the history of Subbuteo or of illustrating some of its pieces, but one of narrating the sentiments and indelible images that we hold in our hearts through the eye of a great Swedish photographer.
She has managed all this with great technical ability and passion.
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