The Mondial de Subbuteo, theater of an astonishing Franco-Ukrainian story

• Every other Thursday, in its "off-field" section,

  20 Minutes

  explores new spaces for expressing sport, unexpected, unusual, clever or in full swing.

• This week we are dedicated to the Table Football World Cup, which is played on Saturday and Sunday in Rome, and which finds its inspiration in the game Subbuteo.

• Thomas Ponté (38) tried to launch this unusual discipline in Odessa, where he lived for two years until the start of the war in Ukraine.

  He will symbolically be the first Ukrainian representative in the history of the World Cup on Saturday.

A French Table Football Federation (FFFT) can hide another.

You spontaneously think of foosball competitions, but there has also been a discipline for Subbuteo addicts for forty-two years in France.

Twenty table football players from France will even meet on Saturday and Sunday in Rome, among 26 nations represented, to compete in the World Cup.

Invented in 1947, the mythical board game adapts in miniature all the rules of football, or almost.

During two 15-minute halves, then a possible sudden death of 10 minutes, the best French players will try to climb, thanks to the precision of their fingers, at the end of the benchmark Subbuteo tournament.

But how did these table football licensees (200 in France, spread over around fifteen clubs) fall into such a niche passion?

French teacher, Thomas Ponté (38) remembers having discovered his first Subbuteo game under the Christmas tree, at the age of 8, “like all the kids of my generation”.

In 1992, he joined the FTC Issy-les-Moulineaux, a reference club in France with 17 European appearances.

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“A discipline worthy of billiards or chess”

Because there has even been the Champions League and the Europa League since 2010, in this discipline which experienced a peak of enthusiasm in the heart of the 1990s, with a thousand practitioners in France.

"Systematically perceived as a big child" because of his astonishing passion for three decades, Thomas Ponté sees a much deeper dimension in Subbuteo.

“It's a discipline in its own right, worthy of billiards or chess, but with the rules of football.

It requires dexterity, technique and tactics.

Table football has changed my life, it has allowed me to learn to control my emotions in managing the clock, but also to travel and understand the usefulness of languages.

Whatever my holiday destination [Romania, Scotland…], I always contacted the country's federation to find people there to play with.

»

Current president of the French Federation of Table Football Sport (FFFTS), Eric Naszalyi continues: “We are dealing with the preparation of high-level athletes before each major competition, where you need a lot of concentration to withstand the pressure.

For each game situation, there are several hundred possible choices”.

Reigning world champion, in a predominantly male universe, the Frenchwoman Audrey Herbaut (32) trains twice a week, and she plays on average one competition per month.

Fournier and Karembeu embarked on the "mini-hype"

“In my opinion, it is both a sport and a hobby, confides the one who will aim for the double this weekend in Rome.

It's been a big part of my life since I started playing as a kid with my brother and dad.

Former world number one, from 1993 to 1995, Eric Naszalyi is delighted with a

around the Subbuteo.

His core discipline has just joined the Paris University Club (PUC) in Charléty, it generates improbable audiences (up to 3 million views sometimes) via Subbuteo videos posted on a dedicated TikTok account.

And,

, the emblematic former PSG midfielder Laurent Fournier edits the jerseys of the French table football team.

We are very far from the shortness of breath observed between the end of the 1990s and 2013, a key year that saw the Subbuteo be redistributed in commerce, with Christian Karembeu as a prestigious

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According to its practitioners, the game then benefited from a Covid-19 effect.

"The fifties took advantage of this period to immerse themselves in this game that had accompanied their childhood, and they made their kids discover it", notes Thomas Ponté.

"It's one of the rare intergenerational disciplines, which can really be shared at any age", confirms Eric Naszalyi (55), who passed on his outdated passion, in the digital age, to his son Paul (25 years).

The latter will also be there on Saturday in Rome.

“Honor Ukrainian players who cannot come”

“Big family” (according to Audrey Herbaut), the Subbuteo gives rise to an astonishing story this summer, since Thomas Ponté will be at this World Cup… the first Ukrainian representative in history.

Former president of the FFFTS (from 2012 to 2019), he indeed lived in Odessa (Ukraine) from 2020, to teach French to non-French-speaking adults within the Alliance Française.

Last January, he built a game table on the premises to introduce a dozen intrigued Ukrainian students to table football.

"I tried to develop a discipline that was totally unknown in this country, because the Subbuteo has never been marketed there," he says.

I was aiming to organize a qualifying Ukrainian championship for the World Cup in June.

The founder of the France-Ukraine table football-Subbuteo association then had one objective: to present a Ukrainian delegation of a few members for the World Cup in Rome.

But the context in Ukraine makes this project unplayable.

23 years after being a World Cup finalist in the Netherlands with the France team, in the junior category, Thomas Ponté will therefore represent the country at war alone.

Our off-road file

"I had to convince the International Federation to let me play for my wife's country," he says.

Ukraine is part of my life, after these two years spent in Odessa.

I'm starting to speak the language, I learned the anthem for the occasion, there is a strong symbolism for me.

I want to honor Ukrainian players who cannot leave their country to participate.

It is also a bit of a bottle overboard for Ukrainian institutions to contact me one day.

The Subbuteo is obviously much more than just a hobby for children, isn't it?

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• off-road

• Soccer

• War in Ukraine

• Odessa