We’ve discussed this before… It was inevitable that with the age and profile of fanzines and their editors that certain games and activities should receive more than a few mentions, part of growing up and a great way of filling column inches.

So smooth out those wrinkles, put some batteries in the floodlights, choose your favourite team and open the fresh bag of Adidas tango match balls, it is Subbuteo time again.

Simply Subbuteo

It might be something simple, an idea for a cover such as this one from Derby County’s Interesting, Very Interesting issue 3 in 1990. As an aside, this is one of two fanzines quoting commentators in their names, Barry Davies in this case with John Motson honoured by Northern Ireland’s Armstong, Arconada. IVI are making a joke about diminutive midfielder Geraint Thomas and getting a Subbuteo piece on the front cover, well done everyone (5’ 7” in case you wondered)

Subbuteo covers were far from rare. Wycombe Wanderer’s zine Chairboys Gas reported that plans for a new training pitch at their soon to be built Adams Park had been rejected in 1990.

The “Drastic Plastic” article this cover refers too could have been written today with idiot nimby’s complaining about the club’s plans for a 3g community facility being rejected because of a nearby footpath that about 6 people used and encroaching on Green belt, ignoring the fact that Adams Park was built on brownfield land next to a crappy industrial estate on the edge of town. I googled it and the scabby scrap of wasteland that they were asking to use is still a scabby scrap of wasteland today…

Staying with new grounds, another way of using the game was to use the modelling aesthetic of Subbuteo to take the mickey out of your neighbours new ground plans. Halesowen classic Follow Your Instinct went down this route with issue 5 in 1991, claiming that bitter local rivals Kidderminster had retained Subbuteo (UK) Ltd as the architects for their new “superstadium”.

Now we go over to Ashford

There were many Subbuteo match reports. This one from No Idea, a Gravesend FC fanzine is a belter. We all had our strange pre match rituals, but Steve’s nephew seems to have taken this to extreme lengths leaving our Subbuteo veteran wondering what on earth the kids of today were on. Mind you, who didn’t have the odd cyclops as a crowd accessory, along with an army sniper, a cow and a snake in my case (move on quickly – Ed)

The Changing Face of Football

Quite extraordinary news about changes coming to Subbuteo seemed to be covered in the general fanzine Tales From the Riverbank issue 1 in 1994. Deeper reading reveals yet another spoof but a very funny one. Pitch Invasion attachments, big men figurines for set pieces, touts with sheepskin jackets plus swing-based divers. All this including a dashing picture of Frank Worthington for reasons that are not exactly clear.

But I kept going back to that opening paragraph…could this be true? Did Subbuteo only start putting black players in sets in the UK in the early 90s?

For all things Subbuteo you should look up Peter Upton’s superb website[1] and he confirms that Waddington had only sporadically put black players into Subbuteo sets in earlier decades. “As is appropriate for a game that has always strived for realism, the history of black players in Subbuteo closely mirrors their treatment in British football as a whole – initially ignored, often completely misunderstood, but then slowly accepted (with some embarrassing hiccups along the way….)” These hiccups included the 1966 World cup range when all South American teams (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile) were all black based on the fame of the Brazilian team including Pele, Garrincha and Jairzinho. The full-size Chilean team had no black players at the time.

Even more incredible it is true that in 1993 a 9-year-old boy wrote to Waddington asking why there were no black players in his England set. The story gets better, the kid in questions was to become a professional who commanded £10m+ fees and was capped 86 times by Wales, leading his country in their brilliant run to the Euro 2016 semi-finals. Yes, it was Ashley Williams[2]. “I wrote to the company that makes Subbuteo, I asked my mum why there were no black players in my England teams. There was no John Barnes or Des Walker and I wanted to know why. I was just a kid asking a question. But they changed it. They introduced black players – and they also sent me a load of Subbuteo stuff. The only problem was that I didn’t play the game properly and I ended up breaking most of it!” Didn’t we all Ashley, didn’t we all.

A mystery wrapped inside an enigma

Let’s move back now to a tale of dark arts and skulduggery that we hinted about in our first Subbuteo-Fanzines blog (https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/07/03/fanzines-and-subbuteo-the-perfect-match/ ).

As previously discussed, this spoof, a clever take on possible Subbuteo “New accessories for the new season” appeared ad infinitum in many fanzines on the early 90’s. We know that it was created by and first appeared in issue 1 of Blow Football from August 1989 (https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2026/02/24/fotd-blow-football/ )  Even after all this time, the originator of the idea still occasionally fumes at the injustice of this appearing in so many fanzines without credit (mostly when I frequently remind him of it) so I decided to try and track what actually happened down. Yes, I do have WAY too much time on my hands.

The story went that The Square Ball had copied this piece without credit in issue 1 of their fanzine in February 1990 so I looked and there it is, sideways but bold as brass on page 24.

However, this is on a page entitled “Best o’t Rest” a page dedicated to highlighting great pieces in other fanzines and they DID credit the piece…just to brilliant the Sunderland fanzine Wise Men Say. WMS was edited by Tom Lynn[3] who also ran a telly shop in Sunderland according to journalist/ Northern league chairman/fanzine editor extraordinaire, Mike Amos MBE..but I digress, TSB credited THE WRONG FANZINE!

I had passed this news back to the Blow Football team some time ago but obviously it didn’t really soften the blow. So, I ploughed on and recently opened issue 12 of Wise Men Say from Dec 89/Jan 90 to find the original piece and thus where TSB got their info from, but the plot now thickens…Wise Mean Say DO credit Blow Football, in effusive terms no less!!

….it doesn’t stop there though because a year later in February 1991 The Square Ball sort of issue an apology and correct their earlier mistake. Great, except…

As with everything fanzine related, nothing is quite as it seems because in the very same article, the TSB team also mention what was to be a VERY short lived fanzine “from their own office” (i.e. it was them)… The Magic Sponge took the original Subbuteo idea and expanded it. Fair enough except they included the Blow Football figurines and presented it as their own save for a tiny little credit 20 pages away down the bottom of the contents page, nowhere near the piece…

Fanzines borrowed and copied from each other and Subbuteo was central to many examples of that. In just a year and despite fanzines being quite narrow and local in their distribution this piece appeared in 4 separate zines, probably more and I’ve seen it replicated in at least another 6 more over the years. The point is that fanzines influence grew exponentially and they were never about linear progression, by their nature they were chaotic, cut and paste, exploring different ideas, spreading the word, different ways of thinking and thank goodness for that (except when it was blatant plagiarism..)

The other great thing is that this has allowed me to produce another 531 words in this blog AND has given me a great idea for a podcast, Fanzine Detectives!!

Still crazy after all these years

Subbuteo purists look away now, we are about to enter the world of highly customised figurines. This photo was taken during the Voice of the fans exhibition, a nice summary of how fanzines, Subbuteo and music have intersected.The little fanzine at the top is a great example of how Subbuteo and football fanzines still cross over today.

Jan Stöver ( @altona93fanzines.bsky.social ) is a highly creative fan of Hamburg club Altona 1893 and by extension its sister club Dulwuch Hamlet. He produces a wide range of incredibly beautiful fanzines based around, politics, diversity, football, music, beer and Subbuteo. He has a fantastic project which you can find at @letomagic.bsky.social which record his visits across Europe to various football clubs, fanzine libraries and breweries, gets involved in penalty shoot outs and always takes a great photo of a customised figure on a beer cap at the ground. Truly majestic.

These are truly wonderful things, each zine and each page unique, informative, fun and very creative, perfect fanzine fare.

Final Whistle

It was a sign of the times, many fanzine editors switched from flick to kick straight to typewrites, cut and paste, telling everyone about their new passion. It was also about borrowing…that’s what cut and paste is, sometimes credit wasn’t given where it was due, but I guess it all works out in the end.

Subbuteo infiltrated all walks of fanzine life, covers, match reports, non-league clubs and international fanzines, jokes at rivals’ expense and “kids of today” pieces. Finding references to it provide great examples of how creativity and protest expressed and expresses itself wonderfully through fanzines.

On that point, watch out for Fanzine Detectives, a new podcast out soon where we solve cold case files from the murky world of football fanzines (Stop this now – Ed)

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[1] http://www.peter-upton.co.uk/focuson6.htm

[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/how-evertons-ashley-williams-changed-8806103

[3] https://mikeamosblog.wordpress.com/2026/02/24/february-23-2026-wisdom-of-the-ages/