Beautiful Pictures of Tiny Plastic Football Men

This is a picture from Paul Willetts’s new book Teenage Flicks: Memories of the Sub-Beautiful Game, a collection of soccer anecdotes interspersed with photographs of Subbuteo, the infinitely customizable soccer board game popular in the mid-to-late 20th century. The Guardian has a terrific gallery of pictures from the book up today. From their introduction:

If you grew up in the 1950s, 60s, 70s or even 80s, chances are you’ll have recreated football’s greatest moments from the comfort of your own home using tiny plastic men on a cotton pitch, the slightest creases in which could drastically alter the course of even the biggest game.

Great stuff, even if, like me, you’ve never played Subbuteo. Now if we could just get a Lego recreation of the Zidane headbutt…