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Foosball at Cafe Kick, originally uploaded by Craig Grobler.

I took this pic at Bar Kick, Shoreditch. Ben is off to Canada so farewell drinks were held at the popular foosball venue.

Foosball is the American corruption of fussball (pronounced the same), the German word for soccer-literally foot plus ball. While the sport has the more formal name of table soccer, to the American players who love it, it's foosball, or just foos.

Unfortunately, the origins of the game are not as easy to trace as those of its name. Like many games, it is quite possible that variations of foosball developed in different countries over roughly the same time period. Since organized soccer first entered the sports scene in the 1860s, the invention of soccer's table version can be safely dated sometime afterward, probably in the late 1800s. The earliest United States patent for a foosball table was registered in 1901, but it is generally agreed that foosball, like soccer, originated in western Europe.

I should say that the low quality of the pic is due to the use of my low res camera phone during a power failure.