Miguel Ángel Villar Alarcón

I build Toy Soccer Cup and I write every article in this notebook. One person, no team.

What I have actually built

Toy Soccer Cup is not a licensed reskin of anything. I wrote it from scratch, and that includes the parts nobody sees:

• The flick physics — how hard the piece travels, how the friction of each surface changes it, how the ball behaves when it hits a standing figure.
• 57 leagues and 858 clubs, plus cups, a season pass and a sticker album with 625 cards.
• Online multiplayer, ranked duels, the bot population that keeps the arena alive at four in the morning, and the anti-cheat that stops the obvious tricks.
• The website you are reading, in 8 languages.

What I write about, and how much

This notebook has 66 articles in 8 languages so far. The subject is tabletop football in the widest sense: subbuteo, futebol de botão, foosball, TIPP-KICK, langırt, calcio balilla, chapas — the same idea under every name it has picked up. Where each version came from, how it is really played, what the pieces do, and why some survived a century while others vanished.

How I check things

Most of what circulates online about these games is copied from other blogs that copied it from somewhere else. My rules are boring and they are the reason these articles are worth reading:

• I go to the primary source when one exists — patents with their numbers, federation rule books, court rulings, national libraries — and I link it so you can check it yourself.
• When two sources contradict each other, I say so and show both, instead of quietly picking the tidier version.
• When something is a repeated tradition rather than a documented fact, I label it as such. Several famous stories about these games fall into that box.
• If I get something wrong and you tell me, I fix it and say what changed.

What I do not write about

I do not do buying guides, price comparisons or affiliate reviews. There are plenty of those and I would not be adding anything. If an article mentions what something costs, it is because the number explains something — never to send you to a shop.

Why I make this

Because flick football is a genuinely good game and it deserved a decent digital version: free, opening in a browser, asking a ten-year-old for no account, no download and no card. I also wanted my own kids to be able to play it without me worrying about what the screen was going to do to them.

Corrections and contact

Corrections are genuinely welcome, especially on the historical articles — if you play one of these games seriously, you almost certainly know something I do not. Write to me.