During the Spanish Civil War the poet and editor Alejandro Finisterre found himself recuperating in a hospital bed after surviving a fascist bombing. As he lay in bed, he became saddened by the bed ridden children he saw around him who were unable to play the beloved pastime of soccer (football as it is known in Europe). Reasoning that if the game of tennis could be miniaturized for table tennis, so too could the game of soccer, he asked his friend Francisco Javier Altuna, a Basque carpenter, to build the very first foosball table. He received a patent for his invention in 1937, but Finisterre had to escape from the fascist coup d'etat to France, and lost the patent papers in a storm.

The sport wasn't brought to America until 1962. Lawrence Patterson, considered the father of American Foosball, was a soldier stationed in Germany. There he arranged for a factory to export the highly popular European game "table football" to America. He dubbed the table "Foosball Match," and soon received American and Canadian copyrights for the name.

It wasn't long before foosball tables were selling by the thousands and expanding in popularity. In 1964 the first tournaments were organized by Billy Taylor, a Portland based distributor of the Foosball Match soccer table.

Until 1970, every foosball table in America was imported from Italy, Germany, or France. It was in that year that a foosball room operator named Bob Hayes and an engineer named Bob Furr designed the "Dallas Tornado," which gave birth to Texas Style table soccer. In 1974 John Gilliland and Cal Rogers filled the need for a governing body by establishing the World Table Soccer Association.

As more foosball tournaments with cash prizes became more common, more serious players appeared and the sport started to make a significant mark in the American consciousness. In 1981, teen idol Leif Garrett starred in "Long Shot", a full-length feature film about three teenagers' quest to capture the National Foosball Championship's top prize of $50,000.

For many years, communication problems frustrated attempts to form an international foosball organization. Thankfully, the kind of easy communication made available through the internet allowed the various national organizations to form the International Table Soccer Federation. They had their first meeting in 2002 in Franconville, France, during the world cup tournament on French style foosballtables. Representatives from Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany and USA were in attendance.