What is button football?
Button football is a classic tabletop game: each team is made of buttons (or pieces) you flick to shoot the ball and score. It is board-game fun that spanned generations — and Refoot brings it to the digital world.
Origin: from subbuteo to tabletops worldwide
The game became famous as subbuteo, created in England in the 1940s, and built a huge tradition in countries like Brazil as "futebol de botão", played on tables with a ruler and a small ball.
The idea is always the same: skill in the flick, aim and power control to move the ball and finish.
Basic rules
- Each move is a flick of one of your team’s pieces.
- The game is turn-based: teams alternate flicks.
- Touching the opponent’s piece at the wrong time can give away a foul.
- Inside the box, a foul becomes a penalty.
- Whoever scores more goals by the end wins.
Are button football and subbuteo the same thing?
They are cousins, not twins. Both grew from the same idea — flicking pieces to shoot a ball across a table — but each went its own way:
| Button football (Brazil) | Subbuteo (England) | |
|---|---|---|
| Piece | Flat disc/button | Miniature figure on a curved base |
| The flick | Plastic paddle or ruler | Flicked with a finger |
| Ball | Small disc | Spherical mini ball |
| Feel | More technical, built on one-twos | Closer to a miniature pitch |
Online the two names blurred together: whoever searches for subbuteo online and whoever searches for button football online is after the same fun in the end.
A quick glossary
- Flick — the move itself: striking one piece once.
- One-two — using two pieces in sequence to advance without losing the ball.
- Duel — two pieces fighting for the same space; the heavier one wins.
- Half flick — the short, controlled touch used to position rather than shoot.
- Bank shot — bouncing the ball off the side of the pitch to open an angle.
Why it survived generations
Button football outlived console generations for a simple reason: the rules fit in thirty seconds and mastery does not fit in a lifetime. Any child understands the gesture on the first try, and yet people who have played for decades still find new angles.
It is also a social tabletop game — it was born to be played with someone sitting across from you. That is the part a digital version has a duty to keep.
How Refoot modernizes the classic
Refoot keeps the essence — pull, aim and release — but adds arcade physics, easy to pick up and hard to master, plus playable penalties and VAR.
The twist: you have a unique, persistent squad that levels up (level and XP), ages, gets injured, retires and becomes a legend, all on album-style cards. There is a World Cup with 48 teams, online Ranked against real players and matches with friends — plus a 2 Players mode on the same device, so playing side by side never gets lost.