Celta return to Europe for the second consecutive year and embark on their eleventh European season, with the aim of taking some of the elements that form part of their identity beyond Galicia, as they did last season with the tambourine. On this occasion, as part of the institutional exchange of gifts, the club will present each of their opponents with two figures from a classic Galician table football game.
Table football is part of one of the most recognisable traditions of Galician popular culture. For generations, bars, cafés and social clubs were also meeting places centred around a table where those small metal players had their own matches. For many Galicians, table football is part of the collective memory just as much as football itself: a place for meeting, competition, friendship and conversation.
Its history is also linked to a Galician and to one of the most difficult episodes of 20th-century Spanish history. During the Civil War, the poet and inventor Alexandre de Fisterra, wounded and hospitalised in Madrid, came up with and patented table football in 1937, thinking of children who, like him, could not play football. From then on, this small game became closely linked to Galicia: a way of taking football to places where there could be no football pitch.
With this spirit in mind, Celta wanted to incorporate this tradition into their European journey. At each fixture, the club will present the opposing team with two figures from this classic Galician table football game, hand-painted especially for the occasion. One will wear Celta’s sky-blue colours, while the other will wear the colours of the opposing team. They will be two unique pieces for each match, conceived as a memento of a European night and, above all, as a small way of sharing Galicia with each of the clubs Celta meet on their journey through Europe.
