Foosball is a relatively new game (and sport, if it’s being played competitively) in the scene, but it already has picked up a significant following among sports enthusiasts and spectators alike. As a game, foosball can be quite recreational and stress-relieving.
After all, it allows you to get together with your friends and challenge each other over some friendly competition; the fast-paced nature of the game helps a person forget their daily problems and hence assists with destressing their mind.
A question a lot of new foosball players and perhaps even some older, more experienced players have asked is why are the foosball players are arranged, from left to right.
We are not sure if you too had this question at any point, but if you did, today is your lucky day! Because after reading this article, you will know exactly why in detail.
This is Why Foosball Players are Left to Right.
You use both your hands to play foosball. Most people are right-handed, So the game is designed to use the power your dominant hand on offense.
For more details read on in the article.
Which Way do Foosball Players Face (and why)?
When playing a game of foosball, it matters as to the direction at which the foosball players face when they are taking an active part in the game. The direction of the foosball players matters, because that decides or determines their hand grips in the first place.
Foosball, much like any other sport, is a physical activity that is designed or programmed to entertain the people taking part in it. And in any sport, the only way to entertain the players is to help them score more points against their opponents because after all, nobody likes losing. Hence, even foosball as a game is designed such that scoring is encouraged; the idea is, after all, to motivate or encourage the players to try their level best to score the points and not let them go away angry and frustrated over a meaninglessly difficult match.
Contrary to popular belief, the foosball players don’t look at each other when playing the game; to understand why this happens, you need to understand the concept of hand positioning in foosball which we have covered below.
How Does Foosball Lingo Relate to the Players’ Left to Right Movement?
Understanding foosball lingo and terminology can provide insight into the game’s strategy and players’ movements. Terms like “pull shot” and “snake shot” signify the different angles and directions players use to move the ball from left to right, showcasing the importance of quick and precise movements in foosball.
Foosball Tables and Hand Positioning
Since foosball is a game that is played exclusively with the hands (as no other body part moves as much), it is necessary to ensure that the game continues to be fun for the players taking part and does not turn out to be frustrating at any point.
When playing a game that requires the movement or relatively fewer parts of the body, the level of engineering or thought that goes into the sport has to be more. This is because the sport has to be fine-tuned’ so that it does not become a boring game for the players.
Additionally, every sport has to ensure that it is being fair to not just one side but to both sides or all the parties involved. So, when it comes to foosball, the positioning of the hands should be in such a way that the players can exert their maximum force in twisting the foosball rods to ensure that in turn can hit the foosball and push it into the goalpost of the opponent.
Because foosball involves the kind of twisting that other sports usually do not, it is necessary that the foosball table is created in such a way that applying this “twist’ to the foosball rods does not hurt the hands, wrists, or arms of the players playing the game.
The analogy to this would be that in the case of a football field, the ground is often grassy. This is to ensure that the players can run as fast as possible behind the ball, and even if they fall, they will not be hurt because the ground is not hard concrete, so they will not suffer injuries as the grass on the field will serve as a cushion to prevent them from getting hurt.
Likewise, in the case of basketball, the chances of the players falling on the ground are much slimmer. Because of this reason, the ground isn’t necessarily cushioned unlike in soccer. Also, because the players in the basketball are trying to make the ball bounce as much as they can to ensure that they can get it up to the height, it makes sense that the ground in such case does not damp their bouncing. Hence, it has to be hard. For both of those games, they have been designed to minimize the efforts involved in scoring points for teams.
Similarly, in the case of foosball, the tables are arranged from left to right because of a particular reason.
You know how to play foosball, you need to use both your hands, right?
And it’s no surprise that for most of us, one hand is stronger than the other; some of us are stronger with our left hand while some of us are stronger with our right hand. So, naturally, the idea of foosball as a game should be to make the players use their dominant hand more often compared to their non-dominant hand.
And that’s why the foosball players are arranged left to right.
We mean, think about it. The last time when you went to play the game of foosball, you had your dominant hand playing much of the match, right? It was your stronger hand, and you were probably twisting the foosball rods more with that hand as opposed to your non-dominant hand.
So, the concept here is that when the dominant hand works on the offense, which is to say, try and hit the foosball towards the opponent’s goalpost, you can exert more amounts of force through that as it’s your stronger hand.
In the technical terms, there are two words associated with what we are referring to, and that is a pronated grip and supinated grip.
Pronated grip refers to when your right hand is stretched out with the palm facing away from you, or in such a case, you can see the backside of your hand. The supinated grip is when your palm is facing you directly and you cannot see the backside of your hand.
Ideally, people, in general, tend to be stronger with the supinated grip as opposed to their pronated grip. The foosball tables are arranged from left to right because that will allow the players to play with their supinated grip handling the offense part of their game while the pronated grip would be used by them for their defense, or to prevent the opponent from scoring the game by hitting the ball into their goalpost.
So, while it would still be possible that the foosball players could be from right to left, that would mean that a reverse table was in use and such a table or game would only seek to irritate the players because they would not be able to use their dominant hands to go on the offense and beat their opponent.
The result of such tables or games would be that they would extend to ridiculous amounts of time because neither side would be able to exert their full strength due to the game being played offensively with their non-dominant hands.
