verything began the day that the plan of a drawing table (used by our father for his job) got free. We felt ridiculous, aged as we were, laying on our knees around the official carpet to celebrate our usual crowncap-football rites!

I can't remember if were the brains or directly the suffering knees to generate the idea; anyway, after a short time, the caps championship would have reached its definitive structure: a luxury green “casino style” cloth covered the table (at the present day many people, looking at S.Siro's grass, are victims of nostalgic regrets), marked with all the regular lines and a couple of 5 x 8 cm goals at the edges; now it was easy to put it over a normal table and start facing ourselves in epical challenges, comfortably standing …..on our feet!

The ball had been cut patiently and with extreme care from a china ink-eraser (yellow for TV- shots exigencies) sized about 5 mm diameter.

Formerly the teams name was the same of Serie A teams, and this was cause of a lot of problems due to the single trainers football faith. New era created new fantastic teams whose exotic names reminded the “shirt” colours and metallic boxes became their head office.

Now, at least, every cap begun to keep its real “personality”, flying into the History with its own name, and not anymore turned upside-down wearing a paper “shirt” with the name of a famous football player glued inside its back.

Every single crown cap colours and its wonderful graphic addressed it to one team or another, and its “feet” (according to how it had been opened) determinated its role in the playground.

It's well known, in fact, that the greatest scorers in the crowns-world (Ganter, Tetley, Holsten just to mention some of them), had one side with up-turned metallic feet in order to kick the ball over the gigantic goalkeeper (like Palla, Beconcini, Parodi) in those glorious days, whereas the other “players” had to slide properly to became famous.

The trainers alternately had to move one of his caps towards the ball by hitting it with the nail to attack or defend, until, passed the middle line, if the player had the ball at a favourable angle, declared the shot. When the opposite goalkeeper had been placed on the presumed trajectory the hit could start; after two periods (12 minutes each), when the clock rang the end, the scores were normally similar to the ones we are used to find on common Serie A matches.

There were two leagues with 12 teams each, promotions and retrocession, and, honestly, we've to admit that nobody ever had the chance to obtain favours by the referee, so that almost all teams suffered the degradation shame, and many of them the glory of winning the title, receiving as a prize a red star marked inside crown's back.

The approach with the first collector not related with our family (many Italian collectors can suppose who he is) broke us to the fatal decision: in order to preserve our loving objects safety it was necessary to avoid contacts, often rough, resulting from every respectable play action. Just the time to complete the running championship and the 24 clubs closed down, and the glorious footballers returned to the routine's ranks among those who hadn't the fortune to be selected to play the best game in the world.

Some of them suffered the shame to be traded (one against two) with missing caps that, after a short time, appeared to be real debris; but this is a different story, and maybe you already know it…

I know that many pre-electronic collector friends shared, even if with some rule differences, the passion in cap-football, and I presume everyone of them tried to transfer it to their children, probably with no success as in my case. A lot of game consolles in use nowadays form an almost insuperable barrier, but I'm sure that the emotional involving that game procured could still now compete with whatever electronic devilry, if only they'd try it.

Crown caps graphic quality is getting moreover to sublime levels, unimaginable few years ago, but whenever, as a consequence of any trade, a cap with a small red star marked inside his back (or a small circle indicating the best goal scorer) would turn up in your hands treat it with the best regards, ‘cause the History it carries on its shoulders could never be compared with the one of a whatever unused, factory-new closure: that crown cap has been ALIVE!

 Lorenzo