Buttons fly in Brazilian tabletop football game

The ball goes right over the defenders and into the corner of the net. Goal for Zidane! Well, at least a goal for a little plastic disk with the French football legend's name on it.

Welcome to the wacky world of button football. Brazil is just as much a powerhouse in this form of the beautiful game as the regular kind played on a field. Players stand at a special table, each with a team of 11 plastic disks about the size of poker chips.

Competitors then take turns to use a separate piece, shaped like a guitar pick, to flick their players, which then strike a small ball around the field. The result can be engrossing, involving tactics, luck and no doubt a few stars.

Alexandre Cerqueira Gil, who was playing "Zinedine Zidane," goes every Saturday morning to meet fellow button football aficionados for pick-up games in Rio de Janeiro's atmospheric Sao Salvador square.

"We manage to recreate most of the situations you get in football," said Gil, a 54-year-old lawyer.

The game is played all over Brazil, as well as in a handful of other countries, but regional variations are common, meaning it can be surprisingly tricky to master.

In Rio, for example, players stick to what they call the 9x3 rule. Games last 14 minutes in two halves and the players take turns to flick the ball nine times, but only three times in a row with the same "player."
- Technique matters -
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"Tactically, it's different to real football, because there are limited numbers of touches of the ball," said engineer Luiz Carlos Pires, 54, who also plays on the Sao Salvador square. "But the quality of your technique makes all the difference, just like in football, as well as the preparation."
- Friendly rivalry -
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At the game in Sao Salvador square, Real Madrid scored two goals against Inter Milan, prompting a friend to joke to Gil: "Careful or you'll have to take a doping test!"