When and How Was the GTSO Founded?
Until 2001, there was no international organization for table soccer, each country was just getting along on its own. There were some attempts at organizing international tournaments, and some contacts between the different player bases, but those were all in a rather ad-hoc fashion.
In 2002, people from Belgium and the Netherlands founded EUTSA, the European Table Soccer Association; with member associations from Ireland, England, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Luxemburg.
In 2003, the federations P4P (Germany), STFV (Switzerland) and TFBÖ (Austria) founded another international organization under the name "Players 4 Players Europe". One of the main goals was to extend the successful tournaments done by P4P / STFV in Germany and Switzerland to other countries, and to organize international tournaments like an European Championship.
2002 also saw the founding of ITSF (International Table Soccer Federation), with goals somewhat different from EUTSA and P4P Europe, the focus being more the international recognition of table soccer as a sport, and less the organizing of tournaments.
So, at the end of 2003 there were (at least) three international organizations for table soccer.
In 2005, EUTSA and P4P Europe agreed to merge their organizations into a single, new federation with the name "Global Table Soccer Organization". This was formally done by changing the name of "P4P Europe" into "GTSO".
So there are now still two international organizations around, ITSF and GTSO, which leads us to the next topic...
What Is the Relation Between GTSO and ITSF?
Why did we build the organization "GTSO" from EUTSA and P4P Europe, instead of just joining ITSF?
There's no denying that the main reason is that we don't agree with everything ITSF is doing. We have different opinions about what should be the goals in the development of table soccer, and how one should try to reach them.
Still, we don't rule out a cooperation with ITSF, and we don't see us as opposing them. We could imagine a situation comparable to tennis, where you also have a player's organization (ATP) and an international federation (ITF). In that picture, GTSO would be "the ATP of table soccer".
Currently, we unfortunately don't have that peaceful situation yet; instead we have a situation not unlike that in boxing, with two federations each with its own set of championship titles etc.
