CALLE was inspired by the street games played throughout the world. In the alleyways, the parking lots, the dirt lots. After experiencing this first hand, the founders of CALLE felt the necessity to bring this style of play to the US, creating the calle (street soccer) movement. We love to tell people our story of how we discovered and fell in love with CALLE. Tell us your story of how you first experienced the game that is becoming known across the streets of America as calle.
8 comments:
Steve’s Story
I was first introduced to CALLE while spending time in Bolivia at the Tahuichi Way Soccer Camp. As part of our training on a rainy day we went to a covered arena where we played on a hard cement surface. The game was a fast paced 5 a side version of the game I was used to. It was a refreshing new look at the game. After leaving Bolivia I did not really have the chance continue playing in this setting.
Three years later I had the opportunity to return to Bolivia. This time my visit would be an extended stay. During the next two years living in the city I found it hard to find time or the facilities to play on a nice grass pitch. Instead the city was filled with basketball sized cement courts with smaller sized goals. This was the perfect setting for 4 v 4 or 5 v 5 games. It was amazing to see how a ball and the court could unite so many people. Whenever there was a game people would gather from all over the neighborhood to watch and hope to jump in and get some action on the court. I had the privilege of meeting many new and unique people that I most likely would not have met if there had not been a game going on at that time.
Amazingly, playing in this setting, at the most two times a week, dramatically improved my individual skill and confidence as a player. Learning and developing this aspect of my game greatly eventually helped me reach the ranks of playing with Real Salt Lake in the MLS.
After returning from Bolivia and talking with some friends that had similar experiences in other countries throughout the world, we realized there was something missing here in the US. From there we set out to bring the CALLE movement to the US.
Calle has always been an important part of my life. I was raised playing in the streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. There were no leagues or organized teams with grassy fields to play on, no uniforms with sponsor’s logos on them, and no leather balls from the sports store. We played because we loved to run and challenge our skills at kicking an empty plastic bottle or a taped up roll of newspaper past our friends and scoring a goal. Our goalpost were sculpted from whatever was available, rocks, chunks of brick or a bag of trash. We loved to compete and would wager for bottles of soda.
I’m sure that many of the residents and businesses on the streets we invaded felt we were a menace but in actuality it kept our minds clean and bodies busy exercising and out of the drug scene. There was a purity in the game we played. We didn’t have much and all we needed was the desire to play. I would show up and ask if they needed one more player. It didn’t matter who my parents were, or if I was too skinny or how I looked, all that mattered was the game.
I realized I had a passion for it and always worked at developing my skills. I learned that I had talent. In the street I would dream of playing on a real team, to play professionally and have soccer and friends part of my life everyday. Playing calle, or fulbito as we call it in Bolivia, is where I realized I had talent and that competitive drive needed to move up in the sport. I was able to play in one of the best soccer clubs in the world, Tahuichi, and eventually made it to the Bolivian National Team. Calle is my culture and anyone’s culture that joins in to play. Calle, don’t pass it, play it!!
JV - what a cool story! I live right next to a grass field but after hearing your story, screw that. I want to play calle with trash bags and newspapers. Sounds so much cooler. haha. What are you doing now? Still playing for the National team?
JP, I am actually living in the US right now. I am playing soccer for a Division 2 college soccer team in Hawaii. You should definitely start playing calle. Take care bro.
Hey, I live in small Canadian town just out side of Ottawa, and have an always been a huge fan of playing soccer on the streets. It would normally be just me and couple friend we'd use hockey pucks, or recycle bins and nets and just hack around on the streets. My interest increased further in this style of play after I first saw a video on a panna KO contest in Amsterdam. Since then I have been trying to improve in any and every way I can. I also took up freestyle football, still only able to do small combo and minor tricks but enjoying so much none the less.
I was also wondering if there was a Canadian league, or organizations that supported this movement, and if not is the Calle organization in the states hoping to branch to Canada. I would love to know and love to help. Cheers
Connor,
Currently CALLE has not done too much in the Canadian market. A few stores in BC carry our line, but other than that we have not done much. We would love insight and feedback on the Canadian market. Shoot us an email at info@callesoccer.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Travis's story
My first experience with calle was in a town called San Fernando, Spain in the year 2000 when I was 20 years old. Like many cities in Europe, most people lived in high rise apartment buildings. In the area where I lived, there were about 6 or 7 of these high rise buildings surrounding a "futbito" (street soccer) court. I still remember the first day I went down to play with some of the local kids.
I had grown up playing on perfectly groomed grass pitches in South Orange County, CA, USA where some of the best soccer in the US comes out of. I played on one of the top 5 teams in the state and with the Cal South ODP team for a season. Yet all of the experience I had under my belt did not prepare me for what I would see in Spain.
With my broken Spanish that I had learned mostly from the Mexican guys that I had grown up playing (not always appropriate words might I add)I began to TRY to communicate with the young Spanish kids of about 13-15 years of age. I was able to communicate that I was American to them and that I liked "futbol" a lot. When I was asked which team I liked, I responded Barcelona - of which about four of the eight kids came up to me and slapped hands. The others were Real Madrid fans and that's what generally determined the neighborhood games. They invited me to play to which I said of course. It was my first time playing street soccer but figured it would be similar to indoor and so I would be able to handle my own. Long story short - I was humiliated by these kids six years my junior. I had never in my life saw kids at that age with such confidence to take the ball at somebody without fear of losing it. They weren't afraid of the touch line either, they used every single inch of that concrete court. But perhaps the thing I remember most was how often these kids would play. During the summer, they would be down there at 9 in the morning, go in at 1:30 to eat, take a ciesta and come back and play from 4 until it was too dark to see the ball. They would only stop to visit the little tienda (store) to get a gatorade and some chucheria (candy).
After living in Spain for just under two years, I had played on a grass field just one time. There were dirt courts to play on or there were futbito (concrete) courts. That is the only place I would ever play.
When I returned to California, I wanted to continue to play futbito, but nobody wanted to play on the concrete when there was always a grass field available. I joined a semi-pro team in the PDL up in Utah and met Steve who had a similar experience in Bolivia. We had both become better players through our experience together and so we started a tiny little street soccer "club" if you will of guys that wanted to play in the streets with us. 2 guys turned into 8 guys, then into 20 and before we knew it, we had some really good turn outs. We had the idea to make a street soccer ball because we had never seen one and we were tired of buying a new ball every month. Because Steve and I both spoke Spanish, and didn't want to use such a generic name like street soccer, we called playing in the streets "calle" - which literally means street in Spanish. Now, 3 years later, the original two guys have created a very serious movement in the U.S. and Canada. The number of people that are playing calle all across North America now are in the thousands and growing every day.
CALLE has become a brand that represents those that believe in the calle movement. We had the idea that we wanted to look like soccer players when we were at school or around town - much like a skater always looks like a skater. Soccer had no brand like this. So I rounded up my life savings (about $6,000) and started the company. After we had a fairly solid business plan and a vision for where we wanted to go with the movement, we were able to start working on the brand and what would be the product line.
In the fall of 2006, we opened our first account in Orem, UT. There are currently 60+ stores across the U.S. and Canada that are carrying the CALLE brand and spreading the movement.
"You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge."
- Dr. Dre
Like many other American kids, my first soccer experience began by going to my siblings’ soccer games. I would hardly watch, eagerly anticipating half-time, where I could show off my mad soccer skills (‘mad soccer skills’ being shooting the ball really hard in the direction of the goal). However, due to my somewhat obsessive personality (somewhat being an understatement), I eventually took my kicking the ball really hard at the goal to creating intense training regimes in my backyard. It started with a children’s swing set that my parents bought for my baby sisters. Ha. A swing set. I saw more of a potential goal than any pink and purple kiddy swing set. It took me only a few days to rip off the swings and throw a makeshift net over it. It was my first goal and I soon discovered the advantage of even having baby sisters. Up until now, they were more of a hindrance than anything else, but as soon as I realized that ten cents could pay for some shoddy goalkeepers, I blessed the day both of them were born. They may not have been good, but it helped grow my ever-increasing ego when I blasted a shot past their little pink fists. Plus, I wasn’t necessarily losing any money because I got their income from my parents’ change jar.
Both the free-style environment as a youngster and the more organized soccer associated with club helped me accomplish my dream. I was privileged enough to get a scholarship to play NCAA division-1 soccer for the University of Portland. I received the best coaching possible, as legendary coach Clive Charles (former US U-23 National Team Coach) opened my eyes to an unbelievable amount of tactical and technical techniques. After playing at Portland for two years, I left the school and spent some time in Brazil. It was there that I was able to see what people truly obsessed with the game do. People of all ages played soccer in the street, on the dirt, on cement pads, etc. I played a bit while in Brazil, but playing in the streets was definitely a different game than what I was used to. At Portland I had unlimited amounts of grass and equipment to play the game. The people of Brazil just had a ball (sometimes a ‘ball’ really meant a ball of rags), and their surroundings. I admired them for the love of the game and especially for their amazing skill, but didn’t truly appreciate that aspect of the game until I returned to the states.
Upon returning home, some of my friends had begun to organize CALLE. We’d play weekly. The competition was grueling and my skills were meager at best. As mentioned above, I was unaccustomed to this type of play. It was so fast, so many tiny touches, I would usually end up bent over, trying to figure out how someone just put the ball through my legs and then back over my head. It was then I realized that this type of play is what my game was missing. My creativity and 1 v 1 tactics had not reached their full potential. Don’t get me wrong, I could take players on, but my repertoire of moves was not nearly as robust as it could have been. I strongly believe that CALLE is what I was missing to take my game to the next level.
CALLE has done two things for me. I’ve begun to further develop my options and skill set for taking players on and being creative. I also now have my own identity with the apparel. I absolutely love the look and get compliments on it all the time. Perhaps one of the greatest things CALLE does for soccer players is give them a brand designed for soccer players while simultaneously providing the tools to take one’s game to the next level.
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