Taking Soccer to the Streets

Oct. 6, 2009 - PRLog -- It’s time to take soccer back to its origins: the calle, the street, the home of innovation. CALLE is the face of the street soccer movement and the brand that represents the best street players in America. Professional scouts, coaches and thousands of players across the nation are taking notice and embracing calle as the sport that develops creative, confident and assertive players by challenging their game-breaking abilities away from the structure of the traditional pitch. To help change the way the game is played, CALLE delivers aggressive, street-ready products and gear available online and in more than 110 specialty shops across North America.

Having traveled the world and living in Brazil, Spain and Bolivia five student-athletes saw that the best soccer players come from the streets. They realized American soccer was ripe for a revolution. In 2006, they created CALLE, the world’s first urban lifestyle soccer brand, to support and give an identity to the street soccer revolution. Embodied with CALLE gear featuring the company’s logo, a “king-of-the-streets” pigeon, the sport of calle is evolving soccer with a focus on fun, competition, creativity and accessibility. Calle is free. All you need is pavement, a garbage-can goal, a bit of talent and an unstoppable drive to play.

“The best soccer players in the world come from the streets,” CALLE founder Travis Winn says. “It’s where you learn creativity, confidence and quick decision making.

“Until America’s youth understand that the best players come from the streets—and until their coaches support play in unorganized settings where they can try new things—American soccer will continue to lack the talent the top global soccer powers ooze with.” That exact challenge is something outlined in CALLE’s youth-targeted mantra, It’s Up To Us.

Today, CALLE sponsors top players like Alfredo Sainz in LA, Gazza Gaston in NYC and Daniel Cappellaro in Australia—who all play calle on a daily basis. In true street-democracy fashion, every calle player has the opportunity to become a sponsored CALLE player. Fellow callejeros vote on the best players—land in the top 2% and CALLE gives you a contract to play in front of a club, collegiate or professional team. In addition, CALLE is partnered with coaches across the nation like UC-Irvine’s George Kuntz and US Olympic Development coach Platini Soaf. Professional soccer agents like Shep Messing make calle viable by connecting the best CALLE players with the pros.

The largest obstacle for young soccer players today is money. A single year of competition with a top youth club can cost around $2,200 in dues, tourney fees and league fees—plus travel expenses. By offering talented players an inexpensive way to play, develop and find exposure, CALLE is eliminating the monetary roadblocks and is fighting to fix the broken American soccer system.

Calle gives players more touches on the ball, more creativity, more confidence and more experience in the heat of soccer battle. Just as the world’s greatest basketball players emerge from playgrounds like the legendary Rucker Park, it’s time for America’s new generation of elite soccer talent to rise from our back alleys and parking lots. This is a movement. It’s authentic. It’s not only about playing, it’s about being. Just like kids become skaters—it’s how they dress, how they talk, who they hang out with, what they do in every spare moment—CALLE players are becoming callejeros, champions of the street.

To get involved in the calle movement and find local calle action, visit calleunderground.com. To see the street soccer gear at the front of the movement, check us out at callerepublic.com. For questions about CALLE, contact CEO Danny Mason at (801) 400-8779 or danny.mason@callerepublic.com.

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CALLE is street soccer gear designed to change the way the game is played. It is bringing the passion and creativity of street soccer to the US and is the world's first soccer urban lifestyle clothing brand.