Street Soccer in Chicago
Over at Chicago Sports Weekly, I take a look at a Chicago-based organised pickup soccer club (Windy City Wanderers F.C.) who have grown from nothing to over 1,000 members in a little over a year. Their founder, Matt Rosine, discusses their plans for the future, which includes a partnership with Calle Soccer out of Utah, who run street soccer tournaments.
The aim is to foster soccer in urban areas including at local schools, and we discuss how this sort of thing promises big rewards for American soccer in the future. Getting kids playing soccer anywhere, any time, from an early age needs this kind of encouragement, it seems to me.
If you know of other urban soccer programs elsewhere in the States (and I know they exist), leave a comment. I’d love to hear more about them.
Photo by fabio colemono on Flickr.
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Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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Kind of unique, though not terribly dissimilar from a lot of co-rec leagues. It would really become interesting if a club like this, after a few years of building members, fielded an actual competitive team in PDL or NPSL. That would certainly be the first case in the US of a team developing out an actual club organization.
If you consider the BYU collegiate club soccer team that entered the PDL to be an “actual club organization”, then it wouldn’t be the first occurence of a club obtaining a PDL franchise.
To acutally see kids playing street soccer on a regular basis will be a milestone for soccer in this country. I wish it happened more often. All for WCWFC, I plan on playing this weekend for the first time with the group.
-bahns
We are busy setting up a national street soccer program in the USA. Masters of the GAme (MOTG) is a company founded in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and busy setting up International Operations in NYC. We have been busy with the street soccer movement internationally for 7 years. Its already a part of everyday life in the rest of the world and we are bringing our programs to the US. All support is welcome. If there is any one interested please leave a message or contact me. Check out our website at http://www.motg.com.
I think soccer is poised to take off in a big way in this country. The support is starting to reach the levels it needs to stay competitive with the rest of the world.