Sydney Street Crew So Far
As we all know, football (or soccer in the USA) is the worlds beautiful game. It’s played by everyone all around the world, whenever and wherever they can play. This is due to the culture around the sport. Children grow up playing, watching and living the sport, it becomes a religion.
Street football is the bare bones form of football, it’s gritty and played all day and night on rough surfaces. You learn to be tough after a few falls on the unforgiving surface. This form of football is accessible to everyone world wide. There are no rules, anyone can play, regardless of gender, size and age, all that matters is ones skill on the ball.

Sydney Street Crew was formed to change Australian mainstream media’s negative view on this sacred sport. We began by playing in the streets, meeting up at a local 3v3 venue once a week to train. Progress was slow at the start but we were all optimistic, watching videos on YouTube about Street Football competitions oversees such as Adidas Tango League and Nike Football X, praying that they would one day come to Australia. Then one day they did. Adidas tango league posted an add on Facebook about a tournament that they were going to have in Sydney. Within an hour of seeing the add we were all registered. We sent eight emails to Adidas begging to be a part of this competition. It might have been extreme, but it eventually wore the Adidas staff down and they allowed us to compete in the event.

It was awesome, the crew walked into the venue to the tune of Stormzy, and the sight of fresh kits and boots spread out for each of our players. The event went really well for us. We made it to the final but lost in the second half of extra time. We were frustrated and angry to say the least that we didn’t win the final, but that’s a normal reaction to losing any final.
A few months went by without anything else major happening. We trained as normal, started the team Instagram and Facebook pages, and looked for any other tournament.
In June we got the shock of our lives. We were contacted by the head of branding from Nike Pacific asking us to be a part of their invitational event. There were only six teams in the whole Nation competing in this event and we were a part of it. Once we heard about the teams that we would be facing, you can forgive us fpor saying that we had absolutely no chance of winning a game or even scoring a single goal. But there was no way that we were going to turn down this offer. The teams invited were: The Futsalroos (Australia's National Futsal Team), The Nike Academy All Stars, The Nike All Stars, D10 All Stars, Vic Vipers, and then us….

The event was organised to be played in a decked out airplane hanger at Melbourne airport, so we had to travel to Melbourne. Nike covered our travel, but when Nike organize your travel they do it the only way Nike knows how. We were flown down to Melbourne airport in a Private Jet!! Honored doesn’t even cover the way that we felt and still feel today. After a quick talk from the event organizers we were geared up and ready for our first game. We lost 3–1 to D10. Thank goodness it was group stage at this point. The next game and final game in the group stage was against the Nike All Stars who beat D10 2–0 and contained Australian legends Bresciano and Emerton, and 3 U23 Australian national team players. We won that game 4–3 to top the group.


We were into the semi finals and we were ecstatic. The next opponent was the Nike Academy all stars. This game was definitely stacked against us. Just so that you understand, the Nike Academy trials approximately 150,000 16–21 year old’s from all over the world every year. They only take the top 5!! So that was our opposition. We won 4–1!!! Unbelievable right?? We were a bunch of guys from Western Sydney who didn’t play high level. One of our players was a regular on the bench at his Sunday league club, next thing you know he scores 2 goals against the Nike Academy.


The final came out to be Sydney Street Crew against the Futsalroos… We were honestly in shock. We are all great players and we knew that we were, but to beat players of that caliber really showed how good we are. The game against the Futsalroos went as you would expect, the game was made twice as long and the 5 best Futsal players in the country absolutely destroyed us 10–0.


We weren’t upset. We had just come second at an event that everyone expected us to come last. We flown back to Sydney on the private Jet with the Futsalroos. It was on this flight that we were offered to play the highest level Futsal that Australia has to offer Series Futsal. Since we had done so well with making our own image, we were asked to make our own team to participate with. This is where Camden FC was born. The Futsal subdivision of Sydney Street Crew. None of us had ever played Futsal before this event, now we were going to be playing pro level.

Another two month break after the Nike event and we were invited to compete in ANOTHER Nike event!! Local FC X Nike Lock in Let Loose was a street football event held in Lakemba, a western suburb of Sydney. This event didn’t go as planned. We were knocked out in the quarter finals in a penalty shootout. But we fought hard until the end after making it out of the group stage.


It was an awesome event.
Next up for us is Series Futsal NSW which Starts on the 6th of September… Wish us Luck.
New article coming soon
Written by Tomislav Bazdaric
