Craque started as an English word. In 19th century Britain, “crack” meant the best of something and at the race track people used it for the top horse in the field. The horse everyone came to watch.

In the late 1800s, the word traveled to Brazil because of the large amount of British families who worked there. With their travel, they brought their sports and slang with them; horse racing being the most popular.

Futbol came the same way. In 1894, a young man named Charles Miller came home to São Paulo after going to school in England. He taught the game to his friends and helped start Brazil’s first league. For a while, football in Brazil was a sport for rich clubs and the upper class, the poor watched from the sidelines.

This didn’t last long and the game spread fast. Poor kids started playing wherever they could find space, in streets, on empty lots, on dirt fields by the river. By 1910 football was the most popular sport in the country. The English words stuck around too, but Brazilians adapted their own versions of not only the game, but slang too. “Crack” became “Craque.”

By the 1930s, when football went professional, Craque was the word for the best players on the field. Players like Leônidas da Silva and Domingos da Guia, who came up outside the old elite clubs, were some of the first to be called Craques. Later came the big names, Pelé, Zico, R9, and Neymar.

Craque is the kid who plays on concrete every day because he loves it. It’s the player nobody is filming, who always shows up and gives everything. It’s also the people who build culture on the street, for themselves and for the community around them.

You don’t need a stadium to be a Craque. You need to show up, day after day, and do your best. That’s what we’re building.