From Brazil to Bowling Green: Men's Soccer's New Brazilian Influence

This past offseason, BGSU men's soccer added several new pieces to the roster, four of whom happened to be from Brazil, including junior goalkeeper Enzo Gil, graduate student defender Giovanni Soares, graduate student defender Caio Tascheto and freshman midfielder Caue Ramos.

"We definitely have a similar culture, but also from like different parts of Brazil, so Giovanni, our center back, I met him last summer and was just someone I knew before, but the connection has been great," said Gil. "The connection has been great, like great guys."

The four players each come from different parts and towns of Brazil, but are all connected through their shared love of the game of soccer, which in Brazil, the fascination starts when they are children.

"Probably one of my first gifts was a soccer ball, probably not the most fancy soccer ball, to be very honest, anything back home can become a soccer ball, a couple of socks together," said assistant coach Gonzalo Carranza, who grew up in Brazil and joined the Falcons coaching staff in February. "So definitely, it's second nature for us, from barefoot soccer with our friends to the most organized, I guess, academies around the country that some of us have played, but it's like definitely installed just like maybe some other sports are here."

Growing up around the game has caused a similar mentality among the players from Brazil, one built on tenacity and enjoyment.

"We take it seriously, like, professionally, but like this is our life, man, so we take it even though we have fun, even though it's serious, we still have fun doing what we do," said Tascheto.

It isn't always so fun, as the dream of playing a sport in America comes with major challenges, especially when you have to live so far from home.

"It's tough, man. I lived with my parents until I was like 20, 21, when I first came to America," said Tascheto. "It's hard to be away from friends and family, but it is what it is, we've got to do what we do."

Often, the homesickness the players feel is helped simply by speaking their native language.

"Very good to talk sometimes in Portuguese, you'll feel at home sometimes," said Soares. "It's very good, I don't know how to explain it, but I feel very good, very good."

While being able to speak the same language helps with homesickness, the toughest part of adjusting to a new country comes from having to learn a new language.

"When I came here, I couldn't speak English very well, so it took me a couple of months to adapt," said Gil. "But I think I went to the right place and I feel at home right now."

While Gil, Tascheto, and Soares have now been living in America for several years and have grown used to their surroundings, Ramos is still in the middle of adapting to his new surroundings.

"It's just my first month here, so that is a lot of new things to me," said Ramos. "The coaches are different, but the main things, I think, are the weather- my city is very different than here, but with [time] I will be adapted."

Ramos' adaptation to America is helped by not just his teammates from Brazil, but the entire team.

"You are making family here, I'm so far off my house and they as well and they helped me with the language as well to make connections with the other players, with the Americans," said Ramos. "It's making their feelings easy [for] me."

Interestingly enough, the toughest thing to get used to, according to the players, is getting used to the windy and colder conditions of the Midwest.

"In Brazil, it's way hotter, like it's just the weather, it's so hot over there, warm you know," said Soares. "We don't need to put the jackets or anything, being in Ohio, there's a lot of jackets, I don't know, just cold weather, it's not good for us."

Despite coming from a different county and area, the players have found their place on the Falcons and are shown to be the standard of what the program strives to be.

"The most important thing for me is that I like to describe them as BG guys," said Carranza. "It's a guy that's a blue collar kid that has no ego that will put his head down and work, that will be coachable and obviously, they're talented and all that, all the stuff we want from anyone but I do think the kids we have from Brazil that we have here or the foreigners that we have, they're just BG kids."

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