In the nonstop drama of Island soccer, a Brazilian named Buick plays Prince Hal, while everyone else is an attendant lord.
    
A carpenter who got to use his father’s car at age thirteen, Buick (pronounced Bew-EE-kee) goes by a single name, in the tradition of Pele and other Brazilian athletes. After playing some pro soccer at home, he relocated to Boston and moved to the Island seven years ago when a friend told him of work opportunities. Lanky, lean, and balding at forty-two, he lorded over last summer’s action in the Vineyard Football Association, sometimes with his play and always with his presence.

“He’s like a pro-hockey player competing with college players,” said Whit Griswold of Lambert’s Cove, whose son Sam was one of 120 league players. “The puck always seems to come to him.”

And the ball did seem attached to Buick, a midfielder for the W.H. Russell team, a painting and floor-sanding company based in Vineyard Haven, and one of the sponsors of the league. (“Sponsor” in the Vineyard Football Association sense of the word means providing T-shirts. Players provide shorts and shoes and pay their own $50 registration fees.)

Whether heading, passing, trapping, or faking an opponent with a tricky dribble, Buick stood out for reasons other than just his height. During the playoffs, alas, a language problem cost him dearly. An opponent was called for an infraction, and referee Neal Sullivan of Edgartown, assuming Russell’s English-speaking manager (and Island painter) Rodrigo Zanon could hear him, asked his players if they wanted ten feet of leeway for a free kick. “No!” they yelled, apparently failing to understand. In the dispute that ensued, Sullivan gave Buick a yellow card for something called “dessent” (unsportsmanlike conduct toward an official), then ejected him with a red card for bumping another player. Buick, who could start a scene or two besides swelling a progress, took several minutes to leave the field.

Nonetheless, he was probably the most respected player in the league. Thanks largely to an influx of Brazilians, who accounted for about 20 percent of the players, the VFA expanded from four teams to six last summer. Among the countries represented were Ireland, El Salvador, England, Argentina, Scotland, Uruguay, Honduras, and South Africa. “It’s a great way to assimilate, because all barriers break down,” said Sullivan, who works with Island architects through his firm, Sullivan Design Build, as well as serving as a ref, league administrator, and manager of the linguistically diverse Broadway Screen Printing team.

Sam Griswold, who has played in Italy and Scotland, said soccer skills often reflect cultures: “Players from the British Isles are physical, specializing in long kicks and tackling. Brazilian and Italian players are flamboyant, with excellent foot skills. Because the Brazilians played on dirt fields, where the ball bounces erratically, they’re known for short passing. Italians defend and counterattack; Brazilians attack more.”

“Brazilians grew up playing day-in, day-out, and developed astounding footwork,” said another US player, John Walsh of Edgartown, who serves as JV soccer coach at the high school. (He also teaches skiing off-Island and builds houses on it.) “Because they haven’t been coached, they’re not as strong in team skills.”

But in a sport known for acting, they’re thespians par excellence. Like NBA players falling backward to draw a foul call, Brazilians can sprawl to the earth in apparent agony, then remain in the game. Another Brazilian specialty, say observers, is fouling with one’s back to officials, who can’t call
infractions they don’t see. And Brazilians aren’t the only actors. Irish and Brits, horrified at the sight of skilled players who call their game soccer instead of football, may take out their frustrations by chest-bumping Americans. For their part, the easygoing Yanks play mostly for fun. A lot more seems to be at stake for the immigrants.

In one game last summer, a Brazilian goalie for Broadway Screen Printing of Vineyard Haven collided with an Irish attacker from MV Lath and Plaster. Irish teammates raced to support their guy, and Brazilians from W.H. Russell (the painters and floor sanders), who were waiting for their game to start, swarmed the field in defense of their countryman. A heated discussion followed with maybe one or two errant punches thrown. After police and an ambulance arrived, a player was hospitalized with a minor injury.

To league administrator Sullivan, the problem lay in two teams that were more Balkanized than mixed. Because their managers chose people they knew, the Russell team was almost 100 percent Brazilian and MV Lath and Plaster mostly Irish. Sullivan hopes for more diverse rosters this year. “The idea is that it’s a melting pot on every team,” he told the Vineyard Gazette’s Helen Phillips.

As if to make Sullivan’s point, Petey Berndt’s Coop de Ville team (the Oak Bluffs restaurant), whose eighteen-man roster included two Brazilians and one representative apiece from England, El Salvador, and Ireland, won the Gilbert Hammond Trophy as 2004 league champion. The cup, established in 2001, is named for Gilbert Lorenzoni of Oak Bluffs and Vineyard high school soccer coach Bob Hammond of Vineyard Haven, who played adult pick-up soccer years ago in one of the many ad-hoc Island leagues.

Island Brazilians don’t need formal competition to enjoy soccer. They play pick-up games too, sometimes barefoot. Two dozen of them gathered in the Vineyard Haven field behind Cumberland Farms one summer day not long ago. Young men representing the southeastern Brazilian state of Espíritu Santo (Holy Spirit) wore spiffy white tops, red shorts, and black socks, while their friends from the nearby state of Minas Gerais (General Mines) countered with red-and-blue shirts, white shorts, and white socks. At stake was a gold-topped trophy, founded by and for Brazilians, with the words MV Unio Esporte Club prominently featured.

While the players warmed up by kicking the ball to each other, each toyed with it on his shoetops before passing.

Brazil has won five World Cups, and even these casual players were experts at kicking, heading, and trapping.

About fifty Brazilian men, several women, and a few kids lounged on the sidelines. The Espíritu Santo mascot Jerry, a three-year-old boy in full uniform, chased after a little girl riding a pink-and-purple bike. A woman unfurled an Espíritu Santo flag emblazoned with the words “Trabalha e Confia,” or “Work and Trust (in God).” Helpful soccer elders such as painter Sidney Rodrigues and paint-store owner Joaquim DaSilva served as referees and linesmen.  “When you put two cities together, you befriend everyone,” Rodrigues said.

Once a center of colonial gold mining, the state of Minas Gerais is known for milk, iron ore, and steel, a rich church architecture, and leaders of the eighteenth-century independence movement. Favored by lush earth and luscious coastline, Espíritu Santo produces everything from agriculture to petroleum. Brazilians from these states rarely arrive here as tired, poor, or huddled masses, and they have the added  benefit of friends to receive them.

A man might make good money drywalling on the Vineyard and tell his friends about it on a visit back home. A fairly typical salary in Brazil is $80 a month, or what a drywaller, carpenter, or painter might make in a few hours here. Brazilian women dominate the Island’s home-cleaning industry; Brazilians make up a huge part of our service economy. When the Immigration and Naturalization Service raided the Vineyard two summers ago, Brazilians stayed home from work, and life slowed to a crawl.

“Most Brazilians here are related or know each other,” Leo DeOliveira, a forty-three-year-old Brazilian national on the Tisbury Police Department, said as he waited on the sidelines for the game to start. “A lot come from the Minas Gerais city of Cuparaque, which is about the size of Vineyard Haven. Others come from the Espíritu Santo city of Mantenopolis, which has about 20,000 people. The Brazilians are especially landscapers [on the Island], because it doesn’t require much English. There are a lot of farmers who come here to pay off the high interest rates on their farms. They will eventually return to Brazil. I have a big thing about approaching Brazilians instead of discriminating against them, because the laws haven’t been explained to them.” He might have been referring to newspaper accounts of Brazilians being stopped for things like driving without a license.

DeOliveira said that an informal census had established the Brazilians of Martha’s Vineyard at 2,500 strong, fully one-sixth of the Island’s year-round population. If some Brazilians immigrate to the Island for work, others come because, as one observer put it, “The laws work better here.” Some originally immigrated to Boston, but found their neighborhoods so violent they moved to the Island.

The game began at 11 a.m. “Segura!” (Hold on to the ball!) people called from the sidelines. “Tá bom!” (It’s good!) “Atrás!” (Back!) Players knocked each other down, then helped up their fallen adversaries. Some chatted with fans when the action shifted away from them.

At halftime the players, all clean-shaven with short hair, gathered for a group photograph. A barefoot, shirts-versus-skins pickup game began among spectators on an adjacent field. Minas, led by the peripatetic Buick, won the trophy game, 4-2. The victorious players posed for another photo and received the trophy from a man whose congratulatory words included the obligatory “Obrigado.” (Thank you.) As if on cue, heavy rain began falling, and the players happily adjourned to a barbecue.

When the tight-knit community isn’t socializing at soccer games, Brazilians meet at places such as the Vineyard Assembly of God in Tisbury. But soccer is assuming a bigger and bigger role on the Island. At the end of the summer season, players were already talking about the indoor games they play each winter at the Martha’s Vineyard Boys and Girls Club.

Buick, who has three kids in Brazil, underscores the importance of soccer as a social occasion. “Everybody talk about family, job,” he said. “Work too much – you come for play. Forget everything else.”

Then he turned to the appeal of the Vineyard for himself and other Brazilians. “Where I born is small, like Martha’s Vineyard,” he said. “I like a small city.”

Tá bom, indeed.