It’s become a running joke.
Every preseason, Scarborough boys soccer coach Mark Diaz tells his players that if the team should happen to pick up a transfer or exchange student that person will be given a chance to start just like everyone else.
Then Diaz looks around the room and says, “Is anyone here from Brazil? Is anyone here from Argentina?”
Up until this year, Diaz’s wishful thinking has been just that. His players never had anything to worry about. There had been no transfers from any world soccer power until this past summer, when France’s Pierre Soubrier showed up on the scene.
A few miles further south on Route 1, a Brazilian by the name of Gui Ribeiro was attempting to infiltrate the Thornton Academy boys soccer team. And in Gorham, German exchange student Serkan Rahman was attempting to do the same.
Is it a coincidence that France, Brazil and Germany are the three teams that have appeared in the last two World Cup finals? Are the soccer gods telling us something? Is the landscape of Southern Maine high school soccer undergoing an international transformation?
Coincidence? Yes. Transformation? Not quite.
Soubrier, Ribeiro and Rahman didn’t come to the United States to play soccer. Just like Old Orchard Beach’s Georg Weibezahl (Germany) didn’t come here to play football, Gorham’s Renate Guyer (Switzerland) didn’t come for volleyball and Windham’s Stoyan Nikolow (Germany) and Luiz Gobbo (Brazil) didn’t come here for football or soccer.
All of these high school students came here because they wanted to experience something different than what they’re used to. Participation in sports has helped ease their transition into American culture.
In some cases their participation has helped ease their team into the playoffs.
Gorham coach Tim King began the season using Rahman sparingly, but an injury has forced him into the starting lineup. Used to practicing just twice a week for his team in Germany, Rahman wasn’t ready for the full-week commitment of high school soccer. He’s had a more difficult time adjusting his game to the officiating, though.
“It’s with two referrees and in Germany we have only one referree. The referrees call the game different with the cards,” said Rahman. “It’s different rules and it’s a little bit hard because, I mean, the first rule was really different with the mouthpieces.
“They don’t give you any yellow cards for fouls, they just give you yellow cards like for yelling or something. And it’s not like that in Germany.”
You might say that Guyer officially became part of the Gorham volleyball team when she was given a nickname.
“They call her ‘The Mop’ because she’s always on the floor diving for the balls and they think she’s so cute,” said Gorham coach Shari Chapman.
“She was a pleasant surprise when I walked through the gym and saw her passing the ball, digging the ball, hitting,” said Chapman. “She could serve. She was just well-rounded. She could do everything. I was very excited. I thought it was great.”
Diaz already had a state-championship contending team; Soubrier may have turned the Red Storm into the prohibitive favorite. And, most importantly, he’s done so without disrupting the team chemistry that already existed.
“He fits in real nice with us. First of all he’s got a great personality. I think sometimes people overlook that because his skills are very good,” said Diaz, whose team is seeded second in the Western Class A tourney. “He’s has great foot skills, great ball skills and a really good knowledge of the game. But the thing he brings most to us is he fits in with the group and he’s very competitive and he brings us a little bit of leadership, too, in terms of his intensity. He’s very intense and soccer is a way of life for him to some degree.”
Back in France Soubrier plays for a private club team and there’s a lot of competition between players; it doesn’t matter if those players are friends or not. So it was different to see the American high school way of playing, where everyone is focused on a common goal. Soubrier didn’t have a hard time adjusting, though.
“For the first week maybe, yeah, I did not speak English very well, so it was a little bit hard,” Soubrier said. “But after it came really quickly, and I play center mid so the ball comes to me a lot of times and everybody talks to me, so it’s pretty easy.”
TA’s Ribeiro has had to adjust as well. His adjustments, though, have more to do with style because the Brazilians are known to play an entirely different type of game than just about everyone else.
“Soccer in Brazil is more passing, little passes and going to the middle,” said Ribeiro. “Here it’s more like long passes and run and cross.”
Ribeiro has found his place within the Trojans’ system. In a recent game against Bonny Eagle he converted a cross from fellow forward Adam Harrison. Then, later in the game, he set up Harrison for another goal.
“They’ve been working really hard together in practice and in games and they’ve just been clicking recently. They both understand how each other plays,” said TA coach Andrew Carlson, whose team is seeded 11th in the Western Class A tourney. “It probably took them a good seven or eight games to understand how each other plays. Adam has been really unselfish and he’s allowed Gui to have some of the spotlight.
“What’s good is he’s helped us and helped our guys to understand the idea of playing one and two-touch when pressure is on and taking some time to get extra touches when when there’s no pressure. He’s been very good at melding his game to the way we play and a lot of our guys have learned a lot from him.”
OOB’s Weibezahl has had a whole new set of rules to get used to as the place kicker for the Gulls’ football team. When a former player’s mother approached OOB head coach Dean Plante over the summer on behalf of the exchange student she was hosting, he was polite, but not expecting much.
“I said, ‘Sure,’ thinking, ‘Good kid, nice kid I’m sure, but he won’t be able to help us much,'” said Plante. “It turned out, he showed up and said where he was from and naturally I said, ‘Hey, you ever play soccer?’ I was thinking, ‘kicker.’ And that first day he showed up, and when he was cleared to play we had him kick a little bit in shorts and he was booming the ball after about five minutes.”
This past Friday Weibezahl showed he’s learned everything he needs to know about football when he booted a 25-yard field goal and a 26-yard extra-point in the rain. So what if the public address announcer pronounced his name a different way each time he said it? Weibezahl officially became part of the team when those four points helped lift the Gulls to their fifth win of the season
“He’s told me a couple times that he feels like football is his second family, even more so than his host family, which is a compliment to the team and the coaching staff,” said Plante. “He’s just a super kid and I think he’d have no problem anyway, but with the language barrier and everything I think football was just about the best thing that could’ve happened to him.”
The same sentiment was echoed by the other coaches.
“It’s been nothing but a positive experience for us altogether,” said Gorham’s Chapman of Guyer.
And Carlson on Ribeiro: “He’s a dream to coach, very willing to listen, very willing to work. I think he’s learned some stuff from the coaching staff and they’ve learned some stuff from him.”
Maybe the landscape of Maine high school sports is changing, and maybe that’s a good thing.
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