Reina Bonta on playing pro ball in Brazil: Friendships, fireworks and creative futebol

In early 2023, Californian Reina Bonta, who played college ball at Yale, joined Brazilian club Santos FC and went to the 2023 Women’s World Cup with the Philippines, her father’s birthplace. Bonta shares the experiences of her first year in Brazil that led to her re-signing with Santos for 2024.

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Twelve months ago, I’m not positive I would have recognized myself. When I arrived in Brazil to play with the historic Santos Futebol Club, Pelé’s palace and once home of icons Neymar, Marta, and so many others, I had no real idea what to expect. I was bursting with a nervous energy that was equal parts a deep craving for the new experiences inevitably unfolding before me, and trepidation. Being my first professional club, my only real reference was youth and college soccer, which fit within the systemic, familiar structure of American soccer. And here in Brazil, they played futebol. 

During my first official training, I remember the staccato cadence of communicating for the first time with a teammate who only spoke Portuguese. It was a dance with two left feet — trying to convey simple information, aiding it along with animated body language, and waiting expectantly as the other side put the pieces together. It was limiting, and frustrating. She was surprised that I spoke English to her, instead of Tagalog, and the idea of having dual citizenship and more than one nationality seemed radical to her.

When she learned that I was born and grew up in America, she asked if I had been to Disneyland, something I’ve now come to know as synonymous with the States for Brazilians. A group of girls pulled out a tiny, 2-by-2-foot plastic table to play mesinha as a warm-up before the training, a game similar to ping pong, but with a partner, no net, and, of course, a much bigger ball. I tried to hide the quiet awe clearly plastered over my face, my gaze dancing from one side of the table to the other. 

Being a technical center back, or in Brazil, zagueira, my profile fit in with the natural style here. I remember distinctly, during an early training, the crisp feeling of starting a play out of the back, picking out a sharp pass to our midfield, and getting goosebumps as the play unfurled in front of me. My teammates would expertly weave together a string of highly technical passes and movements off of the ball, resulting in a chance on goal. The pattern felt different, perhaps more creative and instinctive, and less direct than in the USA. And for me, simultaneously, it felt second-nature. I adjusted well, starting in my debut match for the club. And I quickly fell head over heels for Santos. 

And to my surprise, some of that love became reciprocal. I had never experienced a fan base, or by extension, an all-consuming soccer culture quite like Santos’ within the USA.

There is a man who owns a bar next to our stadium, who has a Santos tattoo the size of an orange on his forehead, and he greeted me by name the first time I passed by him on the street. At the local farmer’s market where I buy groceries for the week, mothers would leave their children at my side for a photo before asking for a signed jersey and wishing me luck in that weekend’s match.

Because our accommodation was within the stadium, the tether connecting us to the club was thick and taut; even our time spent resting at home was touched by Santos. Last year, after a statement victory by our men’s team, a group of fans lit fireworks on the street outside that flew through the window and landed on our bathroom floor, a deep red hue washing over the walls and shower heads as the flame died down. It was frenetic, and alluring, and captivatingly intense. It made me pause, intentionally, before I pulled the jersey over my head on match days. 

I think, often, about the things that enamored me to Brazil, and to Santos. I think about visiting my teammate’s home in São Paulo, and climbing up to her neighbor’s roof to fly kites under the blistering sun on a Monday. I think about the feeling of greeting, cheek-to-cheek, the tia who operates the elevator in the stadium when I return from national team duty.

I think about speaking to Cristiane during a warm-up one day, smiles spreading across our faces and heads nodding in unison as we agreed about the beauty of the World Cup, and how powerful it is for smaller countries. I think about how I learned to speak fluent Portuguese. I think about the warmth. I think about the crisp feeling of a play unfurling before me after threading a pass into the midfield. These are the things that settled my mind when I renewed for a second season with the club. 

And today, the second preseason is underway. To me, returning to Santos felt like coming home after a long vacation, and realizing someone had moved all of your furniture around. Eighty percent of the players are new contracts for this season. The skeleton – the field, the schedule, our training sessions – feel familiar, but the core – the team – is different. We’re still growing into each other, and sometimes sitting on the coffee table when we perhaps intended to sit on the couch. It’s expected, and exciting. It helps me understand the ephemerality baked into life as a professional soccer player. It helps me recognize myself.

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Just a few weeks ago, one of the most seasoned players at Santos made arrangements to sign with a different club in our league, 500 miles away. She treated her goodbye calmly, like a well-practiced ritual, perhaps because in the lives of professional athletes, it has to be.

Even the deepest friendships are fleeting to some degree, and regardless of how rooted you may feel in a club, pursuing new opportunities, and the consequence of constantly leaving behind parts of yourself, is built into the framework of our profession. So goodbyes, they are sacred and familiar acts; they are bittersweet customs. 

She had a churrasco, or Brazilian barbecue, and invited loved ones to laugh over plates of hot steak and steaming rice, to play cards on plastic tabletops, to dance emphatically to pagode.

Players from last year’s team had driven in from different parts of Brazil to take part in the festivities; it felt whole. The next day, she came to my apartment with gifts – jerseys she had accumulated through her years at Santos, signed and personalized for a few friends. On one, she drew an arrow pointing to the Santos patch: “Eu acho que nos encontramos aqui novamente um dia.” (“I think we’ll meet here again one day.”)

She made a few jokes about being most nervous for media day at her new club, and blew kisses as she walked out of the door, poking her head in once more after shutting it, to ensure the tears dripping down some of our faces would at least be caught in the bucket of a smile. My teammate turned to me and said “E aí, acabou nosso Santos,” before returning to her room to sleep for the night. “And with that, our Santos is done.”

I went to bed rolling that parting thought around in my head. One word, in particular, felt sticky. “Our.” To me, it was a word used tenderly, to imply the pride and protectiveness we felt around the unique Santos team we had forged last year. It was a word that implied time, because “our Santos,” in the way she used it, now lived forever in the past tense. And it was a word that implied fierce ownership, strictly reserved for the 23 women who conquered, who sweated together in 90+ degree heat on our turf training field day in and day out, who represented Santos with everything they had from January through December of 2023. 

And this year, albeit in a completely different way, “our Santos” would be spoken again. The group wouldn’t wear jerseys with the same sponsors, wouldn’t shuffle into the same routine locker spots before matches, and wouldn’t have identical strengths or Achilles’ heels on the field. But it would still be ours.

That evening, the Santos men’s team had their first home match of the year. I fell asleep watching the game on the television, feeling at ease by the fact that if I missed any of the goals, I would be woken up by the roaring sound of the crowd’s cheers that echoed throughout the entire city, and bounced through the walls of our apartment. I woke up three times. The first home match of the season, our Santos had made a statement win.

Photos courtesy of Reina Bonta.