Sidewalk Soccer Becomes An Unlikely Ecuadorian Tradition

...This gravelly bit of 36^th Street near Church Avenue has done for Ecuadorian immigrants what it did for Alvarez since 1972, when a group of footballers from Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, organized a match of their favorite homeland pastime on a lot behind a warehouse. The players chose this non-residential block, on the brink of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, because they believed they would be left alone on Friday nights, the Jewish Sabbath. Eventually the warehouse became a discount department store and the lot was paved on an uncomfortable pitch. But other than moving the action to the flatter sidewalk across the street, with spectators congregating on the slanted old playing field, the game remains unchanged. It has become a weekly tradition, a legacy for generations of players and a slice of Ecuador for homesick émigrés who continued moving to the area.

“Anybody who comes recently from Ecuador, we try to bring them here so they can feel warm and have part of their country here,” said Alvarez, an electronics repair technician. “For Ecuadorian people, soccer is the number-one thing,” he said. “We play in the street. If we have nothing, we use two rocks. We play anywhere.”