At 15, Jose Suarez is already something of an international soccer player. First he played in his native Venezuela, then Colombia — where his family lived before immigrating — and, on Wednesday, he squared off against a World Cup winner in Humboldt Park.
He was one of several dozen teens and kids who were invited to play with professionals from Borussia Dortmund, a German soccer team visiting Chicago for a game Wednesday evening.
Jose, normally an avid soccer player, has been hesitant to play since arriving in June due to the language barrier, but organizers hoped he and the others would feel more welcome after a day on the pitch.
For the German team, the event came ahead of its game at Soldier Field against Chelsea, an English team. But for the recent immigrants, it comes after some residents have questioned whether the city should welcome them at all.
Almost 12,000 immigrants, most from Venezuela, have arrived in the city since August 2022. Many Chicagoans have welcomed them with donations — some even opened an entire shelter — but some have protested them moving into Chicago neighborhoods.
Watching from the sidelines Wednesday, Sulanyela Suarez hoped the special training would rekindle her son Jose’s love for the game, inspiring him and his brothers to play with their new neighbors.
“He’s really, really into soccer,” she said. “But he’s been intimidated about playing with kids he can’t understand.”
The family arrived in Chicago in June and have been staying at La Posada, a transitional housing center for families in Humboldt Park where the city has directed incoming immigrants to since March. About a dozen of the families there currently are recent Venezuelan arrivals, said executive director Doreen Gauger.
In addition to the kids from La Posada, around a dozen children from Todo Para Todos, an independent immigrant shelter in Pilsen, joined, as well as students from a West Side high school.
The three locations share a common link in Otto Rodriguez, the director of the Chicago chapter of Street Soccer USA, a national soccer charity organization.
Rodriguez, who recently coached a team of recent immigrants at a local tournament, leads practices at the three locations.
Street Soccer already partners with the German club for other events around the U.S., including a tournament in Times Square in New York City.
Lawrence Cann, the founder of the organization, said he hoped to replicate that event in Chicago (possibly in Millennium Park near the Bean) and that Wednesday’s event marked the beginning of more such events in Chicago.
“It’s about leveraging the life lessons of sports” for youth development, he said.
Players suiting up for the evening game were attending a final practice during the Humboldt Park event, but several others from the German squad led the group through drills and mini games.
The group all wore the yellow and black jerseys of Dortmund, which they called for the German club members to sign afterward.
The youngest Suarez, Joshua, lined up opposite Roman Weidenfeller, a former Dortmund player and member of the World Cup-winning German squad in 2014.
Standing closer to the ground, the 4-year-old almost had an advantage over the 42-year-old German goalkeeper in a drill that involved scooping a cone off the ground, but a language barrier meant Joshua received instructions through delayed translations.
“We hope they have a good time and learn something for life,” Weidenfeller said after the drill. The beauty of playing the game on a team, he said, is it gives young people a “chance to develop character.”
Julius Everke, a spokesperson for the club, noted it has similar programs in Dortmund in Germany, where many refugees from Syria have come in the past decade.
“It makes a huge difference in adjusting to the environment,” he said. “We don’t just want people to play. We want them to have a better life.”
Sarah Lindner, a volunteer for Todo Para Todos, the independent shelter, hoped events like the one on Wednesday would facilitate that same result in the U.S.
“They’re trying to be a part of the community, to connect with the community,” she said. “It’s all about becoming Chicagoans.”
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Side and West Side.
