Sissi champion as foster mom too
Tough childhood in Brazil inspires soccer legends social consciousness

Posted: 8/5/2009 
Updated: 8/5/2009

Aug. 5, 2009

Sissi, known to soccer fans from Brazil to the Bay Area as one of the greatest female players ever, used to lounge at home after a grueling day of coaching and playing.

Those days are long gone.

Since 2006, she and partner Jennifer O’Neal have welcomed a stream of foster children into their split-level tract home in Concord, becoming one of the 456 families volunteering with the Contra Costa County adoptions department.

"Soccer gave me everything," said Sissi, a midfielder with the FC Gold Pride, who at 42 is the oldest player in the Women’s Professional Soccer league. "I have a chance to help these kids. They changed my life."

As Sissi returned home recently from practice, some of those changes presented themselves as soon as she opened the door. Two-year-old Baby M marched forward with outstretched arms and an impish smile on her face. A little later her half-brother Michael, 3½, emerged with plastic blocks just as bedtime approached — ensuring a standoff.

Once the children went down, Sissi seemed momentarily at peace, reflecting on her life.

Her social consciousness spawned from a hardscrabble childhood in northeastern Brazil, in a house without running water. It was in the town of Esplanada that Sisleide do Amor Lima would have to overcome deeply entrenched machismo stereotypes to play the sport she loved in the land of Pele.

When discouraged even by her own family, the child cut off the heads of dolls and booted them around like soccer balls. "I became independent at 11," Sissi said.

She left home at 14 to play on fledgling Brazilian women’s soccer clubs in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in the early 1980s. The players did not earn much and squeezed 12 into a room.

Despite the adversity, the women’s game grew in Brazil and Sissi developed into one of the world’s best midfielders. She played in two Olympics and three Women’s World Cups, including the 1999 games in which she scored a tournament-best seven goals.

"In the true form, she was a pioneer," Gold Pride General Manager Ilisa Kessler said. "To be able to break through, to be determined, to really make something of herself coming from Brazil is phenomenal."

Sissi came to San Jose in 2001 to play for the CyberRays of the now-defunct Women’s United Soccer Association, then she returned in 2003 to play for the semipro California Storm. She learned English, turned to coaching and made a new home. She joined the DVSC (now Diablo FC) coaching staff in 2004.

"Now you look back and say, ’How did this happen?’" said Sissi, who plans to retire after the season ends next weekend.

It’s a statement about far more than soccer.

’Just what you do’

She and O’Neal started volunteering in 2006 after O’Neal’s daughter Rachel read a newspaper story about the need for foster families in Contra Costa County. Rachel, then 10, insisted the family not sit on the sideline — even if it would challenge them all.

After they attended a foster care orientation, the county placed Michael in their care. They soon began the adoption process.

It took some time before county officials realized they were working with a soccer icon. Whoever enters their home, though, soon discovers the importance of soccer.

Michael often sports an FC Barcelona T-shirt. There are photos of the boy draped in a Brazilian flag. Then there are the cleats. Michael has collected so many, the mothers won’t take him into a soccer store anymore.

"He was kicking the ball before he was walking," O’Neal said.

Besides coaching and playing for the Gold Pride, Sissi coaches two Diablo FC teams and at Las Positas College in Livermore. The children often come<