Ryan Williams played for Morecambe and Brentford before embarking on the adventure of a lifetime by signing for Brazilian club Paysandu. In conversation with Adam Bate, he looks back on the illuminating experiences and nasty surprises on and off the field.
Ryan Williams is in reflective mood. He has just returned from a quiet break in Menorca. The calm after the storm. The former Brentford and Morecambe midfielder takes a deep breath before beginning his tale.
“It has been the craziest five months of my life,” Williams said.
He is referring to the move he made earlier this year to Paysandu, one of the biggest clubs in northern Brazil. What followed was the experience of a lifetime but one that included more red tape than action on the green grass, more dark nights than days in the limelight. “I knew it would be different but I didn’t envisage it being quite what it was,” he says.
He has now returned to Britain after playing just one league game and facing many more challenges. But the experience of sampling another culture and seeing sights such as the famed Iguassu Falls will stay with him forever. He has had time to think about the game – and life – like never before. More time than he would have liked, in truth.
This was not simply another case of a British player struggling to adapt to life abroad. Williams is an intrepid sort and enjoyed his time in Canada with Ottawa Fury. He is not some pampered player. He can handle the basics like setting up a bank account in a foreign country and mixing with new people. “It was not a confidence issue,” he insists. “It was a safety issue.”
The more that you discover about the city of Belem, where Paysandu are based, the more you appreciate his predicament.
Belem ranks as one of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world in terms of its murder rate and Williams was not earning enough money to be immune to its unsettling side. “The living situation was difficult for me,” he admits.
“If you are in a cosmopolitan city like Rio, Sao Paulo or Florianopolis, it is still not going to be plain sailing but it is definitely adaptable. Belem was different. Even some of the Brazilian lads would tell me that this was not what they were used to either. So while I was really happy to take on the challenge, I recognised early on that it was going to be difficult.
“At first I would just walk out of my apartment to get some bread or milk but the lad I was living with, a midfielder called Timbo, would tell me that I didn’t realise how dangerous it was. Even in the daytime, kids would come up to me and tell me in broken English that it was not safe for me to be out on the streets. That was a bit of an eye-opener.
“It went dark quite early, around 6pm. So sometimes it would get to 7pm and you’d realise you needed some ingredient that you had forgotten for your dinner. But you simply could not go out after dark. I have a video on my phone of a guy getting kidnapped a few blocks down. In the papers you would regularly see pictures of people dead on the floor.
“The problem is that you can only play football for three or four hours a day in training so I was spending the rest of the time staring at the four walls. I tried to use the time constructively, reading some books and focusing on self-improvement, but you need a social life too. Even if it is just going for a coffee or having a walk to the shops.”
Even from the confines of his apartment, it became clear Williams was at a club on a different scale to what he had been used to. “Don’t get me wrong, they were lovely people and being an Englishman playing for the biggest team in the city, they went crazy for me,” he says. “We had crowds of 40,000 for some games and they were so passionate.
“When it was announced that I was signing, I got an inkling that there was going to be a lot of media exposure because my Instagram blew up. I had 10,000 Brazilians following me within a month. They were very active on there so the next thing was that my Instagram was full of Portuguese comments and I had no idea whatsoever what they were saying.
“The funny thing was coming home from training and switching on the television and they would be showing footage of our training session from that morning. At Morecambe, you might make it onto television once or twice a season, particularly if you did well in a cup game. That was all good fun but here it was every single day and full throttle.”