The Blue Island

Faial is one of the nine islands of the Azores. It covers about 66 square miles and is known in Portugal as the Ilha Azul, the Blue Island, for the hydrangeas that line its roads. Azoreans had been settling in southeastern New England for generations, most of them in the whaling and mill towns. Faial's own wave of emigration had a specific cause.

On September 27, 1957, an undersea eruption began off Capelinhos, on the island's western tip. It lasted thirteen months.¹⁰

The Azorean Refugee Act, signed on September 2, 1958, was sponsored by Senator John O. Pastore of Rhode Island and a young Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The parish of Capelo lost half its population.¹⁰

By one count nearly 4,000 people from Faial eventually settled in Massachusetts. Many went to East Cambridge, where they joined Portuguese families already living there.^1,3 U.S. Soccer's profile of the club describes the neighborhood as once almost entirely Portuguese.³

From kickabout to club

In the summer of 1971, a group of young men from Faial who played pickup games together decided to start a proper team.³ They called it Faialense Sport Club (faialense means "of Faial"). Every founding member was from the island.

The first home field was behind a school near Cambridge Street. The first clubhouse was a converted meat market, where players met after matches to eat, drink and talk about the game.³ Local press and the club's Wikipedia entry give the founding year as 1972.^1,2

1121 Cambridge Street

In 1984 the members bought the building at 1121 Cambridge Street, near Inman Square. It became a social club, event hall, bar and restaurant.² It has been the club's base for more than forty years, and its shelves hold trophies from six decades.³

LASO nights and lean years

In the 1980s and 1990s Faialense played in the Luso-American Soccer Association (LASO), a league of Portuguese-American clubs.³

By the 1990s the club's soccer side had faded.² Through the lean years the team played under other names before the Faialense name returned:^2,3

1. Faialense Sport Club1971 — founded by immigrants from Faial
2. Portuguese American Club of Lawrence"PAC Lawrence," competing in Division III
3. Merrimack Valley United FCThe name used during the lean years
4. Clube Desportivo Faialense2023 — renamed after club president Francisco Correia brought the team back under the Faialense banner

Francisco Correia is credited with reviving the club's soccer program, and his son Paul later became player-coach.²

Back to back

The revived club won almost immediately. In the fall of 2023 Faialense won the Bay State Soccer League Division I title, beating Boston Street FC on penalty kicks.² In 2024 they finished 13–3–2 and won the league by ten points.^4,6

The squad looks very different from the founders' team. Players come from about thirteen countries.⁴ Many played college soccer at Merrimack, New Hampshire, Boston University, Harvard, Holy Cross, Duke, UMass, UMass Lowell and Rhode Island.^1,2,3 They work as civil engineers, a firefighter, a teacher, a venture capitalist and an insurance professional. The club holds no open tryouts. New players come through friends and teammates, which has kept the core of the team together for years.^1,4

Figures of the modern club

• Francisco Correia — club president, credited with reviving the soccer program
• Paul Correia — player-coach and Merrimack alumnus
• Felipe Guimaraes — the longest-serving player, with more than a decade at the club
• Max Krause — midfield captain; scored twice against FC Lonestar in 2025
• Yanis Lakhlifi — scored the hat trick that sent the club to its first Open Cup
• Lucas Verge — goalkeeper and club administrator

The Open Cup

The 2024 league title earned Faialense a place in qualifying for the 2025 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, the country's oldest national soccer competition. It was their second attempt at qualifying. They beat Project Football 4–1, then faced FCY New York at Miller Field in Winthrop in a winner-take-all qualifier.⁵ Yanis Lakhlifi scored twice with his head and added a third. The 3–1 win made Faialense the first Bay State Soccer League team to qualify since Brockton FC United in 2022.⁶

“We got up at 7 a.m. — might as well win this.” — goalkeeper Lucas Rezende, to WBUR²

Their draw in the First Round was Portland Hearts of Pine of USL League One, a professional club in its first season. The match was played at Lewiston High School in Maine on March 20, 2025, and Portland won 4–0.^3,4 That November, Faialense qualified again by beating FC Lonestar GPSE 5–2, with four goals inside the first 38 minutes.⁷ In the 2026 First Round they drew Rhode Island FC of the second-tier USL Championship, who had knocked Portland out of the previous year's tournament.⁸

The Rhode Island match in Pawtucket was a mismatch as well. RIFC scored twice in the first half-hour and won 4–0.⁹ In the second half Damian Attidore, a UMass Lowell alumnus who teaches high school English, tried a shot from a near-impossible angle.⁹