No gloves needed. No pads required. Even shoes are an option (although recommended). All it takes is a ball, an open space, and players.

Last week in Seaside, the players arrived on bikes, in carpools and on foot to prepare for their weekly ritual: pick-up soccer games. The games happen every day everywhere across Monterey County, creating little pockets of competition where social class, day-to-day pressures and nationality cease to matter.

I showed up to play at a recent game on a recent Saturday morning at 7:45am in Seaside. What I experienced there was more than a group of guys working up a good sweat.

There was an undercurrent of cultural exchange. Contrary to popular assumptions, all Spanish-speaking immigrants in the county aren’t Mexicans. In fact, many of the players who show up at the games are from Central American countries like Guatemala and El Salvador. Some are even from South America.

What’s more, the teams that spontaneously form on the field are made up men from different ethnicities and social classes—differences that in their home countries might have prevented them from playing together. Not here.

In countries like Mexico, men usually opt to play soccer with buddies that go to their own school, with their workmates or with players from their own neighborhood—homogeneous groups that they feel comfortable with. But here in the US, their differences are overridden by their common character as soccer addicts. The ability to choose who they play with is a luxury. The game is gift enough. It makes for a wider cross-section of humanity.

This type of diversity makes pick-up games a rare and perfect representation of an emerging immigrant Latino culture in the US because, while the games are at once multiethnic and multinational, they are simultaneously rooted in a tradition that stems from their home countries in Latin America.

In the Spanish-speaking world, as in much of the rest of the globe, soccer is a supremely important rite enjoyed by everyone from the poorest to the richest members in society. The virtually universal passion for the game is visible here in their loyalty to their favorite soccer teams, even after they’ve left their countries in search of the American Dream: Most of the men at pick-up games wear their team’s favorite jerseys—like Chivas (of Guadalajara, Mexico) and Boca (Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Another testament to the love for the game is less visible but no less true: these amateur goalies, strikers and defensemen always find time to play despite jobs and familial obligations.

Jesus Velasquez, a 24-year-old Mexican from Guadalajara, is one of them. He spends just about every moment away from his job playing soccer. “I was playing on three different teams in leagues in Seaside, Salinas and Watsonville,” says Velasquez, warming up on the field with his soccer ball. “Plus, I’d still make it to the pick-up games, where it’s more casual.”

The games take place at all hours of the day and all over the place. Near CSU Monterey Bay, games happen on Tuesdays at 11am. At Seaside’s Laguna Grande Park, they’re played Saturdays at 8am, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 5pm. In Salinas, games can be found most weekday evenings at Constitution Park. At any given point in the county, a game’s not far away.

The tradition appears to be crossing cultural boundaries. Players say Korean men have started to join games, as have non-Hispanic Americans.

After a particularly grueling game last week in Seaside, most of the players sat down to rest and change clothes. I asked where they worked. Some worked at restaurants, but most worked in hotels.

The conversation quickly and spontaneously turned to the topic of the day for these workers: the potential worker strike at two Hyatt Corporation-owned hotels on the Peninsula.

“I work at the Marriot and the management is really afraid that we’re going to form a union,” said one player from El Salvador named Rafael. “They’re keeping a really close eye on us.”

“Same thing is happening with us,” responded another player who works at the Portola Plaza Hotel. “We’re all waiting to see what happens.”

After a few minutes the conversations end, players exchange handshakes and start heading for home. Before he leaves, Rafael draws a comparison between the potential union and the spirit it takes to win soccer games.

“It’s about teamwork,” Rafael says. “That’s it. Teamwork.”

While brief, the exchange of words among the men carries potential. Because as much as anywhere else, the parks where they play their favorite game offer an opportunity to share ideas and interact—to complete small but significant exchanges that slowly but surely influence the nuanced identity of Spanish-speaking immigrants in a new land.