To call it a "pleasant surprise" wouldn't quite be right. As someone with an abiding interest in the colorful names and nicknames of Brazilian athletes—my all-time favorite remains that of Leandro Matos Souza, who went by "Gatorade"—I had a hunch that a particular theme week–inspired Google search would turn up the result I was hoping for. So, while certainly pleasant, it was hardly surprising that typing "bill footballer" into my search bar brought me to not one, but two mononymous Brazilian Bills.
Though I'm sure the player Wikipedia designates "Bill (footballer, 1999)" has an interesting story of his own, today we are going to focus on the life and times of one Rosimar Amâncio, the better known of the two Bills. Our chosen Bill is a 41-year-old striker who has traversed the globe in one of those far-flung journeyman careers that are pretty unique to a certain class of Brazilian player. Brazil not only produces more professional-caliber soccer players than any other country, but the nationality itself, with its redolence of jogo bonito and World Cup wins and flashy tricks and Pelé and Romário and Ronaldinho and Neymar and the like, means that the Brazilian player is highly coveted globally both for what they can do and for what they represent. Couple that with the Brazilian economy, which is relatively advanced but nevertheless struggles to provide a comfortable living for its entire population, and you can understand why it's so common to find a handful of Portuguese names on the rosters of tertiary soccer leagues the world over.
It is in this environment that has seen our Bill ply his trade for 17 different clubs in five different countries—Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Thailand—across his nearly 20-year career. Bill has spent the bulk of his time home in Brazil, where he emerged in the 2000s as a textbook tweener, a solidly good performer at the second-division level who found himself out of his depth in the country's top league. For much of his 20s he yo-yoed between Série B and Série A. The cycle was a familiar one: he'd put up impressive goal numbers in the second tier one season, get a move to big first-division club the next, have a disappointing year, move back to Série B, put up impressive numbers again, and the whole thing would repeat.
It wasn't the most glamorous of fates, but it was hardly depressing, either. Bill's workmanlike game always led him to goals, and what he lacked in flair he made up for with an endearing personality and that wonderfully random nickname. In case you were wondering, seeing a guy go around with just "Bill" on the back of his jersey is indeed as delightfully curious a sight in Brazil as it would be here, which helped earn him a popularity that might not normally accrue to such an unshowy type of player.
"I think my father thought my name (Rosimar) was very ugly and started calling me Bill," he once told Brazilian news outlet Terra. "I think he regretted giving me my name and I thank him for the nickname," he added with a laugh. As creative as his dad was to get "Bill" from "Rosimar," Bill's fans have been even more clever in coming up with additional nicknames. According to Wikipedia, he has been variously dubbed Buffalo Bill, Ibrahimobill (a play on Swedish superstar striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic), Billatelli (a play on Italian superstar striker Mario Balotelli), Kill Bill, Buldogue (Bulldog), and Bill Lepo Lepo ("lepo lepo" being a sort of nonsense phrase originating from a hit song of the same name, where it refers to indefinable sexual magnetism). I don't think there's any explaining why this not-especially-remarkable compilation video from 2011, which collects the goals he scored for Coritiba when they won the Paraná state league and the Série B title in 2010, has racked up almost 75,000 views without the fun of seeing and saying the name Bill, which in the Brazilian accent sort of rhymes with the word "pew."
If Bill's career had ended in 2018, at the plausible age of 33, he would've had a hell of a run. Twelve years of professional soccer had seen him score a boatload of goals, win more than a handful of (admittedly mostly minor) titles, play for massive clubs like Corinthians, Santos, and Botafogo, and share a locker room with legendary players like Ronaldo and Neymar, with whom he briefly overlapped at Corinthians and Santos, respectively. Instead, Bill enjoyed probably his most successful playing years in his mid-30s, when he decided to hop off the Brazilian yo-yo and fly to Thailand.
When Bill signed for Thai League 1 club Ratchaburi in 2018, he'd already had a bit of experience in Asian soccer. He'd had a loan spell with Chinese club Shanghai Shenxin a decade earlier, and spent a little time in Saudi Arabia and South Korea a few years after, never with any outstanding results. His season with Ratchaburi also wasn't particularly dazzling, with Bill scoring an only decent six goals in 16 league games. However, it was when he followed up that debut season in Thailand with a move to Chiangrai United that everything clicked.
Chiangrai United, founded in 2009, was a relatively modest club in the Thai soccer scene when the Jarken Group purchased it in 2016 with an eye toward turning it into one of the local giants. One of the group's main strategies for making the team better and, crucially, more popular was investing heavily in Brazilians. The club has employed 42 Brazilian players in its 16-year history, all but seven of those joining the team since the Jarken Group took over. Likewise, of the 12 managers the Jarken Group has hired since 2016, seven have been Brazilian. None of those players or managers have proven as successful as Bill.
The Beetles of the Jarken Group era wasted little time making their mark. In 2017 the team lifted its first major trophy, winning the FA Cup over Bangkok United after taking down both of the country's traditional giants, Buriram United and Muangthong United, along the way. Bill signed with the team the following season and played a big part in helping the team retain the FA Cup trophy, scoring a hat trick in the final against Buriram, the biggest and richest club in Thailand. Bill and the Beetles (one of whom was a fellow Brazilian whose name also befits our theme week: William Henrique) did even better the next year, stunning the country by beating Buriram to the league title.
That championship came down to the final minutes of the final matchday. As expected, Buriram had sat atop the table almost the entire year, and though their season wasn't quite as dominant as usual, they only had to beat an already relegated Chiangmai in the final fixture to win the league for a third consecutive time, having won seven of the prior 11 titles. Chiangrai came into its final match three points behind Buriram, needing a win of their own and some help from Chiangmai for a chance at the title. The Beetles did their job, beating Suphanburi 5-2. Buriram scored what seemed like the title-winning goal against Chiangmai in the 53rd minute, but later conceded from a corner kick in the 87th (scored by Caique, a Brazilian). Buriram couldn't find a winning goal before time was out, and so Bill's Chiangrai, level on points but with the head-to-head advantage, were champions. It was the first time in 12 years a team other than Buriram or Muangthong had won.
During those first few years with the Beetles, Bill was known as arguably the best true center forward in Thailand. He was never the league's highest scorer but he was usually right around there, his typical workmanlike approach proving as consistent and effective in the Thai league as it had been in Brazil's Série B. Also carrying over from his time in Brazil was his idiosyncratic charm, which I think is attributable to the whole package—his name, his game, and his personality.
Not to go full nominative determinist, but Bill plays just like you'd imagine a guy named Bill would play. He's not especially fast, not especially technical, and almost never attempts to do anything fancy. In terms of skill, the pureness of his ball-striking is probably his most standout trait. What really makes him such an effective player is his knack for knowing where to be, for slipping into defenders' blind spots to find space, for intuiting when and where a pass will come or a rebound will fall, for using his ass to muscle his way into positions defenders would rather not concede to him, for triggering shots at the precise instant they are most likely to find the back of the net. If the name Bill in American sports connotes the old school, wiliness, craft and graft over creativity and gracefulness, then Bill's game embodies that to a T. I'm not positive that the name has similar connotations in either Brazil or Thailand, but something about the fandom that surrounds him tells me it does.
And it's not like Bill is all that dry outside of his straightforward playing style. In his highlight reel videos you'll find lots of silly little goal celebrations, most of which are appropriately Bill-ian (not to be confused with Billy-ian!!!) in their endearing lameness, in the sense you get of a guy sort of trying to act cool but knowing no one is really buying it and not being at all bothered by that. Usually he celebrates his goals with a herky-jerky finger wag that seems like something straight out of a YMCA pickup basketball game. Sometimes he goes for something more, uh, memorable. Always he gives the sense that he loves the game and loves his job and loves scoring, but he's never lost sight of the fact that it all is, in essence, a game, meant to be enjoyed by participant and spectator alike.
In all, Bill spent seven years in Thailand. Most of those he played for Chiangrai, but toward the last few years, as his talent waned and his aging body faltered, the Beetles sent him off on loan to a couple smaller Thai clubs. He and the Beetles added another FA Cup in 2021, but outside of that, the team never recaptured the glory of his first couple seasons. His Chiangrai contract expired in January of 2024, which brought an end to the then-39-year-old's Thai adventure. Bill spent most of 2024 without a club. He hadn't retired, though, and in an appropriately left-field choice he signed in 2025 with Laguna, a newly founded semi-pro Brazilian club best known for its institutional dedication to veganism. Bill helped Laguna win the second division of the Rio Grande do Norte state league, and then to win a spot in Brazil's fourth-tier league starting in 2026.
At 41 years old, Bill is still doing the thing that has sent him around the world and back, the thing that got him more than 200 goals, almost a dozen trophies, and an untold number of fans, who won't easily forget his savvy and practical play, his effectiveness in front of goal, his fun-loving demeanor, and that weird name he puts on his jerseys. He'll of course never rate alongside the mononymic titans of Brazilian soccer, and he won't even be able to compete with Fred for being the most prominent oddly Anglo one-namer. But I for one will always remember this Bill, and I'm certain I'm not alone.
