PORTSMOUTH, England — The team bus for the Leyton Orient women’s soccer team can sometimes be stifling. More than a dozen players sit, shoulder-to-shoulder, for hours in tedium under fluorescent blue lights (and in fear of having to use the one bathroom). There is, at least, free tea.

The team’s striker, Otesha Charles, a dual citizen of Guyana and Britain, owns a hair salon in south London and eats Sainsbury’s salmon sandwiches before games. Cheryl Anderson, an accountant and defender from Scotland, is so soft-spoken and nice that it can be stunning to see her dive into a hard slide tackle. The others are teachers, postal workers, lawyers and a London subway driver.

And then there is me, a former collegiate athlete from America who landed in London last January at a moment when every day brought another screaming headline about how Brexit had torn the country apart.