Versatility, creativity help Leo Fernandes become Rowdies’ longest-tenured player

ST. PETERSBURG — Leo Fernandes was furious. In the 2020 USL Championship regular season, he’d started 13 of the 14 games that he appeared in for the Rowdies. But when they faced Birmingham to open the playoffs, Fernandes’ name didn’t appear in the starting lineup. He didn’t check in until the 67th minute.

Coach Neill Collins said he thought Fernandes wasn’t “playing to the level that he set,” a bar that kept rising in his first four seasons with the Rowdies. So Collins started Max Lachowecki instead.

Thirteen minutes after checking in, Fernandes sprinted down the left alley as four Birmingham players engulfed a teammate with the ball on the other side. Fernandes collected a pass, faked left and sent a shot into the net for an insurance tally in a 4-2 win.

Collins also brought Fernandes off the bench in the next round. Fernandes impressed again and returned to the starting lineup for the Eastern Conference final, where he constructed “one of the best individual performances that we’ve had,” Collins said, with an assist on the first goal in a 2-1 win over Louisville.

“We knew that him coming off the bench angry would be good,” Collins said.

That “that kick in the butt” reminded Fernandes that he couldn’t get comfortable with his role because his progress would stop. In the two years since, the midfielder, 30, has used a pair of position switches to redefine his role yet again and establish himself as the Rowdies’ longest-tenured player while relying on the same creativity that has defined his career.

“It just seems like he’s a step ahead of everyone else,” said Ivo Mohovic, Fernandes’ first coach. “Anticipating what’s going to happen, knowing where the ball is going to go and just being able to create things out of nothing.”

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Fernandes’ family moved from their native Brazil to Queens, New York, when he was 6.

His father, Carlos, built Fernandes and his three younger brothers a net frame in their basement by gluing wood to the concrete wall. Outside, Carlos trimmed the deck a few feet for a small field his kids could use if they weren’t playing at a local one.

In those spaces, Fernandes first honed his creative instincts. He played with the Istria Soccer Club in Queens, starting with Mohovic at age 6, and challenged his younger brothers 1-on-3 to see how long he could dribble without losing possession. Often, they needed to grab his legs and foul him in order to steal the ball, Fernandes said.

When Fernandes was 14, Carlos took him back to Brazil to train with former national team defender Jose Oscar Bernardi, known as Oscar. During one of the academy’s summer scrimmages, Fernandes cut in from the left side and blasted a goal from outside the box. Bernardi walked over to Carlos and said, “Carlos, you want to leave your son with me over here? I think he’s got something.”

In that moment, Carlos said he knew the benefits from Fernandes’ training had started to materialize.

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Fernandes and his father returned to New York, and Fernandes played at North Babylon High School.

“The ball was just magic on his foot,” said Mike Cashman, Fernandes’ coach at North Babylon. “It was just stuck to his foot like he had a string on it.”

Eventually, Fernandes needed to show that he could contribute more than one skill with more than one foot. Cashman started that process by working on Fernandes’ right foot.

At Stony Brook University in New York in 2011 and 2012, coach Ryan Anatol continued implementing those lessons — how to score in the air, how to become stronger defensively — when he took over the program. Anatol joked at the time that he’d make Fernandes wear protective headgear if it helped him head the ball.

Following Fernandes’ junior season at Stony Brook, Anatol connected him with Reading United of the Premier Development League (now USL League Two), which put him on Philadelphia Union coach John Hackworth’s radar for the next MLS draft. In the fourth round in 2013, Fernandes — watching on his laptop — got a text from his agent saying he’d been selected.

“He took that opportunity and just continued to run with it,” Anatol said.

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In the first Philadelphia preseason game, Fernandes played the final 20 minutes with other players fighting for contracts. With the Union down 1-0, Fernandes knew he needed to impact the game. Five minutes after entering, he volleyed the ball in the box and sent it into the net. Other passes nearly led to another point. Following the game, Fernandes signed his first contract.

It was the injection he needed to kick-start his career. He meshed into the lineup even when he couldn’t hold the same attacking spot from high school and college. As his career took him from MLS to the Rowdies in January 2017, that versatility provided stability, too.

Fernandes’ switch to left wingback during the 2021 Rowdies season forced him to sharpen his defensive instincts, which had become secondary to the offensive ones in his youth career. Another position switch, one that resulted in two penalty-kick goals the past two weeks, has inched him back to the attacking midfielder role he always had.

“I really had to sharpen my defense up because I knew I had to do both sides of the ball,” Fernandes said. “I had to go and score and assist, and then also I had to get back and help the defense.”

Contact Andrew Crane at acrane@tampabay.com. Follow @CraneAndrew.