Calvin Rezende Playing His Part In Miami FC's Fall Season Surge

Photo credit: Orovio Photography/Miami FC

Miami FC’s Calvin Rezende, and his twin brother Conner, have traveled the world to further their soccer careers only to end up playing 30 minutes from where they grew up – their parents’ home in Davie, Fla.

While Conner spends time rehabbing an injury that is likely to keep him sidelined for the rest of the North American Soccer League season, Calvin has stepped in and stepped up as Miami FC and Alessandro Nesta deal with injuries to a couple of key players – Michael Lahoud and Richie Ryan, and now Jonny Steele.

“I’m enjoying every minute on the field,” Calvin Rezende told NASL.com. “It’s hard to say if I would or wouldn’t be starting if there were no injuries. But Sandro is very clear on not having a set starting XI. Richie is dealing with a foot injury, against Ottawa Steele got injured. Theirs are roles I can play. After the Ottawa game, coach told me that he needed me and that I was there when he needed me. It made me feel great.”

Calvin Rezende, 23, has made seven starts in 2016 with eight appearances this year, while Conner has yet to feature in league play. The brothers, the only set of twins playing together on a professional soccer team in the continental United States – Pedro and Paulo Mendes have teamed up at Puerto Rico FC – have taken soccer’s version of a roller-coaster ride before ending up playing near home. That trip -- from South Florida, to Brazil (their father’s homeland, they are all Santos fans) after high school, to college in Virginia, to training with clubs in Italy and Spain, back to college in Pennsylvania – came before the brothers signed with Miami FC.

“Europe was amazing, nobody can take that from us,” Rezende said. “We picked up on the tactical part of the game in Italy and in Spain we picked up the possession, tiki-taka style. They broadened our perspective on the game. In the U.S., the game has been about athleticism, it’s huge, but we’re smaller guys [both are 5 foot 7] and we have to be smarter, fitter, and have more quality.”

Calvin has played particularly well for Miami FC the past two games. Last week against the Loons, Rezende’s seeing-eye, diagonal pass from deep on the left flank found the unmarked Kwadwo Poku at the far post for a tap-in goal. Heading into Saturday’s game, Miami FC has lost only once in its last eight games, and is in fifth place in the Fall Season Standings but with two games in hand on three of the four teams ahead of it in the table.

“Everything is starting to glue together,” Rezende said. “One thing that we aren’t proud of are the results from the first half of the year – we did a lot worse than we wanted or hoped for. Every day we have same aim and goal – working hard to get three points every single game. We’ve changed things around and I hope it only gets better.”