Nani’s Orlando City teammates call him a game changer, a natural leader.
Former Lion Miguel Gallardo says Nani is magic, even better than advertised. Orlando City SC CEO Alex Leitão has only one word: superstar.
Nani, who will represent host Orlando City during the MLS All-Star Game being played Wednesday night at Exploria Stadium, has quickly become a catalyst on the field for the Lions. He leads Orlando City with eight goals and eight assists. After helping Orlando City get back on track following a string of disappointing results, the Portuguese forward’s talent still blows away club executives.
“I mean, his quality, my god,” Leitão said. “We see him playing, and he makes it look easy. He plays like soccer is easy.”
For Nani, however, the journey to MLS hasn’t been easy.
When he came to the U.S., the star set his sights on helping rebuild Orlando City. Now, Nani bears the weight of the captain’s armband each week with the mindset that it is his duty to raise the profile of soccer in Orlando.
“I think Orlando has all the potential to, in a couple of years, be a team that will really surprise all the fans, all the league,” Nani said. “We are working very well and very hard, and if we continue on this way, we have it all in front of us to make that happen.”
When Orlando City announced it signed Nani in February, the team was only a few months removed from its worst performance in MLS. In 2018, the club finished 11th overall in the Eastern Conference, only one rung up from dead last with the worst goal differential in the league. Nani’s decision to choose Orlando was described as a “head turner” throughout MLS.
But Nani wanted a challenge. He’d been eyeing MLS for several years, looking to grow his game by playing in America in a style that he believes is more physical and more tactically open than European soccer.
In Orlando, Nani saw a new challenge — leading a struggling team chasing an elusive playoff spot. The opportunity to grow with a club only has fueled his fire to win.
“I’m very competitive,” Nani said. “I want to win everything, every day, every training, every game. That’s the thing that makes me continue to love the game. Once I stop doing that, I think the game would not make sense anymore for me.”
For Nani, soccer has always been more than just a game. The midfielder wears a bracelet on his right wrist at all times, inscribed with the name of his grandmother. When she died several years ago, his mother made them for all of his siblings, weaving them together with thread and letter beads.
Now, the bracelet never leaves Nani’s skin, taped over with purple or white tape on game day. His grandmother’s name weighs on his wrist as a reminder of his family, something that Nani cherishes more than anything else on or off the pitch.
“I grew up with a lot of brothers, a lot of sisters all together, and we had to fight to survive and to get a better life,” Nani said. “At the end, we’ve been very lucky with football to give us a different opportunity and a lot of beautiful things in our life. We are all together in my family.”
Without soccer, Nani said he’s unsure how his family would have survived. He grew up with 14 siblings in Amadora, an impoverished city in Portugal. Soccer was a form of escape. He learned to play on a local neighborhood pitch, building his skills with his older brother until he was talented enough to earn a spot on a local club team.
Nani’s hometown has served as a backbone ever since. He said it’s where he learned to be strong, as both a player and a person. So when Nani heard that the old neighborhood field might be demolished earlier this year, he went home to save the pitch that, in turn, saved his life.
“I’ve been in that situation before where playing football was the only thing you could do,” Nani said. “All we had was that [five-versus-five] pitch to play football. I went there to give the motivation to the young lads to continue to train, to believe and to dream to one day be someone else in this world. I think it’s very important to make sure these young lads have the opportunities to achieve beautiful things.”
The pitch is simple — enclosed by a fence, with two small goals and enough room to run a five-versus-five game. But it’s where life began for Nani. He donated funds to refurbish the surface and improve both the fencing and the goals, adding art on the walls of the dugout where players sit to watch the games.
At the end of construction, Nani hosted an event to coach local kids, passing out advice and running through drills. When he saw his 5-year-old son Lucas playing on the same pitch, his curly hair bobbing between the other boys, Nani said it felt like seeing a flash of his own childhood.
“For me, it was just a very special moment,” Nani said. “He was so happy playing football there where I [grew] up. I kind of saw myself back in time. It was a fantastic moment. He’s always asking me to take him there again, so it’s very special.”
This duty to serve is something Nani brings to his game in Orlando as well, both on and off the field. Although he leads the team in goals and assists, coach James O’Connor says the full impact of his presence on the field is more wide-ranging. Defenses are forced to swarm the talented midfielder, often pulling away two or three players just to lock him down, and allowing Nani to slip the ball into space to set up other players.
With Nani up top, forwards Chris Mueller and Tesho Akindele have performed at their highest this season, setting personal goal-scoring records before the first half of the season was even finished.
“There’s a difference when he’s on field from when he’s off it,” O’Connor said. “He gives a level of confidence to the team, and you can just see it.”
As captain, Nani brings a gentle yet firm touch, preferring to pull players aside one by one to offer advice during training. He’s typically the first player to arrive each morning, and he’s also often the last on the field, running through concepts and talking through plays with his teammates.
Nani sees his teammates recognize his wealth of experience, eager to listen and learn from his days playing in the World Cup and the Premier League. And while the midfielder is often the first to offer advice, he’s also one of the first to rush to a teammate after an in-game mistake, offering support and redirecting attention to the next play.
“He’s a player that demands a lot from the guys on the team,” goalkeeper Brian Rowe said. “He’s competed and excelled at the highest level in the world, and that competitiveness is something he expects from everybody. He’s constantly pushing us to be as good as possible.”
That same drive to inspire and push others continues off the field. On an overcast morning of training, a bus full of young boys spilled out onto the training field at Sylvan Lake Park to watch Orlando City train, sitting on the bleachers to the side of the fields and pointing out their favorite players.
Nani was one of the first to leave the field to greet the young players, tossing out high-fives and advice, grinning for a picture even as in a light drizzle of rain began to fall. For Nani, these moments are just as important as any minutes of training. His impact off the field, he says, will be remembered just as deeply as any goal he scored on it.
“I try to use my experience to help the younger players to inspire them to be better, to be fantastic players in the future,” Nani said. “I see they have a beautiful future. They just need to continue to believe, and I think I can show them that.”