Omir Fernandez (Photo courtesy of the New York Red Bulls)
WHIPPANY, NJ — Thursday morning temperatures touched 90 degrees and it was even hotter on the turf at the New York Red Bulls training facility.
As his understandably-drenched teammates walked into the comforting embrace of their locker room and with it, air conditioning, attacker Omir Fernandez continued to work 100 yards away, curling chance after chance with both feet into the goal.
Just a bit of extra work for the emerging Red Bulls star, who is no stranger to getting some extra work in under inconvenient conditions.
Moving to the Bronx from Manhattan at the age of seven, the son of Mexican immigrants found a way to play the game he loved outside academy work on the asphalt and sidewalks of 138th street — just a stone’s throw away from the 6 line.
“I used to play on the street til I was 14 or 15,” Fernandez began. “It brings back good memories…There aren’t many cars that go by so you can play on the road, but we usually were just on the sidewalk. It wasn’t too big but we didn’t need much”
He would play every position — picking up plenty of road rash as a goalkeeper where he would emulate one of his idols in Mexican legend Guillermo Ochoa. The most capped keeper in Mexico National Team history also spent a decade with Club America, which is one of the most famous clubs of Mexico’s top soccer division, Liga MX. It’s the league that Fernandez grew up watching and is still the marine event of every weekend in his family’s household.
But in his more natural attacking position, he imitated the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo — the reason he grew up a Manchester United supporter — but was still objective enough to admit that Lionel Messi is the greatest player of this generation.
“As a little kid, it was always my dream to play but you never really knew it was a possibility,” Fernandez said. “It was just kind of a dream and when you’d play you’d imitate other…
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