Brian Fernandez guides his son, Milan, toward a soccer ball on the small pitch in the backyard of his Beaverton home. Milan, who will turn 1 this month, is only slightly taller than the ball and doesn’t yet have the balance to run toward it on his own. Fernandez holds his son’s arms and walks him to the ball. Milan kicks it. Fernandez smiles.

It means a great deal for Fernandez to share the game that has done so much for him with his son. Growing up in a humble home in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina, Fernandez sometimes worried about where his next meal would come from. Soccer was his ticket out.

It won’t have to be a ticket out for Milan. Fernandez has made sure of that. Even through the most despondent moments of his life, he has never stopped fighting. He has kept pushing forward for himself and his children, Milan and 4-year-old daughter Delfina.

That drive has propelled Fernandez’s career upward over the last two years. An intensely focused goal-scorer, Fernandez excelled in Chile in 2018 before tallying 18 goals in 32 appearances for Liga MX side Necaxa. His performance in Mexico prompted the Portland Timbers to pay a club-record transfer fee to acquire him in May. The 24-year-old has more than repaid the Timbers for their faith thus far. He has netted eight goals in just 11 appearances for Portland in MLS play and 12 goals overall.

This is only the beginning.

“It was difficult to get to this point,” said Fernandez, who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive through a translator. “But the things that I see online nowadays, when I read people’s tweets and see everything they’re saying about how much they enjoy my performances, it makes me proud. I know it was all worth it. That’s what keeps me going.”

EARLY CHALLENGES

As an 11-year-old, Fernandez used to leave his home every day before sunrise to spend the morning helping a neighbor sell fruit and vegetables out of his horse-drawn wagon, hoping to return home with the equivalent of a few dollars in his pocket.

“That for me was a lot of money,” Fernandez recalled. “With that money, I was able to buy things and bring home some food for my family.”

Money was always tight in the Fernandez household. There were times when he and his siblings, five brothers and four sisters, would have to ask their neighbors for a little bread because there were so many mouths to feed. Fernandez followed in the footsteps of his two older brothers by taking on a job as soon as he could to help the family.

His older brothers also introduced him to soccer and spurred on his fervent support of local club Colón de Santa Fe. But it was the faith of his neighbor, Jorge, that led Fernandez to begin to visualize himself making a career out of soccer. When Fernandez was 9, Jorge took him to Colón and helped him secure his first big opportunity with the professional club’s academy system.

“At first, I didn't think of soccer as a way to help, but then I started to imagine that I would be able to help my family, that I could do a lot of things, have my own things,” Fernandez said. “It was difficult because you wake up and realize that you don’t have enough food to feed yourself and then go train, you don’t have the equipment, but you still have to make a habit of training, even though things aren’t going the way you want.”

Fernandez had hoped to one day make his professional debut with Colón, but it became too expensive for him to compete for the academy. His family couldn’t afford the 50-cent bus fare to send him to train. Instead, his oldest brother, Leandro, who had started competing for Buenos Aires-based club Defensa y Justicia, persuaded his younger brother to move in with him.

In May 2012, a 17-year-old Fernandez made his professional debut for Defensa y Justicia, becoming the second of his brothers to make it to the pro level. A third brother, Nicolas, would go on to play professional soccer as well.

Fernandez was on the top of the world, but the moment would prove fleeting.

DAVID AND BRIAN

Fernandez was close to all of his siblings during his childhood, but he absolutely adored his older brother, David.

David, who was a year older, would bring Brian everywhere. He was the one who first started taking Brian to Colón games, helping to fuel his younger brother’s passion for the sport. The two brothers once showed up to a Colón game as children with only enough money to buy one ticket. Too young to know any better and desperate to see their favorite team, they devised a plan where one of the brothers would go inside the stadium first and hand the ticket back through the bars to the other. They thought the scheme had worked, until security came to their seats and led them out of the stadium.

“He took me wherever he went,” Fernandez said. “There was a time when we were together day and night. We went through the good and bad together.”

In August 2012, Fernandez was away competing for Defensa y Justicia when he heard the devastating news. David had taken his own life. Now, seven years later, Fernandez can’t talk about his brother without tears coming to his eyes.

“I get emotional,” Fernandez said. “I just miss him dearly. I get goosebumps talking about this because he was very important for me.”

David’s death remained seared into Fernandez’s mind as he continued with his soccer career. After spending his first two seasons battling for playing time and struggling to score with Defensa y Justicia, Fernandez finally enjoyed a breakout campaign in the 2013-14 season, scoring the game-winning goal to help his club secure promotion to the top-tier Primera División. Argentine powerhouse Racing took notice, deciding to acquire Fernandez in 2015.

But emotionally, Fernandez was adrift. Shortly into his tenure with Racing, he tested positive for cocaine. He went on to fail a second drug test and was issued a suspension that would keep him from competing for a year and a half.

It proved to be a wakeup call for the troubled young forward. He was strong enough to admit his vulnerability. He entered therapy, left Argentina to go to a rehabilitation clinic and made the difficult decision to distance himself from certain friends who could lead him astray.

“After the suspension, my only thought was, ‘I have to be strong,’” Fernandez said. “It wasn’t easy at all, but I had my daughter, I had my family and I knew I had a chance to make things work. I had to ask for help, and I got help from many people to be able to get out of that situation.”

A “TELLING” MEETING

Timbers President of Soccer and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson and Technical Director Ned Grabavoy traveled to Mexico this spring to sit down with Fernandez for the first time.

Fernandez had been on Portland’s radar from the moment that the club set its sights on acquiring a marquee attacking player last fall. By the time that first meeting took place, Fernandez had already revitalized his career, scoring a team-high 11 goals in 12 appearances on loan with Chilean Primera División club Unión La Calera before quickly shooting to the top of Liga MX’s scoring charts with Necaxa.

Wilkinson and Grabavoy knew what the Argentine striker could do on the field, but they weren’t expecting to encounter a player as genuine and forthright as Fernandez.

“He was very humble and he was very open about what he thought he was as a person and a player, where he was at in this stage of his life and in his career and what he wanted from his career and from his life,” Grabavoy said. “It was telling for us. To sit there, our first communication face-to-face, and have someone be that open, it made us feel a bit more at ease.”

The Timbers had seen several potential deals fall through early in the year in their pursuit of a top attacker, but their conversations with Necaxa were productive from the start. Still, if the club was going to pay a club-record transfer fee, pegged at nearly $10 million, to acquire Fernandez, then they had to be absolutely certain it was the right move. Wilkinson and Grabavoy both made multiple trips to Mexico throughout the spring to talk with Fernandez and watch him compete. For Grabavoy, it was the most time-consuming negotiation and transfer process since he joined the front office in 2016.

“We were looking for a goal scorer, but also a player that played with an edge, that sort of wore his heart on his sleeve,” Grabavoy said. “We felt like we needed that within the group and within the locker room. We knew he was a player that would bring it every day and every game, but I would be the first to tell you that I didn’t expect him to do this much this quickly.”

“LIKE A MANIAC”

It was clear that the Timbers had signed a singular player when Fernandez stepped onto the field for his first day of training in May.

In a short-sided scrimmage, he played with an intensity usually reserved only for games, firing shot after shot into the net with ease. It didn’t matter that it was a training session. He wanted to score as many goals as possible. He wanted to win.

“Every single training session, this guy is charged up,” Timbers goalkeeper Steve Clark said. “He’s like a maniac. He’s going to score in big games, but he’s also going to score in Tuesday trainings at 10:30 in the morning because that’s who he is.”

Fernandez’s thirst has translated into a lethal wave of goals that has put MLS on high alert.

He scored just 12 minutes into his debut for the Timbers on May 15, running on to a long pass from Sebastian Blanco before placing his shot into the net to lead the Timbers to a 1-1 draw with Houston. More recently, Fernandez scored twice in Seattle, streaking into the box and drilling the game-winning goal past Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei to lead the Timbers to a 2-1 victory on July 21 in front of 50,072 mostly dismayed fans at CenturyLink Field.

Fernandez has also brought out the best in the attackers around him, both with his unrelenting attitude and ability to create space for his teammates by drawing defenders toward him. Portland has scored 21 goals as a team in Fernandez’s 11 regular-season appearances this year.

“He’s a handful,” Timbers coach Giovanni Savarese said. “He’s always someone that is fighting through and trying to make it difficult for defenders. He’s always dangerous, trying to mix it up all the time. He has so much passion. He wants to do everything he can to help the team.”

On the day after a game, Savarese often has to remind Fernandez to rest and recharge. He feels antsy when he’s not working.

Fernandez is renting his Beaverton home from Timbers captain Diego Valeri, who along with Portland’s other Spanish-speaking players, has been instrumental in helping Fernandez quickly adjust to his new team and city. Three months after joining the Timbers, Fernandez and his family feel settled and happy in Portland.

But he has traveled a long road to get to this point. He wants to keep pushing forward.

“The coaching staff had confidence in me, despite all that has happened to me,” Fernandez said. “They continue to have confidence in me. All I can do is give them my thanks by leaving everything on the pitch.”

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com

503-853-3761 | @jamiebgoldberg

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