Hartford native Jacob Conde will suit up for the Puerto Rican national team on Saturday, with his father watching, and a dream still alive

Jacob Conde recently began living by a new cliche, as he put it. He doesn’t believe in coincidences.

Fitting, given how the Hartford native’s last few weeks have unfolded.

It was just a month ago that Conde, a former professional soccer player, began training seriously again. One week later, Hartford Athletic announced it would host the Puerto Rico national team, for which Conde had made five appearances. The game would be at Dillon Stadium where his father, Rafael, played football for Bulkeley High.

Jacob Conde reached out to the national team’s scouting director in hopes of securing a roster spot for the international friendly. He heard back on his father’s birthday that the team had interest in picking him up. Three days later, on the one-year anniversary of his grandmother’s passing, he was sent an official email confirming his roster spot.

So on Saturday, Conde, a Bloomfield High grad, will suit up for Puerto Rico for the sixth time, and first since 2017. He’ll be playing against a Hartford Athletic team that didn’t sign him after he tried out for the team in January. He’s eligible to play for Puerto Rico because his father was born there.

No coincidences there, if you ask Conde. It’s all happening for a reason.

“Everything just kind of lined up,” he said with a smile.

A Medaille College graduate who played three years of professional soccer overseas, Conde had finally settled into his first “adult job,” as he called it, putting his degree to use as a digital marketing coordinator in Hartford.

He still played soccer three times a week, mostly in men’s leagues and at Oakwood Academy in Glastonbury, though the urge to return to a larger stage was still there.

“The company is great, the job is great, but you figure, I’ve played soccer my whole life,” Conde said. “There’s days where I’m sitting there like, ‘This can’t be it.'”

He recently took a trip to Buffalo to visit friends from college, who told him that whether or not professional soccer would be part of his future, Conde had to keep training for himself.

With that message in mind, he finally reached for the phone one day at work and called his trainer, Adrian Nelson.

“‘Hey Adrian, this ain’t it,'” Conde said. “And he was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this phone call.'”

He began working out in the mornings before work, eating healthier, and getting back into a similar routine as he had when he was a professional. He had no idea that the national team opportunity was right around the corner. He just wanted to be prepared for anything and everything.

When he saw the friendly was taking place, he made the necessary calls to ensure a spot.

“I’ve got to be a part of this game. One way or another, I’ve got to get in this game,” he said.

The first person Conde told of the opportunity was his father. He credits Rafael, still a resident of Hartford, for his early involvement in soccer. He recalls his dad picking him up at his mother’s house in Bloomfield, driving him to Glastonbury for academy practice, waiting until it was over, driving Jacob back to Bloomfield and then returning home to Hartford.

Conde estimates that in his four years as a varsity starter for the Warhawks, his dad missed no more than five games.

“I literally owe everything to him. I think from U-13 to paying for a trip to Argentina for my club team,” Conde said. “He’s always been supportive.”

Rafael Conde summed up his son’s youth soccer experience a little more simply.

“Expensive,” Rafael Conde said with a laugh.

Looking back, Jacob Conde said, it was expensive, and it wasn’t until recently that, as an adult, he realized how much his father invested in him as a young player. But that was the beauty of their relationship. His father never made an issue of those costs, despite Jacob being one of three children, and his personal love being American football, not soccer.

The friendly will be Rafael Conde’s first time watching Jacob play for the national team in person; he watched a game played in India via a livestream.

“I’m very, very proud to see him be in those colors,” Rafael Conde said. “The funny thing is, I was more proud of him when he graduated high school and college. It’s fantastic.”

The national team scouting director called Conde on his father’s birthday, telling him that head coach Elgy Morales liked what he saw. Conde, who in the past has made the mistake of celebrating before he crosdse the finish line, wanted to wait until the paperwork was official before he told anyone.

That email came three days later, on the anniversary of his grandmother’s passing. As he grew older, he only saw her on holidays, as he moved to upstate New York for college, and then across the globe for soccer. He was in Denver the day she passed away.

“Still to this day, no one cooks like her,” he said with a smile.

Conde had originally wanted to keep the news quiet, though Nelson urged him to get “everyone and their mom to show up.” Conde’s family, friends and others close to his life will be in attendance. His best friend since sixth grade, who has never seen him play a soccer game due to the two going to different high schools, will be in the stands.

“Let me know where to buy tickets,'” Conde’s friend told him. “He literally bought his ticket 15 minutes later.”

“Ultimately it’s great because I’m from Connecticut,” he said. “But the game is on a bigger picture.”

Conde’s heritage is important to him, too. On his right triceps he has a tattoo of a coqui, a frog that can only survive on the island of Puerto Rico. The drawing itself is how it is depicted by the indigenous people, the Taino.

His mother, Carmen Cotto, lives in Puerto Rico now. Part of the proceeds from the friendly will be donated to the San Juan Center in Hartford to benefit ongoing hurricane relief efforts.

“You look at the things that the island has gone through within the last two years; the government, the hurricane, everything. But the Puerto Rican people still manage to smile,” Conde said. “Soccer has brought me joy and happiness throughout my whole life. What better way for me to give back to an island that’s given me so much and is a huge part of who I am through the game that I love so much.”

Shawn McFarland can be reached at smcfarland@courant.com.