A blur of pink, Angel Chavez is making his inevitable sprint toward the goalposts on his team’s home field at Meridian High School in Falls Church. He finds the back of the net, and his teammates converge on him like a swirl of human cherry blossoms.
These are the moments Lucas Mendes dreamed of when he founded Virginia Dream FC, a men’s club team that competes in the Mid-Atlantic Conference of the National Premier Soccer League, in 2022.
Mendes isn’t just the majority owner. He’s a veteran of the pitch. A 2016 graduate of Washington-Liberty High School, he was named the Gatorade Virginia Boys Soccer Player of the Year at 18 after training with the D.C. United Academy. He turned pro soon after, joining the New York Cosmos and then the Richmond Kickers.
After a few years on that circuit, he found himself wondering how he could keep a foot in the game while taking “that next step into my creative career.” His vision was to introduce an element of art and fashion to the sport known worldwide as “the beautiful game.”
Mendes designs the Dream’s colorful kits and merch in tandem with designer Casey Peckio and photographer Jared Soares, with whom he runs a creative studio called Saudade House. He and Soares hand-dyed the eye-catching pink unis for the 2023 season in their kitchens using the Japanese Shibori Itajime tie-dye technique, choosing pastel hues inspired by Portuguese azulejo tiles. Tile motifs also form the ornamental stripes on the “pink quartz” kits that debuted the following year.
This summer, Saudade House is launching a print magazine featuring fashion shoots with players like Austin FC center back Jon Bell. Mendes says their hope is to turn fashionistas into football fans, and vice versa: “For a lot of people, their first step into the club may not be with soccer—it may be with art or fashion.”
But soccer remains at the heart of the enterprise, which was created to give aspiring footballers a forum for competitive play. Sponsors help cover the cost of equipment, and the team has become a farm system of sorts. “It doesn’t matter what your financial situation is,” says Mendes, whose parents are both personal trainers in Arlington. (His father, Paulo, is also the team’s VP.) “We want to give you the chance to progress to the next level.”
Some players already have. The team’s success stories include Ivorian midfielder Jean-Christophe Koffi, who now plays professionally for Puerto Rico’s Ponce FC, and winger Manzi Shalita, who recently joined the roster of Texas’s Corpus Christi FC. Annandale native Bill Hamid, a former Dream player and goalkeeping coach, now tends the net for the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
This spring, the Dream once again qualified for the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, an annual tournament in which qualifying amateur clubs earn the right to compete against professional teams—and sometimes beat them. In late March, the Dream bested Carolina Core, a pro team from High Point, North Carolina, in a surprise upset during the first round of play. They logged a similar Cinderella win against the Richmond Kickers in 2025.
“The big thing with Arlington is how many different cultures there are,” Mendes says. “That’s kind of the goal with the club—to unify people and give people a safe place to play the game and grow.” With dope uniforms.