The Orlando Pride are in arguably the best roster scenario of any off-season in team history. While the team was breaking records on the field, Vice President of Soccer Operations and General Manager Haley Carter was busy keeping the team together for the foreseeable future. The result is that most of the roster is intact for 2025, but there are some issues that need to be resolved.

Following the 2024 NWSL campaign, only two contracts expired  — 21-year-old midfielder Evelina Duljan and club captain Marta. While Duljan will depart the club, the Pride stated they’re in discussions with Marta about returning next season. If the club re-signs Marta, it will have its entire double-winning starting lineup back.

With the possible exception of replacing Marta, the biggest issue for the Pride this off-season involves the three retirements announced prior to the end of the season. Right back Celia, center back Megan Montefusco, and versatile defender Carrie Lawrence all ended their professional careers. Celia’s absence won’t affect the team much as it has plenty of right back options, but the loss of Montefusco and Lawrence — both of whom have plenty of experience at center back — leaves the team short of depth at the position.

The lack of central depth on the back line was on full display during last season. Montefusco had surgery on her right foot, ending her season before it began. Head Coach Seb Hines moved left back Kylie Strom to a center back role alongside Rafaelle and Emily Sams — who played most of 2023 at center back — to right back. However, Rafaelle’s absence due to injury forced Sams into her natural center back position.

In addition to Strom, Sams, and Rafaelle, three other players started at center back last season. Hines used a center back pairing of Brianna Martinez and Kerry Abello once, putting the two together in the second regular season game, a 1-1 draw with Angel City FC. Cori Dyke was only used in the position late in the season when Sams was given a rest. While all three have played center back before, it’s not the first choice for any of them.

Abello and Dyke played the position in college but have primarily played in different positions professionally. Abello started as a left attacking midfielder before moving back to left back last season. Dyke moved from central midfield to center back for her senior year at Penn State and became the starting right back after the Olympic break. Martinez has usually played right back since joining the Pride. The trio only made five combined starts at center back in 2024, with Abello appearing three times and Dyke and Martinez once.

While there are players that can play center back, only three have at least one full professional season of experience at the position. If Hines has the same vision as last year, Strom and Rafaelle would start at center back and Sams at right back when everyone is healthy. While Sams and Strom proved to be an effective partnership, the Pride boss will want the Brazilian international in the lineup if she’s available. However, Rafaelle suffered a partial tear to her right quadricep tendon late last season and it’s unclear when she’ll be ready to play again. As a result, the Pride could begin the season with only two regular center backs.

If Rafaelle isn’t ready to go when the season starts and Strom or Sams go down, it’s currently most likely that Abello would move over to center back and be replaced by Carson Pickett on the left. Considering that it’s the position that Abello has the least experience of her three potential roles, that’s a less than ideal scenario. Signing a natural center back would enable Hines to make a like-for-like change in the lineup and keep everyone else in their familiar spots.

Carter and Hines have built a team full of versatile players, preparing them for these situations. Nearly everyone on the team has played multiple positions in league games and some have played offensive and defensive roles. As a result, players can take over positions they’re less familiar with when needed with at least some experience, even if just one game.

While Abello, Dyke, and Martinez are capable of filling in at center back in an emergency, the Pride would ideally have someone more experienced in that role. Since the rest of the roster is nearly complete for the first game, Carter can focus on ensuring there’s plenty of depth. The first position in need of additional bodies is the center back position.

As we count down to the new year of 2025 — which will be Orlando City’s 11th in MLS, the Orlando Pride’s 10th in the NWSL, and OCB’s third in MLS NEXT Pro — and say goodbye to 2024, it’s time to look back at the club’s 10 best moments of the year as selected by The Mane Land staff via vote.

What do you do after you’ve won the NWSL Shield, went unbeaten for 24 consecutive games, set NWSL records for wins, points, clean sheets, and consecutive shutout minutes? Well, to paraphrase Jake Taylor in Major League, there’s only one thing left to do…win the whole f#@%ing thing! That’s exactly what the Orlando Pride did after the 2024 NWSL regular season. The Pride earned the right to play at home up until the championship game by virtue of finishing with the league’s best record in the regular season, and doing all those things I mentioned above. So, the team entered the postseason needing three victories to leave no doubt about which team was the league’s best.

It’s not that a regular-season title would be a hollow victory without a playoff championship, but it had been a few years since the league’s shield winner had completed the double and won the NWSL Championship. Orlando had high aspirations after such a successful regular season, and three wins in a row — even against a trio of the better teams in the league — seemed like child’s play for a Pride team that had winning streaks of eight, six, and three matches during the regular season. On the other hand, every team wanted to be the one to bring down the mighty Pride.

The team’s run to the double started at home against the Chicago Red Stars, a team that the Pride have famously struggled against, especially in Orlando. I won’t belabor it here, as it was the No. 5 moment in our countdown of the club’s biggest moments of the year in 2024. I’ll simply point out that the Pride breezed past the Red Stars so easily that Barbra Banda and Marta were playing goal frame challenge after Orlando built up a big lead, and Anna Moorhouse gave up a silly goal just to give Chicago one solitary moment of happiness in the match. I kid, but only just. Few playoff wins have come more easily.

That left the Pride with an NWSL semifinal matchup against the Kansas City Current — a team desperate to beat Orlando for perceived slights earlier in the season and because the title game was scheduled to take place in their home stadium. If Current players didn’t like Orlando celebrating in their stadium, they hadn’t seen anything yet. But first, the Pride had to get past Kansas City, a team they beat while down a player on the road July 6 and played to a scoreless stalemate in Orlando on Sept. 13.

The Pride took care of business, building a 3-1 lead after falling behind early, with Haley McCutcheon and Banda starting the comeback and Marta ultimately scoring the game-winner (our No. 7 moment of the year). Orlando had to withstand a desperation rally attempt by the Current that came too close for comfort after a late penalty kick goal cut the lead to one, but the Pride held on as they did throughout the season and booked their ticket to Kansas City to face the Washington Spirit.

If fans needed some good omens, there were a few. The Pride had swept the season series, so they knew they could beat Washington. Orlando had played the Spirit in a trophy-clinching game weeks earlier, beating them to clinch the NWSL Shield (our No. 2 moment of the year). The Pride and the Spirit headed to CPKC Stadium on Nov. 23 with a championship trophy on the line.

The game was every bit as tight and nervy as you could expect from a championship match. The teams were physical with each other, and referee Alyssa Nichols was letting them play. Well, everyone except Banda, who was called for every collision and bump, even when she was trying to fight through a hold by the defense. The Spirit and their fans no doubt weren’t happy when the physical play wasn’t called on the game’s only goal.

Angelina won the ball in the midfield and Washington’s Leicy Santos bodied her from behind, trying to win it back. The Brazilian fought Santos off in a physical confrontation and then launched a good long ball down the right channel for Banda to run onto.

Despite getting to the ball first, Banda had a lot left to do from the right flank. She cut inside, flicked the ball with her back heel to beat her defender, working her way nearly to the corner of the six. Former Pride goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury saw the ball on Banda’s left foot and thought Orlando’s striker might try to pick out a runner in the middle of the box. Instead, Banda smashed the ball with her left foot. Kingsbury got a piece but the shot had a lot of powper and surprised the goalkeeper, opening the scoring in the 37th minute.

PURE BANDA-MONIUM!!!

Barbra Banda scores the opening goal in the #NWSLChampionship pic.twitter.com/5oK0B1h50m

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 24, 2024

That was the only goal celebration in the 2024 NWSL Championship. The Pride held off Washington’s repeated advances into the final third. The Spirit chased the game hard, finishing with advantages in many statistical categories, including possession (58%-42%), shots (26-9), shots on target (5-3), corner kicks (8-3), crosses (25-11), and passing accuracy (79%-69%). But the league’s best defense in the regular season held strong, and the Pride had their second major trophy in a 48-day span with the 1-0 win over Washington.

The Pride were even more effusive in their celebrating than they’d been in their last trip to Kansas City, when they’d suffered down a player for more than half the game and won the battle of the NWSL’s last two undefeated teams in the Current’s seemingly impenetrable home fortress. Team captain Marta can perhaps be forgiven for getting on the bad side of the television censors when expressing the intense relief of finally winning the league championship. Pride fans, who had suffered through some miserable seasons since the team’s inception, likely were experiencing similar feelings.

Upon returning home, the Pride were honored with a parade through downtown Orlando, showing off the team’s two trophies to a huge crowd downtown in front of City Hall. The players, coaches, and front office were showered with adulation from the fans, and rightfully so. Even entering the season with raised expectations, few could have foreseen the club achieving so much, and it was the culmination of an extraordinary amount of work and chemistry from everyone.

While winning the NWSL Shield is considered by some to be the bigger accomplishment of the two trophies Orlando won in 2024, doing the double was twice as nice. With the victory, the Pride became the first professional sports team from Orlando to win a major league trophy. As such, the NWSL Championship is worthy of the top spot on our list of the biggest moments of 2024. It wasn’t a unanimous choice by our staff in the voting, but it was the overwhelming winner.

---

This concludes our list of the the top 10 moments of 2024 for Orlando City, the Orlando Pride, and OCB. There’s no doubt the list was heavy on the Pride accomplishments this season, but that’s what happens when you win the double and set so many league and club records along the way. We had a lot of fantastic moments to choose from in 2024, so if we didn’t pick yours, well…maybe next year. We tried to work OCB into the list, but the Young Lions didn’t make the final 10 in our staff vote. Hopefully you enjoyed reliving these moments as much as we did writing about them.

Previous Top Moments of 2024

10. Orlando City’s massive second-half surge clinches top-four spot in Eastern Conference.

9. The Orlando Pride sign Zambian international striker Barbra Banda ahead of the 2024 season.

8. Facundo Torres scores his 47th goal for Orlando City, breaking the Lions’ all-time goal record.

7. Marta’s magical goal pushes the Orlando Pride past Kansas City and into the NWSL Championship.

6. Orlando City wins nervy three-game MLS Cup playoff series to advance past Charlotte FC.

5. Orlando Pride pick up the club’s first-ever playoff win in their first-ever time hosting a postseason match.

4. Orlando Pride rewrite club and NWSL record books throughout 2024 season and playoffs.

3. Orlando City dumps rival Atlanta United to advance to the club’s first-ever MLS Eastern Conference final appearance.

2. Orlando Pride earn the club’s first trophy by claiming the 2024 NWSL Shield with a win over Washington.

As we count down to the new year of 2025 — which will be Orlando City’s 11th in MLS, the Orlando Pride’s 10th in the NWSL, and OCB’s third in MLS NEXT Pro — and say goodbye to 2024, it’s time to look back at the club’s 10 best moments of the year as selected by The Mane Land staff via vote.

I usually do not compare myself to Ernest Hemingway, as the comparison is not very flattering to one of us. It is not important to delineate to whom it is not flattering, but suffice it to say one of us has significantly more writing talent than the other. Either way, I am going to borrow, and slightly modify, a line of Hemingway’s from The Sun Also Rises that I think perfectly encapsulates how the Pride won the NWSL Shield in 2024:

“How did you win the Shield?” Andrew asked. “Two ways,” Seb said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

The actual question from the novel was about how a character went bankrupt, but the 2024 Orlando Pride were, as the kids say, money all year long, gradually stacking up point after point until Oct. 6, when they defeated the Washington Spirit 2-0 and suddenly they were the NWSL regular-season champions.

In order to get to that night in October, however, the sun had to also rise (sorry, that line was right there) on 22 other game days, and during that run of 22 games the Pride were better than any team in league history, going undefeated with 16 wins, six draws, and a +27 goal differential. For some context, only two NWSL teams had ever even won 16 games in a full season prior to 2024, and neither of them opened with 54 total points in their first 22 games.

In looking back at that season-opening stretch, it is somewhat amusing to see that the Pride drew their first two games, and neither of the teams they drew against (Racing Louisville and Angel City) made the playoffs. They then drew with Chicago, which ultimately made the playoffs as the lowest seed, and then, after whipping off a league-record eight straight wins, the Pride drew with San Diego…which also did not make the playoffs. So in a 12-game opening stretch, the Pride won eight games and drew four, and those four draws were with the teams who ended up ranked ninth, 12th, eighth and 10th of 14 total teams.

It is almost certainly not a coincidence that there were draws in the first three games and all three were played without FIFPRO World Best XI superstar Barbra Banda, but in looking back at the season, it is a bit of a stunner to see that the team that won the league started so meekly.

The Pride finally got their first win of the season in Game 4, against another non-playoff team, the Utah Royals, and that became the first of the eight wins in a row I mentioned earlier. Banda dressed for the first time in the next game, and with her in the lineup, the team scored 15 goals in the next seven games and put the entire league on notice that something special was happening in Orlando.

San Diego put a stop to the eight-game winning streak when the Pride traveled west for a Friday night matchup, but the Pride held on for a 1-1 draw despite playing without a few key players who had just returned from international duty. The team then traveled all the way back across the country for its next match, a hard fought 0-0 draw at North Carolina, becoming the first team all season to take a point from the Courage in their home stadium.

That took the Pride to a season-opening lucky number 13 straight games without a loss and also had the entire league looking ahead and salivating at a possible undefeated team vs. undefeated team matchup in Kansas City in a few short weeks. The Pride held up their end of the bargain, smashing Utah 6-0 and Angel City 3-0, and Kansas City did its part as well. Orlando went into the matchup at Kansas City undefeated through 15 games and tied on points with the Current, who also were 10-0-5 at that point.

I do not think it is hyperbolic to say that the anticipation before the game was as big as any regular-season game in NWSL history. The game was played in prime time on Saturday night, with no other games going on when it kicked off, and the opening 40 minutes of the game were everything everyone had hoped for, including goals from Banda and Kansas City’s Temwa Chawinga, who each had been on fire during opening half of the season. A red card on Orlando’s Carrie Lawrence in the 42nd minute changed the tone of the game, but in the second half Adriana earned a penalty kick that Marta converted, and the Pride held on for a gritty 2-1 victory while playing the entire second half down a player. Kansas City did not like the Pride’s postgame celebrations, although someone with two thumbs and who is writing this article certainly did.

That win over the Current opened up a three-point gap at the top of the table for Orlando, a lead the Pride would never relinquish. After a month-long break for the Olympics and the NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup, the Pride returned to NWSL regular-season action and proceeded to win three straight games in shutout fashion. They then tied the Current at home (another shutout) before going on another two-game win streak, though sadly the Houston Dash (another team that did not make the playoffs) were able to score a goal to break up the run of shutouts. The win over the Dash took the Pride to a record of 16-0-6 and brings us back to the night of Oct. 6, when the Pride won the NWSL Shield suddenly, after having set themselves up to win it gradually.

At this point of the NWSL season, there were only two teams remaining that could win the league — the Pride and their opponents on the night, the Washington Spirit, who entered the game trailing the Pride by seven points. A win for the Pride would put them up 10 points with only three games remaining, clinching the Shield.

“It’s number one versus number two, so we expect a very competitive game,” Pride Head Coach Seb Hines said going into the match. “Washington has been in a good run of form, as well as us, so I would expect both teams going out to get a win.”

The Mane Land’s Sean Rollins wrote an excellent recap of the match, and this paragraph of his really encapsulates how the match went:

This was a dominant performance by the Pride. They took the game to the Spirit early and didn’t let up. There were some moments when it looked like the visitors might find a way through, but the Pride took a deserved lead when Marta scored from the spot in the 53rd minute. An Adriana shot in the 73rd minute was deflected in by Tara McKeown and determined to be an own goal. The second goal ensured the Pride would take all three points and secure the shield.

Washington did not go down quietly, creating a few chances in the final 15 minutes of the game, but they were unable to get anything past the outstanding Orlando defense, and when the whistle blew, the Pride had their first-ever piece of NWSL hardware. If you have not seen the NWSL Shield in person, you need to find a way to get to a Pride game and see it, because it would give Captain America’s a run for its money. The NWSL and Tiffany & Co. were not messing around with this design.

“I mean, a lot of praise has to go to the players and what they’ve done. They’ve been incredible, their efforts and what they’ve put into this year,” Hines said after that match. “And, you know, I said to them before, it wasn’t our time last year. They were bitterly disappointed how the season ended and it just wasn’t meant to be. And so they took that into fuel going into this year. And, you know, I can’t doubt them. They’ve been absolutely amazing from start to finish. And I’m so happy for them that they finally got the job done in front of our own fans.”

Marta, who famously was a little loose with her tongue after winning the NWSL playoffs a few weeks later, was able to keep her postgame comments rated PG after this one. “We worked so hard from the beginning and every single game,” Marta said. “And we looked to have this moment, especially here in our house. You know, in front of our fans and families and friends. It’s unbelievable. Something that I dreamed about.”

The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s first novel, and it is considered by many to be his finest work. This was the Pride’s first-ever league championship, and while it remains to be seen whether it will eventually be considered their finest, there is no doubt whatsoever that it was an amazing season and one that will be remembered for a long time. Interestingly, Hemingway thought that a later novel, The Old Man and the Sea, was his best work, so perhaps there is another epic season coming for the Pride as well, and they will catch the their version of a giant marlin, the full undefeated season.

That would be a fish tale for another day, but on this day we celebrate a season-long dominant performance by Orlando, and one that culminated with the Pride celebrating their reign in the rain on Oct. 6, holding the NWSL Shield aloft as 2024’s regular-season champions.

---

Come back through New Year’s Eve as we count down the remainder of the top 10 moments of 2024 for Orlando City, the Orlando Pride, and OCB.

Previous Top Moments of 2024

10. Orlando City’s massive second-half surge clinches top-four spot in Eastern Conference.

9. The Orlando Pride sign Zambian international striker Barbra Banda ahead of the 2024 season.

8. Facundo Torres scores his 47th goal for Orlando City, breaking the Lions’ all-time goal record.

7. Marta’s magical goal pushes the Orlando Pride past Kansas City and into the NWSL Championship.

6. Orlando City wins nervy three-game MLS Cup playoff series to advance past Charlotte FC.

5. Orlando Pride pick up the club’s first-ever playoff win in their first-ever time hosting a postseason match.

4. Orlando Pride rewrite club and NWSL record books throughout 2024 season and playoffs.

3. Orlando City dumps rival Atlanta United to advance to the club’s first-ever MLS Eastern Conference final appearance.