Adrian Heath on Toronto Win: “We Certainly Earned That One”

A game-tying goal against in the 90th minute. Eight original minutes of stoppage time. A game-winning penalty kick in the 100th minute. Only Orlando City could put together what we saw on Saturday night at Camping World Stadium — and the Lions are actually starting to get pretty good at it.

Maybe it has something to do with the club’s partnership with a rather large medical organization, but these Lions have a knack for sending fans into cardiac arrest with the late drama they create on almost a weekly basis.

"Once again we left it late, but we got a result there," Head Coach Adrian Heath said after the match. "Maybe we might have been fortunate with the penalty, I don’t know. You normally don’t get them, so we might have had a little bit of luck. We certainly earned that one because there’s too many times this club has had things go against them. So, I’m delighted for them, delighted for the supporters and we’ll move on."

Orlando City was arguably the better team on the field for most of the match. Surrendering a late goal in the 90th minute, especially at home, is enough to kill most teams, but Heath’s team doesn’t die easily — as we’ve learned often this season.

“I spoke to [San Jose head coach] Dominic Kinnear last week and he always says that ‘if you’re in the game, you always get a chance.’ That’s the nature of this league,” Heath added. “You always get a chance around the corner and sometimes it’s been really good play and sometimes it’s because of defending, but you do get opportunities.”

While the nature of the game seemed fairly familiar, Orlando City actually managed to take something a little unfamiliar out of the match: three points. The win puts the team back above the red line in the Eastern Conference standings, as more and more focus begins to shift on those elusive six playoff spots in the conference.

The win was also just the Lions' fourth in 15 matches, having seen several others slip out of their hands already this season.

"I didn’t think it was a must win, but when you look at the result, it was a big game for us and obviously it’s another home game against an Eastern Conference rival, so it is important," Heath said. "But the one thing it does do, is it gives you belief and confidence within the group because there’s nothing like giving players confidence like winning and waking up tomorrow morning with a good feeling and that’s what we’ll have in the morning."

Kaká, who returned to the lineup after missing the team’s last match against San Jose due to an injury, scored the game-winning penalty kick in the 10th minute of stoppage time to win the game.

"When they scored the second goal, it’s still difficult because they always come back from nowhere and fire back and we need to learn to keep the energy up until the final whistle," the Brazilian midfielder said. "But we kept fighting and we deserve the win because the team wanted to win and in the end Julio [Baptista] got a penalty in the last minute."

The Lions' captain added, "We get to carry this energy forward and after everything that happened in the game it is a big gift for us."

And now it’s on to Dallas, where the club will to continue on with this momentum on July 4.