Lion Links: 7/17/16

Good Sunday morning Mane Landers and welcome back to the Church of Lion. No tips this week, because if you were like me, you stayed up late last night to watch the Orlando City game out in Vancouver and skipped church. We are bad people.

Oh well, grab that cup of coffee and let’s hit the links!

Orlando City Draws 2-2 at Vancouver

It was another draw — Orlando City’s 10th of the season — but there was something different about this one. The Lions played flowing, attractive soccer and easily could have scored more than the two goals they scored in last night’s 2-2 draw in Vancouver. David Ousted performed crimes against Cyle Larin and David Mateos to deny a couple of goals, and Julio Baptista missed a penalty. But this was by far the best performance since Adrian Heath was fired. Our coverage:

• Gavin Ewbank has your match recap.
• Logan Oliver has player grades and Man of the Match.
• The opponents' view comes from SB Nation's Vancouver blog, Eighty Six Forever.

Check back later this morning for our five takeaways from last night's game.

Orlando Pride Falls 1-0 at Home

The news wasn't quite as good for Tom Sermanni's Orlando Pride squad. Despite playing a hard-fought game, the Pride fell 1-0 at home to the Chicago Red Stars in a fourth-place battle at Camping World Stadium last night. The Pride generated some chances but one moment of magic from the Red Stars was the difference in the match, which featured a lengthy delay for lightning in the area — something we've seen far too much of this summer. Austin David was on hand and has your match recap. Later today we'll have a photo gallery from Matt Starkey.

Orlando City Trade Alert! Sort of.

I hope I didn’t get your hopes too high, as the club’s first transaction during the summer window happened yesterday. Orlando City traded the rights to Luxembourg/French defender Maxine Chanot to New York City FC for allocation money. The 26-year-old is primarily a center back and has played professionally in England, France, and Belgium. He’s even made 19 appearances for the Luxembourg national team.

This move strikes me as a little odd since the team’s defense isn’t a strength right now and you send off a player to a conference rival. Either way, the move has been made and we shall see how it plays out.

#OrlandoUnited Auction Still Going On

Orlando City and the Orlando Pride are still auctioning off game worn jerseys to help the OneOrlando Fund. The jerseys are complete with the #OrlandoUnited game patch, too. Other items are also up for bid, including signed jerseys from players around MLS, so if you have any interest in some awesome attire and want to contribute, head on over to the auction page today!

Youth Development in the United States

Well, with the failure of the u-23 Men’s National Team qualifying for the Olympics, questions are being raised again about the youth development here in the good old USA. Back in April, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber told the Associated Press, "at the youth level, we're just not good enough, and not as good as we need to be."

The above linked ESPNFC article gets quite a few opinions on the current landscape of the youth program and what we can do to improve. Some coaches advocate going to Europe while others want resources allocated to strengthening what we have here. Again, lots of different opinions across the board, so I’d be happy to hear in the comment section where your thoughts are.

Free Kicks

Have you read Brad Newton’s article on Pokemon or Brazilian Stadium, yet? I got three out of six right, so let’s see if you can do better…Manchester United's new boss, Jose Mourinho, is quite pleased with his team’s 2-0 win over Wigan in a friendly…The New York Cosmos of the NASL just want a new soccer stadium, but their potential neighbors want none of that mess. I mean, all the team wants is to build a compound with hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, grocery stores — wait what kind of soccer stadium is this?!

Well team, that’s all for today. I think I’m going to go back to bed – who schedules these games on the west coast anyway?