Orlando City Working to Fix Mistakes, Bounce Back at Home

After two home wins, Orlando City SC experienced its first defeat of the 2017 Major League Soccer season last Saturday in a road game against Columbus Crew SC. But the negative outcome didn’t seem to hurt the players’ confidence as they head into the team’s fourth match of the year against the New York Red Bulls this Sunday at Orlando City Stadium.

The general impression after the loss to Crew SC was that the team executed most of its game plan correctly and only needs to be better inside both boxes to resume its winning trajectory against the Red Bulls.

“We are OK, you know”, said midfielder Will Johnson. “We just need to avoid the mental mistakes we made (against Crew SC). We have to be more aggressive, make more plays on the defensive side and obviously we also have to be able to make more plays in the opposition’s box to be able to score goals. I think it’s just an overall improvement, another 10 to 15% improvement, and a little more quality in both boxes.”

Forward Giles Barnes shared the same opinion, as the Designated Player said that with a few adjustments the Lions will be ready to celebrate another three points in front of their home fans this weekend.

“We need to work on the final details in both boxes. Once we do that, we’ll be fine,” he said. “We’ll have a chance to go home, we’ll learn from it and go get three points on it.”

The New York Red Bulls, are not in a good moment now as they are winless and have collected only one point over the past three weeks. For Head Coach Jason Kreis, showing the mental toughness necessary to bounce back after the first negative outcome of the year is the most important thing about the next match.

“We go home this week with a fantastic opportunity to show a really positive reaction after our first negative result of the season”, he said.