Orlando City only has four more league games to play before Major League Soccer takes a break until late July to accommodate the World Cup. While the Lions have started to move in the right direction with two wins in their last three league games, the good guys still sit 13th in the Eastern Conference table. Fortunately, Orlando has a good opportunity to make up some ground in the standings before the league goes on its summer sabbatical. Let’s take a look at why.

For one thing, despite the rough start to Orlando’s season, the Eastern Conference as a whole hasn’t had a particularly strong go of things either. Nashville SC is atop the standings with 23 points, but no other team has eclipsed the 20-point mark, and Orlando is just five points behind fifth place D.C. United. Contrast that to the Western Conference, where the San Jose Earthquakes have 28 points at the top of the table, five teams have 20 or more points, and Orlando would be 10 points out of fifth place.

Another factor in OCSC’s favor is who it’ll play in its next four games. The Lions will only face one team currently above the playoff line, while they’ll also take on the two teams directly below them, and the team directly above them in the standings.

First up is Saturday”s road match against CF Montreal — a team the Lions have beaten already this year — which currently sits one point and one place below Orlando in the table. After that, Orlando gets a midweek game on Wednesday when it hosts the Philadelphia Union. Philly is currently last in the East with six points, and while the Union’s 17 goals conceded is actually sixth best in the conference, the total of nine goals the team has scored is comfortably the worst.

A few days after hosting Philly at home, Orlando will welcome Atlanta United to Inter&Co Stadium on Saturday, May16. The Five Stripes are currently level with OCSC on points but sit one spot ahead of the Lions in the standings due to a superior goal difference. The toughest test, at least on paper, will come in the final game before the break when the Lions travel to face sixth-place FC Cincinnati. Anything can obviously happen once the games are being played, but in theory this stretch of the schedule is a more welcoming one than the period that saw Orlando play New York City FC, Nashville, and LAFC on the road in quick succession.

Then there’s the state of the Lions themselves. The defense admittedly still needs some work, as Orlando is yet to keep a clean sheet in the league and has conceded fewer than two goals in only four of its 11 games. Thankfully, the offense is improving though. Orlando has scored 10 goals in its last three league games, and bagged an additional four against a heavily rotated New England Revolution side in the U.S. Open Cup.

Outside of the actual product on the field, OCSC is slowly but surely starting to get healthier. Eduard Atuesta and Wilder Cartagena have both made returns from injury, Robin Jansson has been back in the starting lineup for a few games now, and Duncan McGuire also made an appearance from the bench in the 4-3 win over Inter Miami. Injuries haven’t been the only thing that have hampered Orlando this year, but they certainly haven’t made life any easier either, and having key players back is never going to be a bad thing.

Given how topsy turvy this season has been so far, it’s anyone’s guess as to how these next four games will play out on the field. But given the middling state of the Eastern Conference, the quality of the upcoming opponents, Orlando’s improved offense, and an increasing pool of healthy players, the Lions have a good opportunity to start digging themselves out of the hole they find themselves in at the bottom of the standings. The games still need to be played, but given how hopeless things looked in March, it’s just nice to have some reasons to be hopeful. Now all the Lions need to do is take advantage of the chance in front of them. Vamos Orlando!

Happy Friday, Mane Landers! We have some exciting games ahead of us over the next few days, with three straight days of Orlando soccer to enjoy. It all starts with the Orlando Pride’s game tonight, with Orlando City playing Saturday afternoon, and Orlando City B wrapping things up on Sunday. Make sure to plan your weekend accordingly! Let’s get to the links.

Orlando City Gets Ready for Road Match

The Lions are on the road this weekend for a game in Canada against CF Montreal on Saturday. Orlando is coming off of a dramatic 4-3 win over rival Inter Miami, with Martin Ojeda scoring a hat trick. Ojeda has had Montreal’s number in recent years, scoring at least once against the Canadian club each year for the past three years. Orlando hasn’t lost to Montreal since 2023, but it also hasn’t won on the road against Montreal since 2021. Saturday’s match will also be a reunion of sorts for goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau, who joined Montreal’s academy at age 15 and played there for nine years. He was excellent in Orlando’s win in Miami, so hopefully he can keep it up in his home country.

Orlando Pride Host North Carolina Courage Tonight

The Orlando Pride are back in action tonight with a home game against the North Carolina Courage. Both teams are coming off of losses last week, with the Pride falling 4-2 to the Washington Spirit. Tonight’s match will pit the league’s top two scorers against each other, with Barbra Banda scoring seven so far while Ashley Sanchez has scored five. The Pride will play three consecutive road games after tonight, putting an emphasis on a strong showing at home. It’s also Survivor Night at the stadium, so make sure to bring any immunity idols if you’ll be in attendance. The Pride could use any advantage they can get.

Johnny Cardoso Injured Ahead of World Cup

Atletico Madrid announced that American midfielder Johnny Cardoso was diagnosed with an ankle sprain he sustained in training, casting doubt on his availability for the World Cup next month. He’ll now work on rehabilitation before the club provides a timetable for his return. The 24-year-old started in the United States Men’s National Team’s game against Belgium in March, but he had to exit that camp due to injury as well. Hopefully he has a smooth and successful recovery from this.

English Clubs Reach European Finals

Aston Villa beat Nottingham Forest 4-0 in the Europa League, overcoming a loss in the first leg to secure a spot in the final. John McGinn scored twice to help his team reach its first major European final since 1982. Villa will play in the final on May 20 against SC Freiburg, which also bounced back from a loss in the first leg by beating Braga 3-1 in Germany. A red card to Mario Dorgeles in the sixth minute reduced Braga to 10 men early on and Lukas Kubler bagged a brace for Freiburg.

In the Europa Conference League, Crystal Palace won 2-1 against Shakhtar Donetsk to advance to the final on May 27 against Rayo Vallecano. As a result of this week’s semifinals across the continent, English clubs are in contention to win the Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League.

Free Kicks

• The World Cup trophy will be on display for public viewing at Universal Orlando Resort on May 11 and 12.
• Nashville SC forward Sam Surridge topped the MLS MVP rankings at this point of the season, with the Chicago Fire’s Hugo Cuypers in second. Martin Ojeda wasn’t listed, but we know he can go on a hot streak and last week’s hat trick might’ve been the spark.
• Barcelona can clinch the La Liga title with a win or a draw at home against Real Madrid on Sunday.
• As for how Real Madrid’s preparations for El Clasico are going, Federico Valverde suffered a head injury after an altercation with teammate Aurelien Tchouameni.
• ESPN detailed the multitude of pain points fans could deal with during the upcoming World Cup, as well as exploring at what point is it too much of a hassle to attend the world’s best sporting event.
• Darwin Nunez is reportedly leaving Al-Hilal this summer, making him an interesting name to keep an eye out for over the next few months.

That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a fantastic Friday and rest of your weekend!

May is a big month for graduations, as students of all ages are wrapping up their school years and preparing to move up to the next level. Some graduations are bigger deals than others, but it is a big deal for every student that they accomplished everything required of them during the school year and should be celebrated thusly. Dr. Seuss’s book Oh The Places You’ll Go is commonly gifted to graduates in honor of their accomplishments, as the famous author writes about soaring to great heights and overcoming obstacles while on the journey of life.

That book is great and one I highly recommend that everyone, not just graduating students, read every year. I do not know if Orlando City’s Justin Ellis has read that book recently, but he is certainly going places with how he has played in 2026. Ellis started the year primarily playing with Orlando City B (OCB), but his last six games in all competitions have all been with Orlando City. In those games he started five of them, playing a total of 443 minutes, and he scored two goals while adding three assists. For the season Ellis now has one goal and two assists in MLS play, one goal and one assist in U.S. Open Cup play, and three goals and two assists in MLS NEXT Pro play for a total of five goals and five assists in all competitions. He is the leading scorer among all three Orlando teams, as you can see in the chart below.

I was a mathematics major, but you do not have to be one to notice that the chart below will only list eight goal contributions for Ellis, rather than the 10 I just mentioned. The chart below comes from Opta’s tracking on the American Soccer Analysis website, and they only track data from games in league play (a cool feature of theirs is that they track stoppage time minutes, so the per 90-minutes-values are far more accurate than on other websites). Even so, Ellis still leads all three teams in total goal contributions and also goal contributions per 90 minutes played.

All three leagues are at different parts of their season, but the per-90-minutes data normalizes it for all players. In the chart you will see two numbers in each category, the raw number for that category, and then the per-90-minutes number inside of the parentheses. The overall rank is as compared to every player who has at least three goal contributions (there are 218 as of Wednesday) across MLS, MLS NEXT Pro, and the NWSL.

• * This dataset only includes primary assists, though MLS counts both primary and secondary assists in the league’s official tracking. None of the players in the chart have accumulated any secondary assists thus far, though Banda and Ojeda certainly should have accumulated at least one assist somehow by now with how well they have set their teammates up. Sigh.

If we take a look at the two individual per-90-minutes categories of goals per 90 minutes and assists per 90 minutes, a player who contributes equally in all facets of the offense would be one who has pretty similar numbers in each, as that would make them just as proficient in setting up their teammates as they are in scoring goals. Most players tend towards being goal scorers or distributors, but very few players are adept at being both. In his short professional career Ellis is one of the rare players who scores and assists at nearly even quantities, as he has scored 14 goals and assisted on 11 while playing for Orlando City and OCB.

Looking at his 2026 performance alone, Ellis is in the top 17 among all players in both total goal contributions and goal contributions per 90 minutes during league play, with a perfectly even four goals and four assists and 0.52 per 90 minutes for each. That puts him right on the f(x) = x line (real ones know), and he, St. Louis 2’s Palmer Ault, and San Diego’s Anders Dreyer are the only players with at least eight goal contributions (Ault has eight and Dreyer has 10) to have the same number of assists as goals thus far this season.

The scatterplot below shows all 218 players with at least three goal contributions and their associated goals and assists per 90 minutes, and you can see that Ellis is one of only a few players to be strongly positive on both measures.

Ellis’ excellent stats are combined between the two leagues, but based on how well he has played for Orlando City recently it is quite possible that (oh) the places that he will go in 2026 will no longer include any OCB games, unless it is to watch from the stands. After last year’s great year — what a season, in fact! — Ellis is rolling along on the Alex Freeman track.

The senior Lions’ next three games are against teams that are all right next to them at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings (Montreal, Philadelphia, and Atlanta), meaning that all three games are winnable, especially considering that two of the three will be at home. Results have been better recently, especially after the injection of Ellis into the lineup, and thanks to his contributions I am feeling better about the team’s chances of putting together a good run of form in the upcoming weeks.

Will they succeed? Yes! They will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

Vamos Orlando!