I think its fair to say that the first match of the 2025 Major League Soccer season didn’t go how any of us wanted it to, but the good thing about the start of a season is that you have a chance to bounce right back. Orlando City’s bounce-back opportunity comes in the form of a visit from Toronto FC Saturday night.

A match against TFC means I spoke to Corey Brady, one of the writers over at the always excellent Waking the Red. Corey was kind enough to help us familiarize ourselves with this year’s Toronto team, and we greatly appreciate his assistance.

Robin Fraser is in his first year as head coach of Toronto. How does he want this team to play?

Corey Brady: Robin Fraser takes over from a team that has been a defensive disaster.  As a former defender, Fraser wants to bring defensive stability and to stop conceding as many goals as possible moving forward. In the last match, TFC lined up in a 4-4-2 formation and will probably use this formation. Additionally, Fraser might employ a 3-5-2 formation as it was the preferred option when he was last in Toronto as an assistant under Greg Vanney. In this system, Fraser needs to emphasize building the attack from the back and through the midfield, which is a departure from last year under John Herdman, who tended to rely on wing backs and wingers to progress the ball forward.

Take us through some of the off-season business for TFC. Who were some notable departures and arrivals?

CB: TFC management promised big changes through a rebuild, but there have not been any significant departures. The biggest name that left the club was former head coach John Herdman, who abruptly resigned at the end of November amid the drone spying scandal that rocked Canada Soccer. Also, striker Prince Owusu, who led the team with nine goals in the MLS regular season, was out of contract and signed with rival CF Montreal. Some other departures included bench players like Shane O’Neill, Brandon Servania, and Aime Mabika. The two biggest additions, apart from Fraser, are two players loaned from European sides. Toronto native and TFC academy grad Theo Corbeanu is a winger on loan from Spanish club Granada and played most of the game against D.C. United. TFC has recently acquired Norwegian international striker Ola Brynhildsen from Danish Superliga club Midtjylland, and he is yet to see any minutes with the club. One recent signing is Zane Monlouis, who is signed to a permanent deal from Arsenal. Monlouis was captain of the Arsenal U-21 squad and came on for the closing minutes of TFC’s opening match. 

There’s been a lot of uncertainty with Lorenzo Insigne this off-season, with the Italian reportedly rejecting moves away from the club but also being spotted in training with the team this week. Can you give us some insight into what’s going on with his situation? Is there a chance he’ll play this weekend?

CB: It was a bit of surprise last week to learn that Insigne did not make the trip with the team to Washington. However, he’s been spotted training with the team this week and leaves some room for speculation as to what Toronto FC’s management is doing with him currently. In the preseason matches, Insigne was not featured with any of the starting XIs and tended to see the pitch with the reserves and younger players. Multiple reports indicate that Insigne is not in the club’s plans for this year and that it is trying to move on from the Italian. Whether that means a complete buyout, a mutual contract termination, or something else remains to be seen. I wouldn’t bet on Insigne playing on Saturday night.

Are there any players who will be unavailable due to injury, suspension, etc.? What is your projected starting XI and score prediction?

CB: Central defender Nicksoen Gomis missed the season opener due to a calf injury and may not be available. New signing Ola Brynhildsen is working on regaining match fitness and might not be included in the lineup.

Fraser will probably roll out a 4-4-2 lineup again this weekend in Orlando. Here’s my starting XI: Sean Johnson; Richie Laryea, Kevin Long, Sigurd Rosted, Raoul Petretta; Federico Bernardeschi, Deiby Flores, Alonso Coello, Tyrese Spicer; Theo Corbeanu, Jonathan Osorio.

*Score prediction not provided.

Thank you to Corey for helping get us caught up on this year’s iteration of Toronto FC. Vamos Orlando!

Welcome to the final day of February, Mane Landers! This month has flown by for me, and I’m looking forward to a March that will include much more Orlando soccer, thanks to the Orlando Pride and Orlando City B seasons kicking off. I have a fairly busy weekend lined up but am hoping to catch the Lions on Saturday when they host Toronto FC. Let’s jump into today’s links!

Orlando City’s Club Profile

The club profiles for each MLS team were provided, giving the public a nice look at how each team’s roster is built for the 2025 season. Orlando City is one of 14 clubs that opted for the Designated Player model, with Martin Ojeda, Luis Muriel, and Marco Pasalic as its Designated Players. Ramiro Enrique and Nicolas Rodriguez occupy two of the three MLS U22 Initiative Player slots, while seven Lions are Targeted Allocation Money players. Center back Robin Jansson, who was listed as a TAM Player in last year’s profile, is not a TAM Player this time around. These snapshots are a pretty handy way of keeping track of where the club’s roster stands, as it also includes contract lengths, options, and unavailable players.

Orlando Pride Unveil New Kit

For their 10th season in the NWSL, the Orlando Pride revealed the “Decennial Kit” as their new primary jersey heading into the 2025 season. I’m a pretty big fan of the purple pattern, and the blue trim is a nice nod to the club’s past. I also like the iridescence on the badge, even if it feels like the kind of showy thing you can only do after winning the double. While I don’t mind the badge being in the center too much, I hate the Nike logo being right above it, as it creates a sandwiched look. The star representing the club’s first NWSL Championship is obviously a welcome addition though, and the jock tag wordmark is quietly one of the best parts of the kit. All in all, I like it, and there’s a decent chance it’ll wind up on my gift list this year.

Orlando City B Adds Thalles and Riyon Tori

With the MLS NEXT Pro season only a week away, Orlando City B made a pair of moves by adding forward Thalles on loan and signing Riyon Tori to a one-year contract. Thalles joins the club on loan through 2025 from Botafogo-SP in Brazil’s second division. Hopefully the 19-year-old can shine with the Young Lions after doing well in Brazil, and his loan includes an option to buy. As for Tori, he was selected by the Lions over a year ago in the third round of the 2024 MLS SuperDraft. The midfielder returned to college at Charlotte after being drafted and received First-Team All-AAC and Second-Team All-East Region honors last year.

Keeping Up With the Americans Abroad

Americans will clash in the EFL Championship on Saturday when former Lion Daryl Dike and West Brom travel to take on Brenden Aaronson and Leeds United. There’s also FA Cup action to look forward to, as Ethan Horvath could start in goal for Cardiff City when it plays Aston Villa today. Antonee Robinson, Tyler Adams, and Chris Richards are also expected to be in action in the tournament.

Other interesting things to keep an eye on this weekend include Naomi Girma possibly making her Chelsea debut, Giovanni Reyna’s uncertain role with Borussia Dortmund, and whether or not Damion Downs can score when Cologne plays Karlsruher.

Free Kicks

• CBS Sports ranked each NWSL team’s new kit for 2025, with the Pride coming in sixth. Personally, I think the Washington Spirit’s highlighter jersey is my least favorite this year, while I like the Portland Thorns’ understated red and black kit the most. There really aren’t many misses in my opinion though.
• Here’s a nice breakdown of the MLS NEXT Pro’s Eastern Conference teams as the season approaches. Gustavo Caraballo and Justin Ellis were noted as players of interest for OCB this year.
• The Seattle Reign announced that Veronica Latsko was placed on the Season-Ending Injury list due to a torn Achilles.
• Jose Mourinho was banned for four matches and fined for his comments about the refereeing following Fenerbahce’s game with Galatasaray earlier this week.

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a great Friday and rest of your weekend!

The first article I wrote for The Mane Land was in June of 2024, and by that time Orlando City had played 20 games and there was already a robust amount of data to look at and analyze, and trends were already visible. We are now at the beginning of the 2025 season, and while the one-game sample size makes it feel like the team is terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad, I want to urge everyone to heed the words from this week’s The Mane Land PawedCast and please do not panic.

Despite my love for hip hop music I will also urge you not to listen to French Montana’s “Don’t Panic,” as it is actually a terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad song, but I agree with Montana’s central theme of going ixnay on the anic-pay.

With their season-opening loss, Orlando City is no longer able to get to 100 points this year, but let’s be honest, nobody ever thought that was going to happen, even among the most optimistic of optimistic Lions fans. On the whole, I thought Orlando City actually played pretty well, the Lions just had one of those when-it-rains-it-pours games, and there was a confluence of negative events that happened during Saturday’s match that I think are unlikely to happen again this season, especially not all in the same match:

• A late scratch of a starting defender, forcing a back line that had never played together to start the match with zero preparation time.
• Zero saves and four goals allowed by Pedro Gallese.
• Three shots that hit the woodwork.
• Six “big chances” squandered.

Let’s take a look at each of these and evaluate the likelihood of them happening again this season. You may be surprised by just how rare the events that befell the Lions were.

A late scratch of a starting defender, forcing a backline that had never played together to start the match with zero preparation time

My guess is that during the preseason Orlando City had moments in practice when the back line consisted of (from left to right) Rafael Santos, Rodrigo Schlegel, David Brekalo and Dagur Dan Thórhallsson, but that group had never played a minute together in a real match until the season opener. In addition, during the last week of practice in advance of the game, the team surely was focused on a game plan of a Santos-Jansson-Schlegel-Thórhallsson starting group, since that was the announced lineup one hour before kickoff. Losing Jansson was a double blow, as not only did the Lions have to alter their lineup, but he is also the captain and one of the best defenders in the league.

I believe that as the season progresses there will be more defensive lineups used that have never played together before, especially as matches get into the second half and the team makes substitutions, but the likelihood of a late scratch right before a game starts and the team being forced to go with a back line with zero minutes played together is low, especially now that the group that started against Philadelphia — and that same group, but with Alex Freeman instead of Thórhallsson — has logged minutes together.

Reoccurrence Likelihood: 3%

Zero saves and four goals allowed by Pedro Gallese

I want to start by saying that to lay the blame on Gallese for the Union scoring four goals on their only four shots would be unfair, because three goals were scored at point-blank range and the fourth was shot into an open net that he had little chance to cover because of how that goal developed. That said, goalkeepers can and do make saves, even on shots from point-blank range, so Gallese could have possibly positioned himself differently or communicated more to the defense earlier to snuff out the attack. I do not think he bears all the blame, but he is not blameless either.

Looking at El Pulpo’s career, fbref.com shows Gallese having started 266 club matches as the goalkeeper, playing for clubs in Peru, Mexico, and in MLS with Orlando City. There were nine matches when he allowed at least four goals while making zero saves, which is 3.4% of his starts. With Orlando City specifically, he had four matches like this out of his 136 starts, which is 2.9%. In a 34-game regular season each game accounts for…would you look at that, 2.9% of the season, so I think the likelihood of another four-plus goals allowed and zero-save game is very low, especially for a goalkeeper of Gallese’s caliber.

Reoccurrence Likelihood: 5%

Three shots that hit the woodwork

The Lions smashed three shots off the woodwork against Philadelphia — two off the crossbar (Freeman and Luis Muriel) and one off the post (Marco Pašalić). Muriel and Pašalić hit theirs within seconds of one another, right before Pašalić got the ball back yet again and finally deposited the shot into the net. Hitting the post feels better than missing the goal entirely and better than having a shot saved, but not that much better, since none of those scenarios result in a goal. It may feel a little better, since the shot was (literally) on frame and got by the goalkeeper, but it does not help on the scoreboard.

Going back to the beginning of 2023 Orlando City has played 77 MLS matches, including regular season and playoffs, and in only two of those matches did the Lions put more than two shots off the woodwork. That works out to 2.6%, or once per every 38.5 games, but I think the team’s offense is going to be more prolific this year in terms of shots taken per game, and with a good amount of attacking talent, I think the shots will be more likely to be on and around the goal, leading to a slightly increased possibility of another game of two or more shots off the woodwork.

Reoccurrence Likelihood: 10%

Six “big chances” squandered

Fotmob takes everyone’s favorite metric of xG (expected goals) and calls any shot with an xG of 0.15 or greater as a “big chance.” That value is approximately a one-in-six chance of scoring, so we can quibble all day about whether that should be a big chance or not, but if we use that as a baseline, then there were six shots against Philadelphia that were big chances but were not capitalized on. All six of these happened in the second half and were the aforementioned three shots from close range that went off the woodwork by Freeman, Muriel and Pašalić, Pašalić’s close-range attempt that was blocked after Andre Blake fumbled a header from Schlegel, Muriel’s header that Blake saved at full stretch, and Iván Angulo’s shanked mis-hit shot off a great cross from Freeman.

Once again, going back to the beginning of 2023, the Lions have played 77 matches, and they only even created six or more big chances four times total, but twice in those four games they squandered at least six big chances. Two out of 77 is the same 2.6% as it was before, and using similar rationale, I also think that with a better offense will come more big chances, and unfortunately also the ability to miss out on scoring on big chances. Orlando City went one-for-seven in big chances against Philadelphia (Pašalić’s second goal was the one success), and once again I think there is a slight increase in probability for there to be another game when the Lions create six or more big chances but do not score on at least six of those chances.

Reoccurrence Likelihood: 15%

If you listen to The Mane Land PawedCast, you likely know our hosts Michael and Dave will often say that they were told there would be no math when discussing various statistics, but they were never told that by me. In looking at the four events that happened in the opening game, I have assigned the reoccurrence likelihoods to be 3%, 5%, 10%, and 15%.

There is some level of interdependency between these events, so they are not truly independent, but let’s pretend that they are four unique independent events. In that case, to find the probability of a game like the season opener happening again you would do that like this:

Probability = .03 x .05 x .10 x .15

That probability is approximately one in 44,000, which can also be referred to more colloquially as really, really, really unlikely. As I mentioned, there are some dependencies. For example, hitting the woodwork and squandering big chances can be linked, but to have another game where all of these events happen is still unlikely, even if I was way off on my estimates for the reoccurrence likelihoods.

There are 33 regular-season games remaining to play, and even if all of these events do not happen in the same game, Orlando City still needs to try to avoid any of them happening, because as individual events they were not great, and collectively they were a disaster. Couple that with what was likely one of the worst touches of Schlegel’s career at the exact wrong time and it all led to a loss against a team that was eminently beatable.

I view this is as a silver lining, and if you are interested in other silver linings, I wrote several of those in our weekly private newsletter, available only to those who subscribe to our Buy Me a Coffee membership at the TAM Player level or above, which you can do by clicking on this hyperlink. We would love to share even more content with you.

Orlando City has a great opportunity in its next game to show that the season opener was an aberration, full of bad luck and once-in-a-season-type negative events, and the Lions can make us forget all of that by getting a first win under their belt by defeating Toronto FC in the season’s second game. I believe that they will do so, and I am looking forward to watching it happen with my own eyes in Inter&Co Stadium on March 1.

Vamos Orlando!