Orlando City at Philadelphia Union Postponed Due to Craptastic Weather

Update: The rescheduled day and time for tonight’s postponed match is tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. Orlando City SC announced that the club had fought to postpone the match beyond tomorrow but the league decided otherwise.

Kudos to the club for calling out Major League Soccer for this decision. Orlando City’s match against New York City FC on Wednesday is a cup quarterfinal and now not only will the Lions have one fewer day of rest, but they’ll be made to play in the afternoon sun instead of a night game, and then travel home later than originally expected. In fairness, NYCFC also plays tomorrow, but the start time is to hours later in the evening. The Pigeons are playing at home tomorrow.

What this will do to the lineup has yet to be determined. James O’Connor’s options are limited by whoever made the trip to Philadelphia and ostensibly he selected his travel roster assuming the match would be played Saturday night. At any rate, tomorrow will be a long day for us, as we’ll be covering two major international cup finals in addition to Orlando City’s match.

Original story below:

Orlando City’s match at the Philadelphia Union, which had been delayed from its 7 p.m. start time, has been postponed. More severe weather is expected to move through the Chester, PA area and as there is little sense starting a match that is just going to be delayed again later, the move was made to postpone.

“We’re being told that the game is definitely going to be rearranged,” James O’Connor told My65 correspondent Jenny Chiu. “Obviously tonight it’s not possible to get the game in. I think they’re going through a process now to figure out when the game will be played.”

For the rematch of a fixture won by Philadelphia in Orlando on Wednesday, O’Connor had planned to change the shape and rotate the squad quite a bit — in part due to manage workload, partly due to suspensions, and partly due to the upcoming U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal match on Wednesday.

“We’re here. We’d like to get the game played. But I think obviously we need to be mindful of the storm, the lightning,” O’Connor said. It’s obviously very serious. So, again, we’ll see what the league come up with and see when they rearrange it, whether that’s tomorrow or whenever they decide to rearrange the game. We just have to be professional and just sort of see what they come up with.”

After tomorrow, next up for the Lions is a USOC match-up against New York City FC on Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. The next league game will be at home against the Columbus Crew next Saturday night.