Orlando City
Orlando City vs. Columbus Crew: Player Grades and Man of the Match

Hey there, Mane Lander’s it’s me again, reporting for grades. Listen, fam, this one wasn’t pretty. I mean I’ll take the three points and I’m all for being aggressive, a-g-g-r-e-s-s-i-v-e, but last night was a bit much. Now before you come for my head, the yellows were completely unbalanced. Columbus got away with a lot of surprising things, and then City would turn around and get the foul called for the exact same play. You know what we say, PRO gonna PRO. Here’s how I felt the Lions did in the 1-0 win over Columbus.
Starters
GK, Brian Rowe, 7 — We all know what tends to happen when the Lions are up by one in the 85th-90th range and while Columbus made them work for it, Brian Rowe made a Grinwis-esque save to deny the goal, the crowd went wild, and tempers on the pitch flared. Not a bad showing for the keeper.
D, Kamal Miller, 7 — Miller did well to deflect a Columbus cross in the 37th minute to send the ball over the net. When referee David Gantar found his cards, Miller was booked in the 56th for taking down Zardes in the corner. Miller had one shot, two dribbles, one tackle, two interceptions, one clearance and a 77% passing rate on 50 touches.
D, Robin Jansson, 7 — Jansson started despite his rib contusion, and in a race to the ball in the 14th minute beat Zardes but fell hard to the turf and hit his head, but was able to continue. The Swede had a great play in the 60th, using his length to stretch out and break up the Crew’s attack. Jansson registered two interceptions, five clearances, and an 86% passing rate on 58 touches.
D, Lamine Sané (MotM), 8 — Wouldn’t you know the second yellow came only two minutes after the first on Miller as Sané was booked for a foul on David Guzman. Sané had a perfect moment in the match when he sent a beautiful pass to send Ruan up the right flank. Sané passed at a 94% rate on his 73 touches (second on the team). He technically had the second-highest passing percentage to Uri Rosell’s 100% accuracy on only 14 attempts. Additionally the defender made one interception, five clearances, and two blocked shots. Healthy Sané strikes again!
D, Ruan Teixeira, 6.5 — The Brazilian has been trying to work back to what we saw early in the season. His assist on the goal by Benji Michel was perhaps just what he needs to get back in it. This match Ruan finished with one tackle, three clearances, two crosses, the assist, and only a 57% passing rate on his 44 touches.
MF, Will Johnson, 7 — It was a mostly quiet night for the Canadian, though in true WillJo fashion, he never stopped in the minutes he played. His 41 touches saw an 86% passing rate, while defensively he had four tackles, an interception, and a clearance.
MF, Carlos Ascues, 7.5 — Ascues took a bit of time to warm up and find himself in this match and was a bit frustrating to watch early in the first half, but in the second half he sent a beautiful ball to Chris Mueller, who won a free kick from the play. In a (not) surprising turn of events, Ascues was booked in the 81st minute. The Peruvian had a game-high seven tackles, two clearances, a blocked shot, and his 66 touches saw an 83% passing rate on 42 attempts.
MF, Sebas Mendez, 7 — What position was Mendez playing? Because I’m pretty sure he covered every inch of the field. Wouldn’t you know, Mendez was booked in the 92nd minute. Mendez finished with a team-high 78 touches and passed at a 90% rate. Defensively, the Ecuadorian made six tackles and a clearance.
F, Chris Mueller, 6.5 — The Lions did well to pick up a Crew turnover in the 12th minute, and Mueller had a nice breakaway but he failed to look up and was easily dispossessed. Mueller earned a free kick off the pass from Ascues in the 48th minute but it led to nothing. We saw Chris block the Crew’s cross that was earned from Miller’s yellow. Mueller finished with a 79% passing rate on his 30 touches, making two tackles, and an interception, but it was a fairly quiet night.
F, Tesho Akindele, 6.5 — Tesho had a nice cut between defenders in the 43rd but his pass led Mueller a bit too far and it slowly made its way right to Joe Bendik. A tired Tesho pushed through and in the 73rd minute got a nice key pass to create a chance for Santiago Patiño but the rookie’s shot was blocked. Akindele made one tackle, two key passes, and he had a 75% passing rate.
F, Benji Michel, 7.5 — We saw Michel make a nice play to take the ball back in the box but his cross attempt was thwarted by Bendik. Michel sent a weak cross right into Bendik again in the 46th. All his efforts finally paid off when he slammed in a beautiful cross from Ruan, helping the Lions bring home three points. His nine attempts on 33 total touches produced a 67% passing rate. Defensively he made one interception and three clearances.
Substitutes
F, Dom Dwyer (58’), 5 — Dwyer came on for Mueller, which totally shocked me as I thought Tesho would certainly be coming off first. Dom may never have the chance to get in full form this season. In the 93rd an aerial duel found Dwyer’s elbow in Josh Williams’ face earning him a straight red. I still believe, Dom. I still believe.
F, Santiago Patiño (72’), 7 — Again, I was surprised to see Patiño come on for Johnson instead of the exhausted Akindele. The kid does nothing if not bring some incredible energy to the pitch when he subs on! One minute in, with the help of Akindele, Santi got a chance but it was blocked for an Orlando City corner. His 15 touches saw a 75% passing rate, he had a team-high two shots, and he made one big tackle in his own defensive corner, as he made the most of his minutes.
MF, Uri Rosell, (78’) 6.5 — Uri came on for Akindele and the Canadian finally got a well-deserved rest. As mentioned earlier the Spaniard’s 14 touches produced a 100% passing rate on 11 attempts, and he had a clearance. There’s not much else to say about his time in this one.
I think that’ll do it! Who was your Man of the Match? Be sure to vote in the poll and let us know why in the comments!
Polling Closed
Player | Votes |
Uri Rosell | 61 |
Kyle Smith | 27 |
Kamal Miller | 23 |
Santiago Patino | 12 |
Will Johnson | 36 |
Other (tell us who in the comments!) | 1 |
Orlando City
Converting More Big Chances Could Propel Orlando City’s Season Into An Epic Universe
An analysis of Orlando City’s conversion rate on big chances and an evaluation of the impact of a small improvement .

If you could all hop in the Wayback Machine with me, I would like to take you all the way back to Sunday, May 18, 2025. It was a glorious day, punctuated by a 3-0 victory over Orlando City’s southern rivals Inter Miami. The Five Takeaways article about that game was pretty awesome too, and in that article, the dashingly handsome and spellbindingly brilliant author noted that Orlando City “could, and probably should, have scored five or even six goals” against Miami.
You probably surmised that the author of that Five Takeaways article was me, and I appreciate your immediate recognition of my handsomeness and brilliance. I am also pretty confident that you believe that Orlando City should have scored more than three goals as well, and I am here to tell you that the eye test and the tracking data agree. The wonderful site fotmob.com tracks a statistic coded by analysts from Opta called “big chances,” which they define on their frequently asked questions page as:
A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances.
The key words in their definition are “reasonably be expected,” and so, while the word ‘expected’ is in this definition, do not confuse “reasonably be expected” with “expected goals” (xG). I think of expected goals more like a geography problem, kind of like the game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Was that an excuse just to mention that one of my best friends was a contestant on that show in 1994 and won a trip to Orlando? A gentleman never tells.
Back to the geography problem, expected goals is really just a mapping exercise, mapping conversion percentages to locations all over a soccer field and then summing up all the shots taken from those locations in a game. By that measure, fbref.com had Orlando City with an xG of 2.9 against Miami, extremely close to the actual output of three goals. Earlier in the season, however, the xG tracking was 1.6 against Toronto…but the Lions scored four goals.
There are countless examples of the real results not matching the xG. While I value xG and just finished reading a great book called How To Win The Premier League: The Inside Story of Football (soccer)’s Data Revolution, which details the history of expected goals and how the author — the former director of research at Liverpool — helped build the first analytics department at a Premier League club using xG as a foundational measurement tool, I still think xG needs to be used alongside other measures and cannot stand alone by itself.
One of the main reasons I think it needs to be combined with other data is that xG requires a shot to be taken, and sometimes that does not happen. Consider Orlando City’s third goal against Miami, if Duncan McGuire’s cross had gone untouched then the xG on that play would have gone from 0.56 to 0.0, because without a shot attempt there is no shot location, and no map coordinates to use to find the xG for that area of the field.
This takes us back to that definition of big chances, which notably does not include a requirement for a shot to be taken. Duncan McGuire’s pass clearly created a chance to score, and that pass, combined with the perfectly timed run from Dagur Dan Thórhallsson, meant that Orlando City had a great opportunity to score from a location where anyone with eyes would think that “a player should reasonably be expected to score.” If Thórhallsson had whiffed, then the xG would have said no sir, you get 0.0 xG, even though everyone who watched that pass would have said, “Oh my, he should have scored that, what a big chance missed.”
Note: Thórhallsson did not miss, and it was glorious.
According to Opta’s tracking, Orlando City had eight big chances in the game against Miami. Which sounds closer to your memory of that match: Orlando City’s xG was 2.9 or Orlando City created eight big chances to score? I think most people probably think of the latter and remember the breakaways and the close-range opportunities and how it seemed like Orlando City had so many clear chances to score.
Looking at the 2025 season to date, the Lions are tied for the MLS lead with 50 big chances thus far, and just as against Miami, you can see that their conversion rate on those big chances has not been great:
Club | Big Chances | Big Chances Converted | Conversion Rate |
---|---|---|---|
San Jose | 50 | 20 | 40% |
Orlando City | 50 | 14 | 28% |
Chicago | 46 | 18 | 39% |
Columbus | 46 | 14 | 30% |
Nashville | 41 | 12 | 29% |
Vancouver | 40 | 21 | 53% |
LAFC | 39 | 14 | 36% |
Miami | 39 | 20 | 51% |
Minnesota | 39 | 14 | 36% |
Portland | 37 | 16 | 43% |
MLS Average* | 34 | 12.4 | 37% |
- *The MLS Average is the average of every team except Orlando City
If you were wondering, yes, 28% is among the league’s worst conversion rates on big chances. It is tied for second worst, ahead of only Austin, which must be driving its fans up the wall with a 19% conversion rate on 31 big chances. Maybe the release of Wicked at the end of 2024 put the kibosh on good things happening to those in green for a while. Vancouver, on the other hand, is out there Burning Blue like Mariah the Scientist (contemporary pop song alert), converting a league-leading 53% of its big chances.
For Orlando City, however, 28% feels right. It feels terrible, but it also feels right. How many times did it seem like it would be harder not to score than to score, but then the Lions went ahead and did not score? Luis Muriel leads the team with 12 big chances missed (second most in MLS), and while it takes an extreme amount of skill and work to get into position to miss chances, the reality is that 12 times independent analysts thought Muriel should reasonably have been expected to score and he did not.
Anytime there is a lower-than-average performance there is always a question of whether that performance is reality or if there is a regression to the mean coming. In this case, regression to the mean would actually be positive, or something more akin to ascension to the mean. If Orlando City performs at a conversion rate similar to that of the rest of the league, the Lions will score about one additional goal per every 10 big chances, or an additional five goals over their next 50 big chances generated.
Considering that the Lions generated those 50 big chances in 14 games, it is easy math to double that and put Orlando City at 100 big chances after 28 games at the current pace. That extra five goals, were it to happen and the team continued to similarly convert its “small chances,” would net the team 32 goals in the next 14 games, and take the team to 59 after 28 games, with six more games still to play in the season.
Readers of UpRoar, the weekly newsletter for The Mane Land’s Buy Me a Coffee subscribers, which you can subscribe to by clicking this link, will know that Orlando City’s offense is already on pace to break the club’s MLS goal-scoring record, which is…wait for it…59 goals, and so, if the Lions could start converting more of their big chances, then the 2025 team could not only break that record but smash it — like, epically smash it like the Super Smash Brothers.
And speaking of…what better way to celebrate today’s official opening of Epic Universe but to imagine Óscar Pareja and the coaching staff out there training their goal-scoring dragons and super Marco and Luis-gi to tame the dark world of opposition defenses with their Harry Potter-esque offensive wizardry?
That would be epic, and if you are asking me what the coaching staff should do, that is what I pick.
Orlando City
Orlando City vs. Nashville SC: Five Takeaways
Here’s what we learned from a regrettable 3-2 loss to Nashville SC in the U.S. Open Cup.

Orlando City came into the U.S. Open Cup Round of 16 match against Nashville SC riding a 12-match unbeaten streak, including a 3-0 thrashing of in-state rival Inter Miami on Sunday. The Lions’ next match against the Portland Timbers looms on Saturday. Despite the glut of matches, Orlando fielded most of the normal starters in an effort to advance. Unfortunately, the Lions fell 3-2 to the visitors to end any hopes of another Open Cup trophy. Here are my five takeaways from a disappointing midweek match.
Pasalic Power
Marco Pasalic decided he wanted to do it all himself on the first goal. As he has so often, he went up the right side before cutting in to the left and burying an absolute rocket of a shot into the back of the net to give Orlando City the early lead. It’s the type of goal we’ve come to expect from Pasalic since his arrival and it was his first U.S. Open Cup goal on his debut in the competition. Unfortunately, he’ll have to wait until at least next year for his next USOC match.
Tired Starters
One could see that the Orlando City defenders were running on tired legs. It seemed obvious in the two goals given up in the first half. The first goal bounced around in the box and then off of Rodrigo Schlegel for an own goal. On the second goal, no one stepped to Ahmed Qasem at the top of the box, allowing him to put an easy shot into the bottom right corner of the goal.
Alex Freeman was near Qasem, but had to anticipate a pass to the wing. Cesar Araujo trailed Qasem passively, and he was not in position to do anything when the Nashville attacker opted to take the space the defense gave him. On the left side, Nashville’s attackers torched David Brekalo from the start. The defense simply looked tired, including Araujo in central midfield.
Enrique’s Equalizer
Orlando City came back out after halftime looking much better on the ball. The tactical adjustments worked as the team pushed for an equalizer. Working along the right side of the attack, Freeman sent the ball to Pasalic, who smartly provided a one-touch pass to Ramiro Enrique for the finish. It was a well-worked attack and a beautiful finish.
Handball Debacle
In the 72nd minute, there was a handball in the box on Nashville’s Wyatt Meyer. Unfortunately, referee Joshua Encarnacion did not make the call. To make matters worse, he then gave Freeman a yellow card for dissent a little further down the field seconds later. There is no video review in the U.S. Open Cup, so there was no second look available to make the correct call. It was a double whammy of a situation. To then pour salt on the wound, Meyer scored Nashville’s third goal to give the visitors the lead again.
Taking it Too Seriously?
Oscar Pareja takes the U.S. Open Cup seriously. So seriously that he started most of the regulars despite the emotional and physical toll taken in the match against Inter Miami and the volume of minutes they’ve played throughout May every three days. Initially, it looked to be the right decision, but the two first-half goals by Nashville put that into question. The number of minutes played by some of the starters — who will need to play against the Portland Timbers this weekend — may turn one loss into two. That being said, I wanted Pareja to prioritize the Open Cup over the Leagues Cup, and we’ll find out in July and August if that’s the case.
Those are my takeaways from Orlando City’s 3-2 loss to Nashville in the U.S. Open Cup. It was a disappointing result on a night where Nashville didn’t bring their A-squad, but did bring its A-game.
Let us know your thoughts about the Nashville SC match in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!
Lion Links
Lion Links: 5/22/25
Orlando City ousted from U.S. Open Cup, OCB’s Justin Ellis named Player of the Matchweek, Tottenham wins Europa League, and more.

Well, that could have gone better. It’s understandable to feel a bit deflated after Wednesday night’s game, especially after so many positive Orlando City results as of late. The good news though is that we’re another day closer to a holiday weekend that should include some good times or at least rest and relaxation. Let’s dive into today’s links!
Orlando City Eliminated from U.S. Open Cup
The Lions lost 3-2 at home to Nashville SC in the U.S. Open Cup’s round of 16, ending the team’s run in the tournament. Orlando struck first in a rollercoaster of a match, and Ramiro Enrique pulled the Lions level after they fell behind, but rookie Wyatt Meyer scored the winner for the visitors. The loss snapped Orlando’s 12-game unbeaten streak across all competitions and Orlando looked like a team that played five other matches already this month. Orlando will need to shake off this loss as it prepares to host the Portland Timbers on Saturday.
Justin Ellis Named MLS NEXT Pro Player of the Matchweek
Orlando City B midfielder Justin Ellis was selected as MLS NEXT Pro Player of the Matchweek for his role in the team’s 3-0 win over Inter Miami II. Ellis, who turned 18 years old last week, assisted on both of OCB’s first two goals before scoring from the penalty spot himself. It’s been quite the year so far for Ellis, as he also scored six goals in the Generation Adidas Cup to help Orlando win the U-18 title in April. The Young Lions are back in action Friday with a road match against rival Atlanta United 2.
U.S. Open Cup Round of 16 Results
Comebacks were a theme throughout the U.S. Open Cup’s round of 16. Minnesota United took the lead, gave it up, and ultimately advanced thanks to defender Anthony Markanich scoring two late goals to beat St. Louis City 3-2 at Allianz Arena. Markanich was traded from St. Louis to Minnesota last year, adding a little salt in the wound for the visitors. D.C. United and Charlotte FC battled in a back-and-forth match that ended up with D.C. winning the penalty shootout after a 3-3 draw. The match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas also went the distance, with the Red Bulls winning the shootout. The Philadelphia Union won 4-1 against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds to eliminate the last team from outside MLS. The draw for the quarterfinals will take place this morning.
Tottenham Hotspur Wins Europa League Final
Tottenham prevailed in this year’s Europa league final, winning 1-0 against Manchester United in Spain. Brennan Johnson’s goal was enough for Tottenham to end its 17-year wait for a major trophy. It was a bit of an underwhelming finish to what was a fairly exciting knockout stage, and this was United’s only loss in this year’s tournament. Tottenham has now qualified for next season’s Champions League despite currently being 17th in the English Premier League standings.
Free Kicks
- Christian Pulisic reportedly won’t play in the Concacaf Gold Cup so that he can recover from a lengthy season with AC Milan.
- Boston’s NWSL team will play its home games next year at Gillette Stadium due to delays with construction for its eventual home, White Stadium.
- NWSL Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Julie Haddon will leave the league this summer as part of the league’s restructuring. Chief Sporting Director Tatjana Haenni will exit in October as well.
- After winning the domestic treble in his first season in charge, Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has extended his contract until 2027.
- Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham will undergo shoulder surgery once the Club World Cup is over.
- London City Lionesses were fined for messaging a Southampton player through social media without Southampton’s permission back in August. London City earned promotion this past season and will be the first fully independent women’s team in the Women’s Super League.
That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and rest of your week!
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