Orlando City
Orlando City vs. FC Dallas: Player Grades and Man of the match

Orlando City had never beaten FC Dallas. The club hadn’t even scored a goal against the Western Conference foe. That all ended in a 2-0 win in Exploria Stadium Saturday night.
With an eye on the upcoming U.S. Open Cup match against Atlanta United, no one knew for sure what James O’Connor had up his sleeve. It turns out he had a plan to make history.
Orlando pressed high until its first goal, and then dropped back, stifling FC Dallas in the first half. The club then held on during the second half assault from FC Dallas, and eventually put the game away.
Here is how each player performed in the club’s first win over FC Dallas and my pick for Man of the Match.
Starters
GK, Brian Rowe, 6 — Rowe was not tested much in the first half. However, in the second half, FC Dallas started getting forward, and his save in the 52nd minute was a beauty. He also did well to come off his line in the 58th minute to take care of a ball making its way through the Orlando defense. Rowe had a very solid match, with some important saves. Fortunately for Orlando, he wasn’t asked to do more. Unfortunately, it means that he didn’t have a chance to earn a higher grade.
D, João Moutinho, 5 — Moutinho was the weak link in the back line, for me. He got caught flat-footed several times, giving FC Dallas its best chances of the night. His clearance header in the 60th minute barely went 10 feet. He just didn’t have a great match, and was lucky that teammates like Robin Jansson and Will Johnson were there to cover for him. He was the busier fullback as Dallas ran a lot of its attack through Michael Barrios down his side. Moutinho finished with a game-high six tackles, two interceptions, and a clearance. On the other end he created one chance. His passing was a bit off at 69%.
D, Robin Jansson, 6 — A recovery clearance in the 38th minute resulted in a corner that amounted to nothing. It seems like either Jansson or Lamine Sané will have a slightly better match than the other, but I think that the two are becoming quite a pairing, and it’s more difficult to grade them seperately. Jansson had a bit of a more difficult job, as he had Moutinho to his left. He finished with a tackle, an interception, and three clearances.
D, Lamine Sané, 6 — Sané was the clear leader on the back line, directing traffic, and generally doing a good job. He was almost called for a handball in the second half, but after video review, referee Silviu Petrescu said there was no penalty. He continued to make important clearances, especially late in the match as FC Dallas was pressing for the equalizer. He finished with two tackles, one interception, two clearances, and a blocked shot. He was the best passer on the back line (89%).
D, Ruan, 7.5 (MotM) — Early on, Ruan got forward in the attack, as he is accustomed to do. He earned a free kick, and then in the 13th minute, he put in what might have been his best pass of the season to Tesho Akindele for Orlando’s first goal of the match, and first ever against FC Dallas. Ruan also played better on defense this match, ranging up and down the right side of the field. He regularly outpaced FC Dallas attackers to get the ball up and out of Orlando’s area. Late in the game, he still had plenty of speed and continued to give FC Dallas fits with his runs up the right side. Ruan created two chances, passed at a 75% clip, had two dribbles, and drew three free kicks. On defense, the Brazilian made three tackles, three clearances, and an interception. It was his best game in over a month.
MF, Will Johnson 7 — Will Johnson continued to do his normal Energizer Bunny shift. He defended well, backing up other players like Moutinho, often dropping between the two center backs. He just missed a shot wide on a late run in first half stoppage time. He drew a game high six fouls, defended, played well in the midfield, and generally did what Will Johnson usually does. He was everywhere, made good passes, and contributed on both sides of the field. If Ruan hadn’t had maybe his best match, Will would have won MotM. He created a scoring chance, was a 94% passer, and chipped in a tackle, an interception, and two clearances.
MF, Carlos Ascues, 6.5 — It was quite a night for Carlos — especially in stoppage time, when he was in the right place at the right time to take Sacha Kljestan’s beautiful back heel pass and seal the win for Orlando City. He was part of an effective midfield for Orlando City, and he pressed higher than usual this match. It did take a while for him to take advantage of the advanced position that James O’Connor had him playing, but when he did, he scored his first goal. Ascues created one chance — setting up an Akindele opportunity that nearly doubled the lead in the second half — scored on his only shot attempt, and drew two fouls. He also finished with four tackles and two clearances. Aside from one scary back pass in the second half, he played a solid game, though his 70% passing could have been better.
MF, Sebas Méndez, 6 — Méndez had a fairly good game, as did the rest of the midfield. He passed well (90%), with most of the distribution going forward. He had some good defensive fouls, but did give up a free kick on the handball early in the match, and he earned a yellow card in the 69th minute. If not for those mistakes he would have earned a higher grade. He led the team with three interceptions and added two clearances.
F, Tesho Akindele, 6.5 — The former FC Dallas player not only scored on his former team, but he also set a new career high with his eighth regular season goal of 2019. The goal came in the 13th minute from a beautiful pass from Ruan. He hit a few of his team-high five shot attempts off target throughout the match. He also had a golden chance in the 70th minute, but he knocked it right at Jesse González, who blocked it with his body. He had a chance to send in Dom Dwyer alone in the first half but put too much on the pass. He had a 69% passing rate and earned a secondary assist on the Ascues goal. He chipped in an interception and a clearance on defense.
F, Dom Dwyer, 6 — As usual, Dom was harried and fouled by the opposition, though he did get some defensive revenge with a nifty bicycle kick clearance in the second half. He did well to get out of the way when Johnson made a late run to take a shot in the first half. Dom did Dom things in the box in the 67th minute, trying to make something happen, but he couldn’t quite find that little bit of space needed to do so. He did have one shot but it went wide right. He didn’t get much service or many touches (13) but he found other ways to contribute. He had two defensive clearances and was good when he pressed.
F, Chris Mueller, 5 — Cash was largely absent from this match. His movement off the ball was good, and his passing was fine, he just wasn’t as big a part of the attack as he has been in other matches. He finished with three bad touches, no chances created, and no shot attempts, although he did pass at a 92% clip. Defensively, he added a tackle and an interception.
Substitutes
MF, Sacha Kljestan (54’), 6.5 — Kljestan was brought on to try and get control of the game back after FC Dallas dominated the first few minutes of the second half. His back heel pass to Ascues for Orlando’s second goal sealed the match for the Lions. If there was an award for Pass of the Week, or Assist of the Week, Sacha’s and Ruan’s would be neck and neck. Kljestan’s assist gave him 92 in his MLS career, passing Cobi Jones and taking eighth place among the all-time league leaders. Aside from his assist, he attempted one shot that was just over the bar. He was an 88% passer and made one interception.
F, Nani (72’), 6 — As the only Lion to have played in the MLS All-Star Game, James O’Connor left the captain on the bench until late. Nani did well to hold the ball up and help get the Lions back onto the attack in the second half, and drew defenders to him opening up the attack for his teammates. He completed two dribbles, but created no chances and took no shots.
MF, Kyle Smith (94’), N/A — Smith came on for Iron Man Will Johnson with only a few minutes to play, and wasn’t on the pitch long enough to grade fairly.
It was a great night to be in purple, and a well earned three points at home. Such points have been hard to come by. Do you agree with my choice for the game’s Man of the Match or did someone else deserved the honor? Have your say by voting in the poll or letting us know in the comments!
Polling Closed
Player | Votes |
Ruan | 58 |
Will Johnson | 19 |
Carlos Ascues | 15 |
Tesho Akindele | 6 |
Other (comment below) | 2 |
Orlando City
Orlando City Relies on Starters More Than Any Other MLS Team
An analysis of Óscar Pareja’s early lineup choices and substitution patterns and how that compares to the 2024 season.

Legendary swordsman Inigo Montoya, a man who is not lefthanded, once opened a conversation by asking the Dread Pirate Roberts if, by any chance, he had six fingers on his right hand. Nobody will need to prepare to die by the end of this column, but I will ask a similar question: I don’t mean to pry, but did you by any chance happen to realize that we are already more than one-sixth of the way through the MLS regular season? Six fingers, one-sixth of the season…close enough. Let’s go.
Time flies when you are having fun, and somehow Orlando City has already played 540 minutes of MLS soccer this season. I consider 500 minutes played to be a cutoff amount when looking at player and lineup performance, and with the conclusion of the most recent game in Los Angeles, the team has now surpassed that 500-minute threshold.
In looking at the opening 540 minutes, I was surprised to see how much continuity I found in the minutes played, considering how many injuries the Lions have had to work around during these first six games. In just the first six games, Orlando City has already had full games missed due to injury by César Araujo (1), David Brekalo (2), Robin Jansson (2), Duncan McGuire (3) and Nico Rodriguez (5). Brekalo and Pedro Gallese both missed a game for international duty as well. McGuire was not expected back during the first set of games, but all of those other players, with the possible exception of Rodriguez, were expected to contribute during the early part of the season.
These absences led to games where the substitutes list was full of players who will play big minutes for Orlando City B this year, but not players who Óscar Pareja was likely to turn to off the bench unless the game was out of hand or he was absolutely desperate. According to Opta’s tracking through the opening six games, Orlando City ranks last in MLS in the average minutes played by its substitutes, as the average amount of time per appearance for the players off the bench for the Lions is only 12 minutes. For context, 16 teams have an average amount of time per substitute appearance of 20 minutes or greater, and Inter Miami and Toronto are tied with a league-leading 27 minutes per substitute appearance.
The interesting thing about those two teams, Miami and Toronto, is that Miami leads the league in points per match with 2.6 and Toronto is second from the bottom with a scant 0.33 points per match. I think a lot of this data will even out over time, as right now there are several teams, including Miami, that are playing in multiple competitions and trying to keep players fresh for all of their matches.
When it comes to Orlando City, however, that is not the case, and thus far there has just been the standard one game per week on six consecutive Saturdays. The players are rested for each game. The issue has just been that Pareja has not had the depth and variety of players he thought he would have to bring off the bench to protect a lead or chase a deficit.
We often joke in articles or on The Mane Land PawedCast about how “Óscar gonna Óscar,” and once he finds a lineup he likes, he sticks with it. Even with all the injuries he has somehow managed to do this again this season, as you can see from the chart below. I started tracking lineup data last season, and even though the 2025 season is only six games old and there have been so many absences from key players this season, it was striking to see that the 11-man lineup that has played the most minutes together this season already outranks all but two lineups from the entire 2024 MLS season (including the five playoff games!):

Now, it is a little unfair to the one 2025 lineup on the above chart that it has such a negative goal differential per 90 minutes, because if it is only the 10 field players, with goalkeeper excluded, then that lineup has played 215 minutes together and has a +0.84 goal differential per 90 minutes. That group is +4 with Javier Otero in net in 74 minutes together, and removing the goalkeepers from the calculation turns that negative goal differential into a positive.
What that also tells us, however, is that when it comes to the 10 field players, Pareja has played the same unit in the field for 40% (215/540) of the team’s minutes already. Granted it is early in the season, but after six MLS games last season, the lineup that had played together the most had played a grand total of 74 minutes together (14% of all minutes). The top five most used lineups in last season’s opening six MLS games combined to play 302 minutes, or 56% of all minutes, and in 2025 it is 402 minutes, or 80%. My math, and everyone else’s math, says that is a much higher percentage and indicates that the team is focused on continuity early.
That continuity thus far this season has paid dividends, with the Lions earning 10 points from the first six games, twice as nice as last season’s five points after the first six games. Last year, the team was balancing midweek Concacaf Champions Cup games in addition to injuries and an international break during the opening weeks of the MLS season, so there were some good reasons for the lineup rotation and the slow start. This year’s squad will have to navigate two upcoming cup tournaments in the coming months, and so we likely will see a lot of new lineup configurations or more rotation once the U.S. Open Cup starts in May and then again when Leagues Cup starts in July.
Thus far though, Pareja has been able to stick with his starters deep into matches, and has only given playing time to 20 players, which is tied for third fewest across all of MLS. Fan bases often clamor for the coach to “play the kids,” but while Pareja has had young and inexperienced players on the senior roster for every game, he really has only given significant minutes to Alex Freeman from the group of players that could be referred to as “the kids.” Gustavo Caraballo has played nine minutes, which is incredible for a 16-year-old (15-year-old Cavan Sullivan of Philadelphia is the only player younger than Caraballo to have played this season, and he has also played only nine minutes), and new signing Nico Rodriguez (20 years old) has played 11 minutes, but the next three youngest players to play are all at least 22 and were with the senior club last season (Otero and Ramiro Enrique) or came to the club after four seasons of college soccer (23-year-old, but nearly 24-year-old, Joran Gerbet).
The team’s record thus far shows that Pareja has been right to limit the minutes to the small group of players he trusts, and with one game per week for the next six weeks it will be interesting to see if the early trend of starters playing long minutes and only a few players getting all the minutes off the bench continues. The next match is on the road against Philadelphia, which so rudely came into Orlando and defeated the Lions 4-2 in the season opener, and my expectation is that while we likely will not see any players make their season debut in this game, I do think we will see a different starting lineup than the season opener and probably a different one than the game last weekend against the Galaxy.
No matter who the Lions go with, I am sure they will want to avenge the season-opening loss and bring three points back home to Orlando.
As we wish.
Vamos Orlando!
Orlando City
Orlando City at Philadelphia Union: Three Keys to Victory
What do the Lions need to do to earn all three points on the road against Philly?

Orlando City is on the road yet again, this time heading to Pennsylvania to take on the Philadelphia Union at Subaru Park Saturday night. The Lions will look to get a second road win in a row after the smash-and-grab victory against the LA Galaxy. Things don’t get any easier with the Union sitting in second place in the Eastern Conference, but a win would catapult Orlando City above Philadelphia in the standings. Here’s what Orlando City needs to do to earn all three points against the Philadelphia Union.
Tie up Tai
Tai Baribo leads the way-too-early-to-call Golden Boot race with six goals in five matches. The Union striker has taken 13 shots, putting eight on target and the aforementioned six in the back of the net. He scored a brace in the season opener against Orlando to bag a third of those goals. It’s a pretty easy call to say stopping the league leader in goals is an important part of shutting down the Philadelphia attack.
It will be up to Cesar Araujo and whichever center back pairing we get to shut Baribo down. Of course, he’s not the only one the Lions need to worry about since the Union also have striker Mikael Uhre, and midfielders Daniel Gazdag and Jovan Lukic providing goals and assists. The point is that Philadelphia is second only to the Lions in offensive production with 13 goals compared to Orlando City’s 15 goals.
Formation Change
In the last match against the LA Galaxy, the Lions struggled to get things going with Luis Muriel up top, Ojeda at the No. 10 spot and Ivan Angulo on the left. Once Duncan McGuire came on, Muriel shifted back, Ojeda went wide, and Angulo subbed off. That really opened up the attack and allowed the Lions to get the two goals needed to secure the victory.
Perhaps Oscar Pareja could start things off like that against Philadelphia. Angulo hasn’t been great the last few matches, and perhaps some time on the bench will get his head straight. McGuire is still early in his return from injury, but Ramiro Enrique can start up top with Big Dunc coming in later as he has the last few matches. I think making this change could help Orlando City get an early goal on the road.
Vengeance is Thine
When the two teams met on opening day, the Union dropped four goals on Orlando City in Inter&Co Stadium. You would think it a completely dominating performance, but the Lions actually had more shots, more shots on target, and more possession than the Union. Philadelphia simply put each of its four shots on target past Pedro Gallese. That type of luck is unlikely to happen again.
Since that time, the Orlando City defense has stiffened — at least a little bit — and the team has been more difficult to break down. I’m not saying the defense is as stalwart as last season, but it has improved. Orlando City needs to use that four-goal drubbing at the hands of the Union to galvanize the defense to enact revenge with a multi-goal victory of its own.
That is what I will be looking for Saturday night. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!
Lion Links
Lion Links: 4/3/25
Martin Ojeda in the MLS MVP mix early, Orlando Pride players won’t play for Zambia this window, Tierna Davidson out for the NWSL season, and more.

How’s it going, Mane Landers? I hope this week has been going well for you as we gear up for a busy Saturday filled to the brim with soccer to enjoy. Despite my blender’s protests, I’ve finally figured out how to make frozen coconut mojitos and plan on having those get me through the rest of the week. Before we dive into today’s links, let’s all wish a happy 28th birthday to Orlando City legend Rodrigo Schlegel!
Martin Ojeda’s MVP Credentials
Orlando City’s Martin Ojeda placed second in Sacha Kljestan’s MLS MVP power rankings this week. With four goals and three assists so far this season, Ojeda leads the league in goal contributions and is a major reason why the Lions have scored a league-high 15 goals. It’s great to see the 26-year-old take the reins of the offense after Facundo Torres’ departure. Inter Miami’s Luis Suarez tops Kljestan’s rankings, despite only having a goal in five games this season. Tai Baribo, Evander, and Lionel Messi round out the top five in what could be an interesting MVP race this year.
Pride Players Won’t Join Zambia For International Duty
Zambia will be without four NWSL players when it takes part in the Yongchuan International Tournament in China this month. Along with Bay FC forward Rachael Kundananji, Orlando Pride trio Barbra Banda, Grace Chanda, and Prisca Chilufya were withdrawn from international duty, with the Football Association of Zambia stating it was due to additional travel measures by the current U.S. administration. FAZ General Secretary Reuben Kamanga expects the quartet to be available for future matches and both Banda and Kundananji played in friendlies in Zambia in February. Restrictions like this may limit the appeal of the NWSL to foreign players in the future.
Fan Banned For Hateful Language Towards Banda
NJ/NY Gotham FC announced that the fan who directed hateful language towards Banda has been banned following an investigation that included interviewing witnesses and reviewing security footage. The incident took place at the Pride’s match against Gotham on March 23 at Sports Illustrated Stadium. The fan was found to be in violation of the NWSL Code of Conduct and their season ticket was revoked as well. Gotham also encouraged fans to report inappropriate behavior through the team’s encrypted text message service to inform the stadium’s incident management team.
USWNT Defender Tierna Davidson Out for the NWSL Season
American center back Tierna Davidson will miss the remainder of the 2025 NWSL season after tearing the ACL in her left knee in the club’s draw against the Houston Dash. It’s tough news for her, Gotham, and the United States Women’s National Team, as she captains the NWSL club and featured heavily in the Olympics last year. Davidson sustained an ACL injury in her right knee back in 2022, which contributed to her missing out on the 2023 World Cup. Gisele Thompson replaced Davidson for the USWNT’s upcoming friendlies with Brazil, and Pride defender Emily Sams will likely receive more playing time as the team prepares for the 2027 World Cup.
Free Kicks
- Orlando City received $100,000 in General Allocation Money in exchange for former academy goalkeeper Zack Campagnolo’s Homegrown Player rights. The Lions will receive another $100,000 in GAM if conditions are met, and they retain a sell-on percentage if Campagnolo is transferred.
- San Diego FC added Milan Iloski on loan from FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark through July of this year. Iloski is a San Diego native and won the USL Golden Boot for Orange County SC in 2022.
- New England Revolution midfielder Carles Gil won MLS Goal of the Matchday for his free kick against the New York Red Bulls.
- El Farolito SC, which is named after a burrito chain and bar local to San Francisco, has reached the third round of the U.S. Open Cup for the second straight year. The National Premier Soccer League side took down Monterey Bay FC to reach this point of the tournament.
- Barcelona beat Atletico Madrid 1-0 to book its ticket to the Copa del Rey final, where it will face rival Real Madrid on April 26.
That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a terrific Thursday and rest of your week!
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