Lion Links: 11/5/19

Happy Tuesday, Mane Landers. My AC was finally fixed so I come to you all in a much cheerier mood than I did last week! There’s some very interesting bits of news to cover this morning so let’s jump right in.

More Pareja Rumblings

Last week on Halloween, we here at The Mane Land reported that Oscar Pareja had become the favorite to fill Orlando City’s vacant head coaching position. Pareja is reportedly the club’s top target, something that makes sense if its true given the Colombian’s time spent working with OCSC Executive Vice President of Soccer Operations Luiz Muzzi at FC Dallas. There now seems to be more smoke to add to the Pareja reports, as Super Deportivo out of Mexico is reporting that Pareja now has a formal offer from Orlando City. The rub here is that Pareja is currently still under contract with Los Xolos of Liga MX, but the team’s season is nearing an end and anything is possible. We’ll report more on this story as we hear it so stay tuned.

Pride Announce Roster Status Updates

The Orlando Pride have announced the contract statuses of all of the team’s players as the club heads into the NWSL off-season. The Pride exercised options of 18 players on the roster, and extended new contract offers to five individuals. Alex Morgan, Ashlyn Harris, and Shelina Zadorsky all remain on the Pride roster as players allocated by their federations in 2019, with federation allocation status for next season to be announced at a later date. Marta, of course, has already come to terms on a new deal for 2020. The long and short of the announcement is that as of right now, every player that was on the Pride roster yesterday is still on the Pride roster today. That doesn’t however, necessarily mean that the roster won’t change between now and the start of the 2020 NWSL season due to some trades and other movement.

Vela Named MLS MVP

Major League Soccer has announced the winner of the 2019 Landon Donovan MLS Most Valuable Player award, and in a not-very-shocking turn of events, LAFC’s Carlos Vela took home the trophy. Vela won over 69% (nice) of the weighted vote in a year that saw him break a slew of MLS records. He banged in 34 goals in 31 regular season games for an average of 1.10 goals per game — both marks were new league records. He also supplied 15 assists as part of an LAFC team that won the Supporters Shield with a best-ever goal differential of +48, and tied the highest number of goals scored at 85.

USWNT Adds to Staff

The United States Women’s National Team has announced the addition of Milan Ivanovic to its coaching staff. Ivanovic joins recently appointed Head Coach Vlatko Andonovski on the USWNT staff. Ivanovic spent the last four seasons working with Andonovski with FC Kansas City and Reign FC. Prior to his coaching career, he played professionally in Serbia and in the American indoor circuit, where he actually played under Andonovksi as a member of the Kansas City Comets.

Nashville SC Trade Reports

Reports surfaced yesterday that Nashville SC landed a pair of players in two separate trades. The Athletic’s Paul Tenorio reported that the soon-to-be-blooded MLS side acquired Dax McCarty from the Chicago Fire and Dave Romney from the LA Galaxy, with a league source further confirming the pair of deals. McCarty and Romney both have plenty of MLS experience to bring to the table and would be welcome additions to a side that will be looking to avoid the sort of rough first year in the league endured by FC Cincinnati in 2019.

Free Kicks

• The Australian Women’s National Team will become the first international women’s soccer team to earn the same amount of money as their male counterparts.
• Mesut Ozil to MLS rumblings won’t quit, and here are a few potential landing spots should the German make his way stateside.
• Forbes has released its list of MLS’ most valuable teams with Atlanta topping the list.

That’ll be all for me. Y’all stay safe out there.