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

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Man, this game was yellow — not just the Crew’s blinding kits, but the Lions picked up three yellow cards to Columbus’ one. This game was full of Orlando City turnovers, and Columbus corners. If I hadn’t seen it myself, it would be hard to believe that Orlando City won this match with all the turnovers, all the corners, and all the fouls. Yet, here we are with three road points and some confidence as the Lions return home to face Philadelphia on Wednesday. 

Starters

GK, Brian Rowe, 8 — It was a performance from Brian Rowe that had my non-believer husband saying, “I love Rowe! I didn’t think I did, but I do!” So there’s that, if it matters. He had 37 touches and ended the game with a clean sheet on the road. Plus, he made a spectacular save to deny a Goal of the Week from Robinho. What more could he need as a keeper?

D, Danilo Acosta, 7 — It must have been “defend with your face” night, as Acosta took a hard knock to the face or neck early in the second half after Robin Jansson took one in the first half. Acosta, who hasn’t seen very much game play for the Lions, sent crosses to nowhere, and was beaten out multiple times to the ball. We finally saw a nice defensive play out of Acosta in in the 86th minute and he won a free kick. I feel like I can’t be too hard on Acosta only having three clearances, when Lamine Sané and Jansson were out there racking up 26 collectively. He also got a secondary assist on Mueller’s goal, starting the play toward the net by driving inside and finding Nani.

D, Robin Jansson, 9 (co-MotM) — Jansson was just so, I don’t even know how to share how amazing he was to watch tonight! He took that free kick to the face and after a quick look, kept going. It seemed to be swelling as the game went on but that didn’t stop him at all. Not to mention that tackle that sprung the series leading Tesho to score in the 66th minute. He just kept heading crosses away for the rest of the match. Jansson saw 45 touches, 13 clearances, two tackles and three fouls.

D, Lamine Sané, 9 (co-MotM) — Sané has had a touch-and-go season in my opinion, but he was on fire tonight. We saw a nice clearance in the 11th minute when Columbus sent a free kick into the box. Then there was that beautiful moment in added time during the first half, when the ball fell perfectly for Columbus and Sané just got it out of there. He just continued to soar over everyone and clear the ball repeatedly. Thirteen was a lucky number for the defense tonight as Sané also recorded 13 clearances and an interception. Is this what a happy and healthy Lamine Sané means for Orlando’s back line?

D, Kyle Smith, 7.5 — We saw a nice play early in the match where Smith chipped a ball into the area for Mueller, but Columbus’ Jon Kempin was there to grab it. Smith took a yellow in minute 15 in exchange for shutting down what could have been a potentially dangerous turnover. He was aggressive and had two tackles, an interception, four clearances, and two fouls. A little bit of aggression is what I’ve been looking for in the Lions!

MF, Uri Rosell, 7.5 — Maybe you know this about me, maybe you don’t. I stan Uri Rosell. He’s not always flashy in the midfield, but he seems to be consistent and reliable. He ended the match with an 81% passing rate, an interception, five tackles, and match-high touches, with 64.

MF, Sacha Kljestan, 7.5 — Klejstian was awarded a yellow card in the 63rd minute as his attempt to break up play and win the ball back came in a bit heavy. His help clearing a free kick in the second half helped keep the clean sheet for Rowe. In a surprising turn of events, Sacha’s passing rate was at 90% this match, and he made three clearances defensively.

MF, Dillon Powers, 6.5 — It was a quiet night for Powers who has been receiving a lot of love from fans as of late. His 50 touches saw an 80% passing rate and he had two interceptions defensively. Not much else to add as Uri and Sascha seemed to hold down the midfield tonight.

F, Nani, 8 — Ah isn’t it fun to watch Nani when Nani’s on? From putting his moves on Pedro Santos in the 50th minute and stealing the ball then drawing a foul in the 57th, to the assist on that beautiful Tesho Akindele goal in the 66th. Excitement was high in our house when Nani was off on a breakaway and fired his chance right into Kempin’s chest later in the second half. Nani made four tackles and an interception as well as, two key passes (both assists), and one shot on target.

F, Tesho Akindele, 7 — His goal from distance in the second half was just what the Lions needed to help secure the 2-0 game, but of his 22 passes, only 11 connected. Aside from the offside call and his goal, Akindele was pretty quiet.

F, Chris Mueller, 7.5 — Mueller started off rough. In fact, I was ready to score him pretty low as he dribbled away opportunity after opportunity. Then, there it was, in the 41st minute, Chris Mueller put one in.

Substitutes

MF, Carlos Ascues (77’), 6 — Ascues was booked late in the game for holding up a restart. Other than that, he didn’t have much of an impact.

F, Benji Michel (65’), 6 — Michel came on for Mueller in the 65th minute, right before Tesho’s goal, but other than that he was pretty quiet as he collected his minutes and helped see out the match.

F, Santiago Patino (87’), 5.5 — Patino didn’t play much tonight, but his first bit of play saw him commit an unnecessary foul. So, I’m grading him anyway. Don’t @ me.


You read right, Mane Landers, that’s two Men of the Match winners from me tonight! That’s how I saw the game anyway. Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to vote your man of the match in the poll below!

Polling Closed

PlayerVotes
Lamine Sané and Robin Jansson 55
Chris Mueller6
Nani23
Tesho Akindele1
Just Lamine Sané5
Just Robin Jansson21
Other4

Lion Links

Lion Links: 11/22/24

Emily Sams wins Defender of the Year, Orlando City’s turnaround, Barbra Banda nominated for African Woman Player of the Year, and more.

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Image courtesy of Orlando Pride / Jeremy Reper

Happy Friday! Beyond working and catching some soccer here and there, I don’t have many plans for the weekend. I’m also hoping to find some time to trial some cranberry and brie bites I’m trying to perfect before Thanksgiving next week. For now though, let’s jump right into today’s links from around the soccer world!

Emily Sams Awarded NWSL Defender of the Year

The Orlando Pride’s Emily Sams was named 2024 NWSL Defender of the Year after a fantastic season. The Pride only conceded 20 goals in a record-breaking season, and Sams played in all 13 of the team’s shutouts. Sams was one of the most impactful players for the Pride this year and had 163 recoveries, 76 clearances, and 16 blocks. She’s the first Pride player to win the award and it’s great to see her receive some deserved recognition in her second year in Orlando.

Analyzing Orlando City’s Revitalization

It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for the Lions to say the least. There were serious concerns over whether or not the Lions would even make the playoffs back in June and now they find themselves as the highest remaining seed in the Eastern Conference this postseason. Facundo Torres’ excellent run of play is a major reason behind the club’s turnaround, but the buy-in from all of Orlando’s attackers has helped create a dynamic and unselfish offense. Although expectations are rising once more for the Lions, Executive Vice President of Soccer Operations and General Manager Luiz Muzzi spoke on how the team is focused on Sunday’s playoff match.

“There’s only one team that matters: Atlanta United,” Muzzi said. “The easiest way to lose a game is to look ahead. I’ll say we didn’t expect to be playing at home, but it’s welcomed. We’re focused on Atlanta, they’re playing great. They have a lot of confidence and momentum. It doesn’t matter they’re the No. 9 seed because they’re not playing like the No. 9 seed.”

Barbra Banda Up For African Woman Player of the Year

Orlando Pride forward Barbra Banda was one of 10 players nominated for this year’s African Woman Player of the Year award. The 24-year-old has done well for both club and country this year. She scored 13 goals in her first regular season with the Pride and has three goals so far in the playoffs. Banda also had a hat trick for Zambia in the Summer Olympics. She’s joined by fellow NWSL players Temwa Chawinga and Racheal Kundananji on the list of nominees. Bay FC striker Asisat Oshoala, who has won the award in five of the past six years, was not nominated for the first time in a decade. The nomination list will be trimmed to a three-player shortlist before the winner is announced on Dec. 16 in Morocco.

Croix Bethune Named NWSL Midfielder of the Year

Washington Spirit rookie Croix Bethune won NWSL Midfielder of the Year after recording 10 assists and five goals in 17 matches this season. A knee injury cut her season short in September, but she still tied Tobin Heath’s record for the most assists in a season. Bethune gave plenty of NWSL teams headaches this year and also won Rookie of the Year earlier this week. She’s the first player to ever receive NWSL Midfielder of the Year and she beat out the Pride’s Marta, the North Carolina Courage’s Ashley Sanchez, and Kansas City Current duo Lo’eau LaBonta and Vanessa DiBernardo.

Eastern Conference Clubs Making Moves

FC Cincinnati officially signed striker Kevin Denkey from Cercle Brugge on a deal that will last through 2028. The 23-year-old joins as a Designated Player on a reported $16.2 million transfer, which would be a league record. He won the Golden Boot in Belgium last year after scoring 27 goals and should give Cincinnati some considerable firepower next year.

Elsewhere in the league, CF Montreal declined the option on Josef Martinez’s contract, meaning the Venezuelan forward will be a free agent once again. The 31-year-old led Montreal with 11 goals this season and we’ll see where he winds up next. Charlotte FC did not trigger the purchase option on Pep Biel’s loan, opening up a Designated Player spot. Former Lion Junior Urso’s contract option was also declined by Charlotte. The Philadelphia Union signed defender Olivier Mbaizo to a contract extension that will keep him with the club through 2026, with options for 2027 and 2028 as well.

Free Kicks

  • In preparation for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA named 26 new options across the country as “base camps” for participating teams to train and rest. Orlando was included, with OCSC’s training grounds at Osceola Heritage Park pitched alongside the Lake Nona Wave Hotel.
  • ESPN‘s Jeff Kassouf dove into how the NWSL stacks up to the biggest sports leagues in the U.S. Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Pride and Spirit should showcase just how entertaining the league is to plenty of viewers.
  • Pep Guardiola will stick around as Manchester City’s manager for a couple more years after signing a two-year contract extension with the club. His contract was set to expire at the end of this season.
  • Here’s a cool breakdown of the seven amateur teams that have qualified for the 2025 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup so far. None are from Florida, but there are some great logos to check out if you’re looking for a team to root for in the early rounds next year. Debutants Southern Indiana FC and the Virginia Dream are my personal favorites of the bunch.
  • The draw for the 2025 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations will take place today. Zambia is in the second pot, meaning it will be put in a group of four that will include one of Nigeria, South Africa, or Morocco. The tournament itself will be in July of next year.
  • Arsenal, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City all clinched a spot in the Women’s Champions League quarterfinals with two games still left to play.

That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a fantastic Friday and rest of your weekend. Go Orlando!

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How Orlando City’s Offense Stacks Up Against What Atlanta Does Defensively

How Orlando City has performed against teams playing with three or four defenders, and how that may influence the playoff game against Atlanta United.

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

The most famous quote about real estate is that “there are three things that matter in property: location, location, location.” Soccer coaches also like to think in threes, especially when it comes to points, but for a soccer coach, the three things that matter might be the rhyming triplet “formation, formation, formation,” as that is where they will have the biggest influence on every game that their team plays.

Throughout his tenure as head coach, Óscar Pareja has preferred to use a 4-2-3-1 as his formation (fbref.com’s lineup data shows that the Lions primarily played a 4-2-3-1 in 65% of their MLS matches this season, and 79% of their MLS matches during the last three seasons). The Lions have lined up in a 4-2-3-1 during each of their last 14 games, and my confidence level is strong to quite strong (can you believe Meet the Parents came out 24 years ago?) that they will do so once again on Sunday when they host Atlanta United.

Atlanta United also prefers to deploy a 4-2-3-1, but was less consistent than Orlando City this season during MLS play, as evidenced by the chart below that shows how Atlanta lined up this season:

The purpose of this image is a table to show how Atlanta United lined up in 2024 (mostly in a 4-2-3-1 but also in one of six other formations).

I am relying on the coders at Opta for their evaluation of the formation, as I do not watch a lot of Atlanta United matches (sounds terrible), but though Atlanta primarily played with four defenders in more than two-thirds of its matches, during the last two matches it played a 3-5-2, the only two matches all season in which interim coach Rob Valentino rolled out that formation. I suspect that the formation change was related partially to playing Inter Miami and trying to defend the Herons’ dynamic offense and partially due to an injury suffered by defender Brooks Lennon in the first game of that series. So, while Atlanta primarily played four in the back for most of the season, there is a good chance it will roll with what worked against Florida’s second-best MLS team when it plays Florida’s best MLS team this weekend.

Now, if you want to read more about Atlanta, then you can read our match preview, which will drop Sunday morning, but I want to look at how Orlando did against teams that play similar styles. Looking only at MLS games, the table below shows how Orlando City performed against different back line structures this season (the left side is how the Lions’ opponents lined up, the right side is how Orlando City performed against opponents in those formations):

Table embedded as an image showing Orlando City doing best in goal differential in 12 games against three-man back lines, second best against four-man back lines, and having played once against a five-man back line (a 1-1 draw).

Orlando City earned slightly more points per game — the stat that matters most — against teams that played four in the back, but the Lions had a better average goal differential when teams played three in the back. Atlanta will likely deploy one of those two formations. In both games against Orlando City this season, Sunday’s visitors went with a 4-2-3-1, but as mentioned earlier, they used three in the back in each of their last two matches, so it really could be either.

Soccer is not like baseball, where players primarily stay in the same spot throughout the game, so some of these stats have to be taken with a grain of salt, as players are not always rigidly in the same position throughout a match. A team may also primarily play with four in the back but switch to three when chasing a game, or five when trying to protect against a late goal.

That said, using the data around Orlando City’s opponents’ general formations, here are the attacking groups who played the most frequently against four defenders during the 24 MLS games where Opta coded the opponents as using a defensive group of four:

Table embedded as an image showing the most frequently used lineups against teams who deploy four defenders. The most frequently used attacking group has a plus eight goal differential for the season.

It is a little ominous that the main starting group, shown in row one, has played 666 MLS minutes against back lines of four this season, but do I like that green goal differential of +8 in those minutes, which is a strong +1.08 per 90 minutes. I like that goal differential more than I like all the things that Cardi B, Bad Bunny, and J Balvin like on their song that is creatively named “I Like It.” Coincidentally, when people ask me what I think about that song, I say, “I like it.” I am very creative.

If we look at the lineups that Orlando City has used against back lines of three defenders then there are some pretty major differences in personnel groupings, but it must be noted that more than half of the games against teams playing three in the back came early in the season, when Ramiro Enrique was unavailable to play. Enrique, my presumed starter at striker, has played fewer than three games’ worth of minutes (265 total) against back lines of three this season, and only 28 minutes with the main starting group, which ranks 13th among all the attacking lineups for minutes played against three defenders. That group scored one goal in their 28 minutes together though, for a robust 3.21 goals-scored-per-90-minutes average.

While the team as a whole has been successful against three-man back lines, I do not expect any of the lineups shown in the table below to play more than a few minutes together this weekend, though the first row and the last row are strong groups and had a lot of success.

Table embedded as an image showing the most frequently used lineups against teams who deploy three defenders. The most frequently used attacking group has a plus three goal differential for the season.

I am sure that all week long the Orlando City coaching staff has been going back and forth on whether it is more likely that Atlanta reverts to its most commonly used four in the back, or if the Five Stripes try for three wins in a row with three in the back. I would prefer that Atlanta plays with zero defenders and goalkeeper Brad Guzan wears a blindfold, but I think that is unlikely to be the case.

Even though Atlanta defeated Orlando City both times while in a 4-2-3-1, based on available personnel and recent results, I believe that the team will come out in a 3-5-2 in Inter&Co Stadium in the conference semifinal. Good things come in threes, and Orlando City’s best offensive production this season has been against three defenders, so I am going to be hoping that this continues, and in the third game against Atlanta the Lions grab the three points. Three’s company!

Well, it is a playoff game, so there are no actual points at stake, but you know what I meant.

Vamos Orlando!

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Orlando City vs. Atlanta United: Three Keys to Victory

What do the Lions need to do to get a victory to advance to the Eastern Conference final?

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Orlando City continues its playoff journey against Atlanta United Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium. The Lions are coming off an emotional penalty shootout win over Charlotte FC in their best-of-three, first-round series. Likewise, Atlanta United stunned everyone by taking out Inter Miami to advance in its own best-of-three matchup. Now, the rivals meet in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

What does Orlando City need to do to get past Atlanta United to advance to the Easter Conference final?

Beat Guzan

Brad Guzan made 16 saves over Atlanta’s three matches against Inter Miami, including seven in the 3-2 win on the road in Game 3. The 40-year-old former USMNT keeper is in excellent form and is a big reason why the Five Stripes are facing Orlando City. Converting chances against Guzan will be crucial to earning a result. There have been times this season when the Lions have struggled to convert their chances. Despite that, the team has done enough offensively to get to this point. Facundo Torres, Martin Ojeda, Duncan McGuire, Ramiro Enrique, and others have contributed and will need to do so this weekend.

Cartagena is Essential

Orlando City lost twice to Atlanta United during the regular season. What is interesting, and perhaps relevant, is that Wilder Cartagena was out for both of those matches. Cartagena was shown a straight red in the match against Minnesota United prior to the first match against Atlanta way back in March. He was shown a yellow card in the match against FC Cincinnati and then served a yellow card accumulation suspension for the final match of the season against Atlanta. Fortunately for Orlando City, Cartagena will be available for the match this weekend. I’ve mentioned before the importance of Cartagena to Orlando City’s success. When he and Cesar Araujo are on the field together, the defense is simply better. Cartagena is frankly one of the better defensive midfielders in MLS. Atlanta scored five goals in the series against Miami, and Orlando will need to keep the visitors from having that kind of offensive success.

Overcome the Past

That darn international break in the middle of the playoffs is something I don’t love. More precisely, I don’t like it because Orlando City often struggles after a break. It would have been nice if Orlando City could have ridden the momentum from the penalty kick victory into the Atlanta match, but that’s not to be. Now is the time for Orlando City to break some bad habits, including turning around its historical lack of success against Atlanta, and tendency to struggle in the first match after a break. Oscar Pareja needs to have the players in the right frame of mind, and the players need to execute the plan. A full house of supporters can also make a difference. Given it’s a Sunday afternoon match, there’s no reason not to pack the house.


That is what I will be looking for Sunday afternoon. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!

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