Another weekend brings another opportunity for Orlando City to pick up its first points of the still-young 2026 Major League Soccer season. To do that, OCSC will need to beat a team that is unbeaten through its first two games, as the Lions are heading to Yankee Stadium to take on New York City FC on Saturday.

A trip to the baseball diamond means I took the time to catch up with Matthew Mangam, who is one of the senior writers over at the independent and always excellent Hudson River Blue. He was kind enough to help us refamiliarize ourselves with the Pigeons, and I also answered some of his questions about Orlando City, which you can find over at their place.

Talk me through NYCFC’s off-season transfer business. Who went out the door, and who arrived to replace them?

Matthew Mangam: NYCFC’s biggest loss this off-season was Justin Haak, who joined the LA Galaxy as a free agent. Defensive midfielder and center back Kai Trewin joined the club from Melbourne City, serving as the unofficial replacement for Haak. Alonso Martínez, who tore his ACL, and Andrés Perea, who fractured his lower right leg, aren’t official departures but will spend most of the season recovering from their respective injuries. NYCFC also loaned out Julián Fernández and Mitja Ilenič. 

Of those new arrivals, who has been the most impressive through the first two games of the season?

MM: I’m going to cheat a little bit here and say Keaton Parks — he missed most of last season after undergoing surgery to address blood flow issues in his right leg. Since appearing in the season opener and starting the last game against Philadelphia, Parks looks like he hasn’t missed a beat. He’s contributed on both sides of the ball, bringing great energy and consistency. 

Who is an NYCFC player with the potential to be an X factor in this game, and why?

MM: Hannes Wolf. He scored the opening goal against Philadelphia in true Hannes Wolf fashion: opportunistically pouncing on a deflection in the box and burying it in the back of the net. The only issue is that Wolf struggles with consistency, but in his two seasons at NYCFC, he started each year in good form. I would say Nico Fernández Mercau could also be an X-factor, but he’s playing as the No. 9 — not his natural position — which has clearly affected him a bit.

Will anyone be unavailable due to injury, suspension, etc.? What is your projected starting lineup and score prediction?

MM: Besides Martínez and Perea being out with long-term injuries, NYCFC is healthy. Talles Magno is coming off a calf injury, which happened in preseason, but he will likely play at least 10 minutes off the bench. Jonny Shore is also working back to full fitness, so it’s unclear if he’ll get any time as a substitute on Saturday.

I expect NYCFC to keep its lineup the same from the win over Philadelphia:

Matt Freese; Kevin O’Toole, Raul Gustavo, Thiago Martins, Tayvon Gray; Aiden O’Neill, Keaton Parks; Agustin Ojeda, Maxi Moralez, Hannes Wolf; Nicolas Fernández Mercau.

I think NYCFC wins 2-0, with Wolf and Parks getting on the score sheet.

Thank you to Matthew for the excellent info on NYCFC. Vamos Orlando!

Happy Friday! It’s been a bit of a hectic week but I’m looking forward to spending the weekend enjoying some soccer and visiting my family for a birthday. Hopefully Orlando City can get a win on the road on Saturday and bring points back to the City Beautiful. Before we get started, we want to give a shout out to “Flip,” the latest subscriber at the TAM Player level in our Buy Me a Coffee membership program. Thanks for your support and welcome to The Mane Land family! Now, let’s jump right into today’s links!

Orlando City’s Leagues Cup Schedule Revealed

The schedule for this summer’s Leagues Cup is out and we now know which Liga MX teams Orlando City will play against. All three of Orlando’s games in the first phase of the tournament will be at Inter&Co Stadium, starting with a match against Monterrey on Aug. 5. The Lions will then take on Club Leon on Aug. 8 before playing San Luis on Aug. 12. Of the 18 MLS clubs taking part in the Leagues Cup, only the top four will advance to the knockout stage. Last year, the Lions went unbeaten across their four matches against Mexican teams before falling in the semifinals and the third-place match.

Orlando Pride Sign Reagan Raabe 

The Orlando Pride signed forward Reagan Raabe to a short-term contract that will last through June of this year. The 24-year-old has been with the club throughout its preseason as a non-roster invitee. Raabe joins the Pride following a collegiate career with the University of Nebraska, recording four goals and six assists in her final season after missing a couple of years due to injury. Hopefully she can continue to impress the coaching staff and make an impact this year.

Analyzing Colombia Ahead of USWNT Match

The United States Women’s National Team will play Colombia on Saturday in the final game of this year’s SheBelieves Cup. Colombia lost 4-1 to Canada in its first match but bounced back with a 1-0 win over Argentina. One of the top nations in South America, Colombia finished second in last year’s Copa America and boasts a versatile attack that does well with possession or in transition. The U.S. will need to limit Real Madrid forward Linda Caicedo as much as possible. The 21-year-old has scored in both of Colombia’s games this tournament and has the talent to create opportunities out of seemingly nothing.

WAFCON Postponed Until July

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, which was set to begin on March 17, has been postponed until July 25 and is set to last through Aug. 16. This decision comes amid reports that Morocco wished to withdraw as the tournament’s host and it’s unclear at this time if Morocco will still host it later this year. Many NWSL players are impacted by this change, including Orlando Pride forward Barbra Banda, whose Zambian side will face Nigeria, Malawi, and Egypt in the group stage. The tournament doubles as qualifying for the 2027 Women’s World Cup, with the quarterfinalists directly securing a spot in Brazil next summer.

Free Kicks

• We have some rumored numbers to put to how much Orlando City was offering to pay Atletico Madrid attacker Antoine Griezmann. Even if the move doesn’t come to pass, I can appreciate the club taking a big swing.

• Nothing is official yet, but the United States Men’s National Team’s jersey for the upcoming World Cup may have been spotted in the wild. It looks like the Waldo kit with a twist, literally.

• Toronto FC officially added center back Benjamin Kuscevic on loan from Fortaleza in Brazil’s second division.
• Walid Regragui stepped down as Morocco’s head coach with only a few months to go before the World Cup. Mohamed Ouahbi will take over for Regragui and it will be his first time coaching a senior team.
• Relegation is growing into a real possibility for Tottenham, which lost its fifth-straight match after a 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace.
• Cristo Fernandez, who plays Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso, made a splash with a pair of goals in an exhibition match while training with Chicago Fire II.

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!

Last week was an exciting one for nerds fans of salary cap minutiae like me, as Major League Soccer (MLS) released the club roster profiles for all 30 teams. Every sports league has its own set of intricate rules and regulations, and MLS is no different. For a league that seemingly embraced a lack of transparency for years, it has been a breath of fresh air that MLS is starting to share more information. Later this year, we will find out each player’s salary for the 2026 season, but for now, we know the status of every player as of Feb. 26, plus the few official transfers that are listed on the transfer tracker on the MLS website.

If you click on that link you will note that the transfer tracker is not accurate for Orlando City, as it neglects to mention that Alex Freeman was transferred to Villarreal. As far as I am concerned, that means that Freeman can suit up for the Lions on Saturday, so Alex, get on that yellow submarine and head west to the Bronx. We will see you there, in a baseball stadium. Sigh.

Freeman could use the minutes, having played only 31 across six games since joining Villarreal, but Griffin Dorsey is doing a great job out on the right side in his stead, and if not for bad luck, he would have a goal and an assist in his first two games as a Lion. Dorsey was acquired in late February in a GAM-for-player deal with the Houston Dynamo, and that brings us back to the club roster profiles which were released a week ago.

I went through each club’s profile and aggregated the counts of players in each roster designation, and the results are in the table below. The long list of rules for roster construction can be found here, and I will remind you that reading these rules is only slightly less effective than counting sheep if you are trying to grab some sleep. And now, without another peep, let us plunge into the end that is deep and take a look at the table that my aggregation reaped.

A few notes on this table:

• These counts come directly from the club roster profiles on Feb. 26 but also include the few official transactions that have occurred since then.
• The max and min columns reflect the number of players that at least one team has in that category, not the allowable maximum or minimum.
• The Homegrowns row has an asterisk because, frankly, the rules are a little complicated with how teams can use and pay players they either developed themselves or acquired from another club’s youth setup. That said, I put two numbers in each column to try to simplify it: the first value is the total number of players listed as a Homegrown Player and the number inside the parentheses is the number of Homegrowns who are on the active roster. Orlando City, for example, has six total Homegrowns but only four (Gustavo Caraballo, Colin Guske, Javier Otero, and Zakaria Taifi) on the active roster. Justin Ellis and Tahir Reid-Brown are Homegrowns but are not on the active roster, even though both were dressed against Miami and Reid-Brown went the full 90, while Caraballo did not dress for either of the first two games. That is how MLS rolls.
• I did not count, but dozens of players are listed on rosters but are currently unavailable due to being on loan, on the injured list, or in one case due to visa issues. I excluded all of these players from the counts in the table.

All right, enough of that, what does this mean for Orlando City?

First and foremost, it means that the Lions have room on their roster for acquisitions. The maximum number of players on an active roster is 30 (Senior Roster + Supplemental Roster), and Orlando City is only using 24 of those 30 spots. That leaves six spots available for roster maneuvering, and it is overwhelmingly likely that the front office will sign a few more players before the season ends.

No team is using all 30 active roster spots at the moment, which makes sense as it is early in the season and teams want roster flexibility, but the 24 spots currently being used by Orlando City ranks 22nd in the league. Our David Rohe wrote about the team’s depth issues in the latest edition of our weekly newsletter, which you too can receive by signing up here, and while playing the kids will help in the long run, in the short run Orlando City needs to get some points, and using those available spots to sign some proven veterans could help.

Another interesting item to note is that Orlando City went big on Ojedas, with both Braian and Martín occupying Designated Player spots on the roster at the moment. The third Designated Player, Marco Pašalić, is the only one of the three who cannot be bought down to become a TAM player, however, and so if Orlando City is able to acquire a certain French player, or another player of his ilk, the team can easily convert one of the Ojedas (most likely Braian) to a TAM player and offer that third Designated Player slot to an incoming player.

It is not shown in the table above, but it also appears from the club profiles that the Lions have one international slot available to them that they have yet to use, which would fit very nicely on that theoretical Designated Player signing.

Moving on, I am not here to tattle on anyone but…Orlando City’s opponent this weekend landed one too many Pigeons on its Supplemental Roster, as league rules state that “a club may have no more than 11 players on its Supplemental Roster, subject to the Season-Ending Injury, Injured List, and Loan exceptions.” NYCFC shows none of those as it relates to its Supplemental Roster players, and as the official league document shows that the Pigeons have 12 players on their Supplemental Roster, I think their punishment should be an automatic forfeit, with three points going to Orlando City. Who is with me?

Nothing will happen, of course, as NYCFC is owned by City Football Group, which has a vast amount of experience with (allegedly) flouting league rules (*cough* Manchester City *cough*). And realistically, that Supplemental Roster oversight has already been addressed and fixed, but until MLS issues an updated document, NYCFC appears to be out of compliance and the only games on baseball fields in New York City this weekend should be, you know, baseball games.

That will not be the case, and there will be soccer in Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon. The Lions have not fared well on the road against NYCFC this decade, and are on a run of five straight losses when playing away against the Pigeons. Preferably they do not match those six open active roster spots with a sixth straight loss, and they take their 24 players plus the extra Homegrowns up to the Big Apple and give NYCFC a little of the old “how do you like them apples?” and come back with all three points.

And then maybe go out next week and sign three more players.

Vamos Orlando!