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Orlando City vs. Atlanta United: Final Score 0-0 as Lions Run Unbeaten Streak to 10 Games

Brad Guzan and the woodwork stole points from Orlando City as the Lions couldn’t put one in the net.

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6 years ago

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC

Orlando City failed to find the net as both Brad Guzan and the woodwork combined to stop everything the Lions threw at them. Still, the team’s record unbeaten streak grew to 10 matches (6-0-4) after a 0-0 draw against Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

The Lions (8-2-6, 30 points) have now gone three straight without a loss to the Five Stripes (5-8-3, 18 points), but after largely outplaying their hosts, they’ll consider this two points dropped on the road. Despite a lot of regulars being out of the lineup, Orlando was the better side for the majority of the match.

“I think the players had another great game,” Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the match. “We had many options to score and not only that but I think we really dominated the game all the time. It’s much better when you translate that into three points but there is no frustration.”

“I thought it was a great team effort tonight,” said goalkeeper Brian Rowe, who made his first start of the season and ended up with a shutout on three saves. “I know you look around the field and we’ve had a number of guys that stepped up that haven’t gotten a lot of minutes this year.”

Pareja was without Pedro Gallese (international duty) for the first time in 2020, so Rowe got the start in goal behind a back line of Kamal Miller, Robin Jansson, Rodrigo Schlegel, and Kyle Smith. Joey DeZart got his first start for Orlando City in central midfield, along with Junior Urso, with Andres Perea and Robinho in the attacking midfield, and Benji Michel and Daryl Dike leading the attack. Fullback Michael Halliday was recalled from OCB and made the bench.

The Lions started the match without most of the team’s starters. In addition to Gallese and Sebas Mendez (international duty) being out, Joao Moutinho’s lingering groin problem and the undisclosed injuries to Mauricio Pereyra, Ruan, Tesho Akindele, and Uri Rosell combined to leave Orlando seven starters shy, with regular center back Antonio Carlos on the bench along with wingers Nani and Chris Mueller.

Some early pressing by Orlando gave Atlanta problems before both teams settled into the game. Atlanta sent an early warning sign with a good cross in from the left for Adam Jahn, who had slipped free of Jansson, but the cross was just a little too high for him in the ninth minute.

The Lions nearly opened the scoring in the 11th minute but Guzan made two huge saves to keep it scoreless. Smith sent in a good-looking cross from the right and Dike powered a header on target. Guzan fought that off and Robinho waited for the rebound to come down and swept it toward the net, but the Atlanta goalkeeper made a diving stop.

Atlanta then had some extended possession but wasn’t doing much with it. The Lions continuously turned them backward toward their own end, and most of the time the ball was around midfield. The hosts finally won a corner and Jon Gallagher sent in a good cross for Miles Robinson to head on target. Rowe made a huge save in the 18th minute, punching it away.

Perea bombed down the left side a minute later, but his shot was deflected out for a corner. Neither team got particularly close for the next 10 minutes or so, until the Lions again nearly opened the scoring. Robinho cut left to right with options in the box and chose to fire a shot that skipped just in front of the goal and crashed off the left post. The rebound came out to the right side and Smith ran onto it before firing a shot that Guzan saved in the 30th minute.

Franco Escobar picked up the first of what should have been two quick yellow cards in the 36th minute when he clobbered Robinho from behind. Two minutes later, he made a terrible challenge on Urso that had the Brazilian on the turf for a couple of minutes in pain. Escobar should have been sent off with a second yellow, but referee Rubiel Vasquez gave the Atlanta fullback a huge break and didn’t book him again. Urso was able to continue after receiving treatment.

Neither team got a good look the rest of the half and the two sides were scoreless at the break. Orlando had more first-half shots (7-5), shots on target (4-2), and corners (4-3), as well as more accurate passing (89%-86%). Atlanta held a slight possession advantage (51.7%-48.3%).

Disaster nearly struck early in the second half as Jansson tried to pass back to Rowe. The ball moved more quickly than expected and Rowe could only slide for it and watch as it skipped just wide of goal in the 55th minute.

“The turf is tricky,” Rowe said. “The way they wet it. The ball doesn’t really check up at all. It almost accelerates once it’s moving in a direction. So, he was trying to play me kind of into space on my right foot and it kind of took off a little faster than I think I was anticipating and what he thought as well. So, I kind of scrambled for a second but then once it was going by me, trying to reach for it, I saw that I was at least covering the goal, so I knew it was going wide.”

The Lions conceded a little more possession in the second half but still managed more scoring chances. Just two minutes after the near mishap in front of Orlando’s goal, Urso fired a shot that skipped off a defender and went wide. Atlanta looked to counter off the ensuing corner but Jansson made a great play in the open field to break it up.

Alex De John subbed on for Kyle Smith shortly after that and one of his first involvements was a nifty pass into the area for Michel in the 64th minute, but Benji couldn’t make good contact to bring it in and the chance evaporated. Michel then had another opportunity to get in two minutes later, as the Lions broke in transition 4-v-3, but his first touch on the pass again let him down.

Benji’s last involvement was to concede a free kick near his own penalty area before being subbed off for Nani in the 70th minute. Jansson made a good play on the ensuing cross to get across his man and nod it behind for a corner. Rowe needed to make his second big save of the night on that corner when Orlando failed to clear it all the way out and it fell for Anton Walkes, who shot from point-blank range. The Lions’ goalkeeper made a good reaction save to keep the Five Stripes off the board.

Atlanta held the ball for quite a while during that stretch with Orlando City content to play the ball to safety rather than try to pass out of the back as the team usually does. The Lions sustained some pressure as a result, but the defense and midfielders did well to keep Atlanta on the perimeter.

Nani nearly found a breakthrough in the 78th minute. The captain fired a shot at the top of the area that deflected off a defender and over Guzan but it hit the crossbar and stayed out.

Perea smashed a shot just off target from outside the area seconds later as the Lions continued to look for a winner.

Nani set up Urso in the 86th minute and the Bear hit his shot first time, but he left it too close to the middle and Guzan was able to make a vital diving save to keep the game at 0-0 late.

The last chance fell to DeZart in the 91st minute as the rookie found himself in space and sent a curling shot toward the back corner but Guzan again was able to get over and keep it out.

That was it for the match and Orlando City had to settle for a single point, falling two points further behind Toronto but gaining a point on Columbus, while Philadelphia jumped over the Lions into third.

The Lions out-shot Atlanta, 15-9 (6-3 on target), earned more corners (7-5), and were more accurate in passing (87%-85%), while the Five Stripes held more of the ball (52.3%-47.7%).

Even though Pareja wasn’t frustrated, he said his players expected more from the match.

“Today the players left the field thinking that they left two points on the field,” he said. “They were not so happy with the tie. And I said, ‘Well, sometimes you know, you take the point and leave.’ They are convinced about what they are. And no one gave anything to them. Nobody. Nothing. They have earned it through the effort, the discipline, the desire to do the right things. They know that to be the best team and to win trophies, you have to keep getting better.”

“It was a solid performance by the team,” DeZart said. “At the end of the day we’re disappointed because each and every game we want to go out and win it, home or away.”

Orlando City will next face the stingy defense of the Columbus Crew at Exploria Stadium on Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

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Orlando City

Flashback Friday: June 10, 2023 vs. Colorado Rapids

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to a booking-laden match at home that took place a little less than three years ago.

Published

5 hours ago

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June 12, 2026

By

Dan MacDonald, The Mane Land

The World Cup is now officially underway, and while that means Orlando City is on break, we can’t have you forgetting about the Lions while all the international action is taking place. That means its time for another edition of Flashback Friday, where we hop in the trusty time machine and reminisce on OCSC matches of yesteryear.

Last week we relived a rousing road win over the New York Red Bulls from June, 3 2023, and this week, we actually pick up right where we left off, on June 10, 2023 as the Lions returned home to take on the Colorado Rapids.

Coming off a 3-0 win over the Red Bulls in the previous match, Oscar Pareja decided to not mess with a good thing, and kept Orlando City’s same starting XI from that victory. Pedro Gallese was in net behind a back line of Rafael Santos, Robin Jansson, Antonio Carlos, and Kyle Smith. Wilder Cartagena and Cesar Araujo played the double pivot; Ivan Angulo, Mauricio Pereyra, and Facundo Torres were the attacking midfielders, and Ercan Kara was deployed as the striker.

In typical June fashion for the City Beautiful, kickoff was delayed by just under an hour as the stadium was pounded by storms, and the delay did not look to have done any favors for Orlando’s sharpness. That said, OCSC did win a corner kick less than a minute into the game, and Torres had a tame shot saved in the eighth minute, but the Lions weren’t consistently sharp with their passing in the early moments of the contest.

The teams traded chances just before the 15-minute mark, with Kara sending a header too high before Cole Bassett sent a shot straight to Gallese. Carlos then picked up a yellow card in the 24th minute, which evened things out between the two teams after Lalas Abubakar was cautioned for the Rapids after just six minutes. Those two bookings proved to be a harbinger of things to come, because Colorado went down to 10 men in the 39th minute after midfielder Braian Galvan caught Angulo with a high boot while his studs were showing.

Pereyra had Orlando’s best chance of the opening 45 minutes in stoppage time but could only send his effort right at goalkeeper Marko Ilic, and that was the last significant action of the half. The Lions ended the half with an edge in possession (59.7%-40.3%), shots (7-2), shots on target (2-1), and passing accuracy (85.3%-79.4%), while both teams won two corners.

Pareja made two moves at halftime, bringing on Rodrigo Schlegel for the once-booked Carlos, and Martin Ojeda for Cartagena in an effort to go more offensive against a shorthanded Rapids side. The Lions certainly looked brighter going forward as the second half got underway and had a few dangerous moments before finally breaking the deadlock in the 55th minute.

Pereyra played a ball across the top of the box for Torres, who took a couple of touches before sending a ball to the net that took a wicked deflection off Andreas Maxsø that carried it past Ilic.

It wasn’t the prettiest goal the Lions have ever scored, but for a team that was guilty at times of passing up good shots in favor of the perfect look at goal, it was proof that sometimes you just need to take shots in dangerous areas.

Fortunately, Orlando seemed to take that lesson to heart. Kara went close in the 65th minute despite shooting through traffic, Angulo had a shot deflected by Abubakar three minutes later, and Torres had another deflected effort go just wide of the post four minutes after that.

The game changed again in the 75th minute, when the Rapids had another player sent off. Abubakar lasted for 69 minutes on a yellow card but got burned by Angulo in midfield and hauled him down in order to prevent the Lions from potentially working a transition opportunity. He had some teammates behind him, but the referee showed him a second yellow card. Pareja smelled blood in the water and just three minutes later he brought on Ramiro Enrique for Smith, who had been given a yellow card in the 52nd minute.

Ilic made a great save on Pereyra in the 81st minute to keep the score at 1-0 and keep the Rapids in the game, but Orlando got its second goal just two minutes later. Torres had the ball on the right side of the box with a Colorado player backing off him, and that gave him ample time to get his head up and pick out a man. He played a ball to Enrique at the top of the box, who had plenty of time to take a couple of touches and send a low shot into the bottom corner past a diving Ilic for his first goal as an Orlando City player.

Somewhat surprisingly, the game started to get a little stretched after the Lions doubled their advantage. Colorado had a shot blocked in the 81st minute, Kara sent a shot very close to the post six minutes after that, and Gallese saved a Darren Yapi attempt in the 88th minute to keep his clean sheet alive. Aside from Pareja handing Alejandro Granados his MLS debut, that was the last significant action of the match, which finished 2-0 to the good guys.

Unsurprisingly, considering Colorado’s deficit in players, the Lions dominated all of the game’s most important statistics. OCSC finished with the advantage in possession (65%-35%), shots (15-4), shots on goal (6-2), corners (5-3), and passing accuracy (89.4%-81.5%).

The victory made it back-to-back wins for the first time in 2023, stretched Orlando’s unbeaten run to six, and gave El Pulpo his 100th clean sheet for the team in all competitions.

Marcus Mitchell had the helm for Player Grades in this one, and Torres got his nod for Man of the Match with a goal, an assist, and a grade of 7.5 out of 10. Several other Lions graded out at 7 out of 10, with only one player grading below a 6.

While it was a weird win, it unfortunately was the final game of the unbeaten streak, as the Lions fell to a familiar defeat at Gillette Stadium the following week, although things got back on track soon afterward. I’ll see you back here in a week for another trip down memory lane. Vamos Orlando!

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Lion Links: 6/12/26

USMNT plays Paraguay tonight, red cards rain down in World Cup opener, Sporting Kansas City linked with Yann Gboho, and more.

Published

9 hours ago

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June 12, 2026

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Image of Alex Freeman sliding in celebration of a goal.
Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Happy Friday, Mane Landers! The World Cup is in full swing and the U.S. will play today, so it’s a pretty exciting Friday to say the least. I’m a bit of a bundle of nerves about how the team will do, but I’m still looking forward to catching the game. If you have any gameday rituals, be sure to share, so that we can conjure up enough luck and support for the team tonight. Let’s get to the links!

USMNT’s World Cup Campaign Begins Today

The United States Men’s National Team will take on Paraguay at 9 p.m. tonight in its first match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. There’s plenty of pressure on the U.S. to perform well as one of the host nations, and this will also be Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino’s first time coaching at a World Cup. Pochettino stated that all 26 players are available for selection, including center back Chris Richards, although he may not necessarily start. Former Orlando City defender Alex Freeman, who is the youngest player on the U.S. roster, could make his World Cup debut tonight, so be sure to root for our hometown hero should he take the field. Hopefully, the Yanks can start this tournament off on the right foot with a big win in California.

World Cup Opener Features Three Red Cards

This year’s World Cup began in Mexico City, with Mexico beating South Africa 2-0 in a match that included three red cards. All three were straight red cards given in the second half in separate incidents, as Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were sent off for South Africa before Mexico’s Cesar Montes was shown red in stoppage time. There hasn’t been a World Cup match with that many red cards since the record of four was set in 2006 in a match between Portugal and the Netherlands. As for the game’s goals, Julian Quinones pounced on a mistake by South Africa to give Mexico an early lead and Raul Jimenez doubled that lead while South Africa was reduced to 10 men.

Sporting Kansas City Linked With Yann Gboho

While the World Cup roars on, the rumor mill is in full force as clubs make plans for summer reinforcements. Sporting Kansas City is reportedly pushing to sign Toulouse winger Yann Gboho, who recorded 10 goals and three assists across all competitions this past season. The surprising aspect of this pursuit would be that Toulouse values Gboho at an eye-watering $20 million transfer fee, which would be a club record by a country mile. Kansas City needs all the help it can get on offense, as it has scored just 14 goals in 14 games so far this season.

Jose Mourinho Officially Returns to Real Madrid

It’s been a bit of an open secret over the past few weeks that Jose Mourinho would become Real Madrid’s next manager and it’s now official, with the 63-year-old signing a three-year contract with the Spanish club. Mourinho helped Real Madrid win a La Liga title and the Copa del Rey over a decade ago before his departure in 2013 after three seasons with the club. Now, he joins a Real Madrid side that has finished second in the league standings and been eliminated in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League the past two seasons. I, for one, can’t wait to see how one of the biggest personalities in soccer works alongside a locker room of star players that seemed in disarray this past season.

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

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Lion Links: 6/11/26

Wilder Cartagena linked with move to Sporting Cristal, Orlando Pride hire Dr. Nicole Surdyka, Barbra Banda injury update, and more.

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1 day ago

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June 11, 2026

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Jermey Reper

The World Cup is finally here! Today starts what should be an exciting month of international soccer featuring more teams than ever before. While I wasn’t able to part with the arm and leg necessary to afford a ticket to one of the games, I’m still looking forward to watching along when I can with the rest of the world. Let’s get to the links!

Wilder Cartagena Linked With Move to Peruvian Club

You’ll need a translation tool to check out the full details unless you are fluent in Spanish, but Sporting Cristal of Peru’s top flight is reportedly interested in signing Orlando City midfielder Wilder Cartagena. The 31-year-old is currently under contract with Orlando through 2026, with the contact also including a club option for 2027. He was a crucial part to Orlando’s success in 2024, but he missed all of last year and has only started one game so far this season due to injuries. It’s not much more than a rumor as of now, but it’ll be something to keep an eye on during this break in the league schedule.

Barbra Banda Sustained a Hamstring Injury

Zambia Head Coach Nora Hauptle stated that Orlando Pride forward Barbra Banda is dealing with a hamstring strain. Banda didn’t play in either of Zambia’s matches during this international break, but Hauptle also noted that she should recover in the next week or two and will be fine for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations at the end of July. Banda was injured late in the Pride’s 3-1 win against Bay FC on May 29 and it was unclear how severe the injury was. Hopefully she’ll be good to go before the Pride’s match against Angel City FC on July 3.

Dr. Nicole Surdyka Named Orlando Pride Director of Medical & Performance

The Orlando Pride have hired Dr. Nicole Surdyka as their new director of medical and performance. She’ll oversee the Pride’s medical operations, nutrition, and more while also working with Orlando Health. Dr. Surdyka has over a decade of experience that included leadership roles with OL Reign and the LA Galaxy and has studied extensively into developing frameworks for health and performance in women’s soccer.

“Nicole is one of the most respected practitioners in our field, and her expertise in women’s football, return‑to‑play, and high‑performance systems will elevate every aspect of our medical and performance environment,” said Caitlin Carducci, Orlando Pride VP of Soccer Operations & General Manager. “Her leadership, her commitment to evidence‑based practice and her passion for supporting athletes make her an exceptional addition to the Pride.”

Analyzing Paraguay Ahead of USMNT World Cup Match

The United States Men’s National Team will play its World Cup opener on Friday when it hosts Paraguay at SoFi Stadium. It will be the 10th match between the two nations, with the USMNT most recently winning 2-1 against Paraguay in November of last year. There’s a familiar face on Paraguay’s roster in Orlando City midfielder Braian Ojeda, with Miguel Almiron and Andres Cubas as other MLS midfielders called up. Paraguay’s defense is anchored by center back Gustavo Gomez, who you may remember as the player who put former Lion Alex Freeman in a headlock during that aforementioned November friendly. As for Paraguay’s attack, the Yanks will need to keep Julio Enciso and Antonio Sanabria from wreaking havoc. Paraguay is a physical team that’s also strong in the air, so we’ll see how the USMNT deals with that on Friday.

England Beats Costa Rica 3-0 at Inter&Co Stadium

Orlando City’s Inter&Co Stadium hosted a friendly between England and Costa Rica on Wednesday, with England winning 3-0. Declan Rice gave England an early lead, but Costa Rica kept the Three Lions off the scoresheet until the substitutes came on for England in the second half, with Anthony Gordon and Ollie Watkins both scoring. England got the full Orlando experience due to a heavy storm that delayed kickoff, but Inter&Co Stadium earned praise for its drainage system that had the pitch ready to roll in no time. Enjoy this satisfying time-lapse video of the transformation provided by the stadium.

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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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