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Orlando City vs. New York Red Bulls: Five Takeaways

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3 years ago

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The Lions headed up to New Jersey to face a Red Bulls team that generally protects its home grounds and, despite playing poorly, Orlando City had a chance to escape with a late draw. Unfortunately, shots don’t always go where you want them to and the Lions fell 2-1 to New York.

It was Orlando City’s 200th MLS regular-season game but it was one to ultimately forget. The Lions were forced to wear the PRIMEBLUE Parley kits that made them look like FC Cincinnati, and…well, they played like FC Cincinnati, to be honest.

Here are the things I took away from Orlando’s first L of 2021:

Missing Persons

If you keep taking players off a good team, it eventually catches up. Ruan’s continued absence and a personal matter Rodrigo Schlegel had to attend to forced Michael Halliday into the starting lineup for the first time on Saturday. While Halliday wasn’t terrible, he did turn the ball over in dangerous spots and was culpable on New York’s opening goal. If he’s not going to continue tracking Caden Clark there, he absolutely must make sure to communicate that a teammate has to pick him up. It did not appear Antonio Carlos knew much about Clark until the ball was in the net.

Up front, the second game of Nani’s ridiculous two-game suspension was obviously an issue. The midfield lacked composure on the ball and passes were off line just enough to force bad touches or simply turn the ball over on numerous occasions. Oscar Pareja said Mauricio Pereyra had experienced some tightness during the week and gave him 45 minutes anyway, but it was clearly not the normal Magic Mo out there.

Toothless Badger

It’s been painful watching Chris Mueller struggle in 2021 after his outstanding 2020 campaign. Mueller was deployed on the left again during the second match of Nani’s suspension and he just doesn’t look comfortable there at all. He’s still working his tail off but generally isn’t providing the expected width, he’s not generating consistent danger, and he’s been too passive at times. He had an opportunity to fire a quick shot in the box Saturday afternoon but instead tried to dribble past two defenders and was dispossessed.

But it isn’t just when he’s on the left. Silvester van der Water sent him on his way on the break just right of center and a heavy touch forced Mueller to re-gather the ball and by that time the defense had gotten into position to block his shot attempt. He’s not beating defenders 1-v-1, he’s passing backward a lot to restart attacking sequences, and he’s opting not to shoot when he’s got room to do so. The Lions need Mueller to get his swagger back and it might only take one shot going in to do it.

Flawed Strategy at the Start

Pareja said in his postgame press conference that the coaching staff picked a lineup and strategy expecting Orlando’s midfield to boss New York’s. That’s certainly not the way the game unfolded. The Lions were on their heels the entire first half and for stretches of the second half. Orlando struggled to break lines with poorly placed or weighted passes and every time the Lions turned it over, the Red Bulls looked threatening. Orlando changed tactics at halftime but the game was already 1-0 at that point, due mostly to one of those turnovers in transition. Instead of looking for a shot on goal, the Lions were picking a goal conceded out of their net because of a poor connection on the counter. Sebas Mendez had a shockingly poor game by his standards in terms of being loose with the ball and Andres Perea didn’t add much to the attack or to keeping possession.

The Lions’ turnovers were caused by numerous factors. Sometimes it was a misplaced pass, just a bit too far ahead or behind. Sometimes those passes were accurate but telegraphed. Often players in the middle of the pitch underestimated how much time and/or space they had before defenders closed and they kept the ball too long. Sometimes touches were simply too heavy and that little extra space between player and ball allowed the defender to close and poke the ball away.

Water Under the Bridge

Silvester van der Water has most certainly earned more minutes with his last two outings, tallying a goal and an assist. His 88th-minute miss on Saturday was a bad one, certainly, but without his goal four minutes earlier, the team’s not even in the match. After the match, van der Water seemed more concerned with the missed shot than the goal, which is the way you’d want your players to react, provided he puts the miss behind him and continues to be a dangerous attacking player.

The Dutchman provided an excellent ball to spring Mueller shortly coming on but Cash couldn’t control it on a day when it seemed like every bounce went the wrong way. So, it could have become a two-goal, one-assist outing in less than half an hour if things had gone more smoothly. I’ve seen enough that my conclusion is there’s just no excuse at this point not to start him every game until/unless Mueller starts producing at last year’s pace again.

Tesho’s Fine

There’s still a lot of blamethrowing going on when it comes to Tesho Akindele. I’m here to tell you that he’s not the problem with the offense at the moment. Even when not scoring, Akindele is finding ways to contribute both offensively and defensively. Saturday he listened to what Pareja has been drilling into him and selected the best options in the attack. He had two excellent layoffs for van der Water and should have had a two-assist game as his reward. He made an excellent run in the first half on a give-and-go with Junior Urso, but was forced onto his weaker foot before firing a shot on target. Akindele is more or less the team’s third-choice striker without Daryl Dike and Alexandre Pato, but he’s forged some good early chemistry with van der Water and does so many little things well that don’t show up on the score sheet, such as frequently forcing the opposing goalkeeper to turn the ball over.

Akindele has four direct goal contributions (two goals, two assists) in seven appearances after having just three (all goals) in 17 matches all of last year. He’s registered all four of those goal contributions in the past five games, including the last three straight. His next start will equal his total of starts from last season, his next shot attempt will equal his 12 from all of last season, and his next shot on target will equal the seven he had all of last year too. He’s not a prolific guy, but he’s stepped up his game in 2021. Unfortunately, some other guys have taken a step backward. If the surrounding pieces were clicking the way they had previously been, Akindele would find himself isolated less of the time and might even have better numbers to show for his work.

That’s the way I saw things during Saturday’s match. What did you see? Let me know in the comments section.

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Orlando City

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.

Published

15 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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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

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?

Published

17 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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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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Lion Links

Lion Links: 11/21/24

Marta’s chance to shine in NWSL Championship, NWSL and MLS award winners announced, 2025 SheBelieves Cup details, and more.

Published

20 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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Image courtesy of Orlando Pride

How’s it going, Mane Landers? I’ve been spending most of this week plotting out some holiday shopping to make things a little less stressful for myself over the next few weeks. A big weekend filled with Orlando soccer awaits us, so make sure to get any errands or obligations out of the way sooner rather than later. Let’s dive into today’s links!

Spotlight Falls On Marta in NWSL Championship

There are plenty of storylines heading into Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit, including Marta’s opportunity to put an exclamation point on what has been an excellent season for the Pride. Orlando has been enjoying the fruits of its labor this season after a rebuild over the past few years that’s included plenty of change in the City Beautiful. Marta has been a constant, however, enduring some difficult seasons since joining the Pride and adapting her game She’s scored in both of the Pride’s playoff games so far and has a chance to author a storybook ending on Saturday.

Ann-Katrin Berger Named NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year

NJ/NY Gotham FC goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger was named 2024 NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year, beating out the Pride’s Anna Moorhouse and Utah Royals FC’s Mandy Haught for the honor. It was Berger’s first year in the NWSL and she’s the first European player to win the award. She only conceded 16 goals across her 22 matches for Gotham this season and was a key reason behind her team’s success. I’m not too surprised that Moorhouse did not win, considering how solid the Pride’s defense was as a whole, but this won’t take anything away from a record-breaking season for her.

Wilfried Nancy Named MLS Coach of the Year

Columbus Crew Head Coach Wilfried Nancy was voted 2024 MLS Coach of the Year after a historic season in which the Crew set club records in both points and goals. The Crew also won the Leagues Cup this summer and their 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup campaign included advancing past Tigres and Monterrey en route to the final. This is Nancy’s first time being named Coach of the Year and he has been a finalist for the award every year since 2021. The Frenchman received 40.02% of the vote, winning the award over Inter Miami’s Gerardo Martino and Colorado Rapids Head Coach Chris Armas.

2025 SheBelieves Cup Details Unveiled

The 10th annual SheBelieves Cup will take place next year and the tournament will return to its usual format where each of the four teams plays each other once. The United States Women’s National Team will host Japan, Colombia, and Australia in February in what should be an exciting tournament. The U.S. will take on Colombia on Feb. 20 in Houston before facing Australia in Arizona on Feb. 23 and finishing the tournament on Feb. 26 against Japan at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego. These games will also be the first domestic games of 2025 for the USWNT as it prepares to qualify for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.

Eric Quill Named FC Dallas Head Coach

FC Dallas announced that Eric Quill will become the team’s next head coach. Quill joins Dallas after a great year with New Mexico United that included trips to the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinals and USL Championship Western Conference semifinals. It’s also a reunion of sorts for Quill, as he previously coached North Texas SC and was named USL League One Coach of the Year with the club in 2019. Dallas missed out on the playoffs this season, with Peter Luccin coaching the team on an interim basis after the firing of Nico Estevez in June.

Free Kicks

  • District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser challenged Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to a bet involving this weekend’s NWSL Championship, with embarrassing lightshows on the line.

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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