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Orlando City vs. Inter Miami CF: Final Score 0-0 as Wasteful Lions Drop Points at Home

A missed Tesho Akindele penalty was the best opportunity but there were others in an unsatisfying scoreless draw at Exploria Stadium.

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3 years ago

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Orlando City outplayed Tropic Thunder rival Inter Miami but couldn’t find the back of the net in an unsatisfying 0-0 draw at Exploria Stadium. Tesho Akindele had an opportunity from the penalty spot, but there were other good chances that went unfulfilled as well in a frustrating night that still saw the Lions (9-4-8, 35 points) finish undefeated against Inter Miami (6-9-5, 23 points) with a mark of 1-0-2 on the season.

The Lions ran their unbeaten streak to six straight matches (2-0-4), equaling their longest of the season, and remain in second place in the Eastern Conference for the time being. Orlando hasn’t allowed a goal in two games, and tonight’s shutout came against a team that had scored six times in its last two outings.

“We think we did enough to (win) it, but humbly we have to accept it, take the point, and understand that’s the game,” Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the game. “But a great effort by our players. Competitive match. Obviously we needed to score goals. We needed to be more clinical, just missing that PK as well and with the goal that was called off too. Those things make us feel like it was not enough to get a result but we will keep going forward.”

Pareja’s lineup included Pedro Gallese for the first time since July 25. El Pulpo lined up behind a first-choice back line of Joao Moutinho, Robin Jansson, Antonio Carlos, and Ruan. Junior Urso wore the captain’s armband next to Joey DeZart in the central midfield, with Chris Mueller and Benji Michel facilitating the attack to Silvester van der Water and Akindele at the top of the formation. Nani started the match on the bench, as did Daryl Dike.

Orlando outplayed Miami throughout the opening 45 minutes but, as has been the case far too many times in 2021, couldn’t produce that final moment of magic. Mueller and van der Water sent shots well over the bar in the opening minutes and Urso missed a free header wide of the left post off a Mueller corner kick in the fifth minute.

But the biggest wasted opportunity of the first half came after Nicolas Figal was called for a handball in the area. Akindele took the spot kick for Orlando City and fired to his left, but Nick Marsman guessed correctly and made the save in the 12th minute.

Miami’s first good opportunity came off a corner kick in the 22nd minute. The cross bounced around in the box and Rodolfo Pizarro got his foot on it, sending a soft shot toward goal. Gallese was able to get over and swat it off the line.

The Lions thought they’d scored in the 24th minute when a short corner to Robin Jansson was fired toward goal and deflected into the far corner by Akindele. However, the Miami defense had stepped forward just in time to put the forward off and Ismael Elfath waved off the goal after reviewing the play on the video monitor.

“I felt it directly when it left my foot and it touched Tesho that he was standing offside,” Jansson said. “That was my first feeling, but then I haven’t seen it afterwards so I don’t know if it goes on the frame if Tesho doesn’t touch it. But it is what it is. I mean, we tried to do some stuff on the set pieces and this time it was close for me but we have to look forward to next time.”

The last decent look for Orlando in the half came on a header attempt in the 33rd by Michel, but he mistimed his effort and sent a weak dribbler well wide. Moutinho tried recycling it from the end line but could only sky his cross high into the air. Akindele made an attempt for it but was bodied off by the defense and couldn’t get anything on the shot.

Miami got a ball over the top in first-half stoppage time and Gallese was late getting off his line. Gonzalo Higuain put the ball in the net but the flag came up immediately and the video assistant referee confirmed the offside call.

The teams went to the break scoreless and Miami had to feel fortunate that Orlando didn’t take its chances.

Orlando doubled up Miami in shots (8-4) and each team got only one on target. The Lions held a 4-3 edge in corners and had the advantage in both possession (54.6%-45.4%) and passing accuracy (89.8%-84.3%).

Pareja put Dike into the lineup in place of Akindele to start the second half but the big man didn’t have the impact fans might have hoped. He managed one shot attempt that was well off target and only touched the ball 11 times in his 45 minutes on the pitch in his first match since returning from the Gold Cup. Dike last suited up for the Lions on July 3.

The second half was played mostly between the boxes for the first 15 minutes of the second half with each team getting some set pieces but doing nothing with them.

The first decent look of the half came from Mueller in the 64th when he sent a rocket from distance that he couldn’t get to dip enough at the end.

Much of the half was bereft of chances for either side, with Orlando getting six shot attempts off and conceding only one the other way.

Dike’s cross nearly resulted in a Miami own goal in the 83rd minute with a sliding clearance that didn’t miss the net by much. Second-half sub Nani sent in a good corner kick cross in the 85th minute that found Carlos’ shoulder. The ball deflected on target but Marsman did well to get over and make a huge save to keep the game scoreless.

Urso sent a curling effort toward the upper left corner in the 89th minute, but it was just a smidge off target on a good shot from outside the box. Orlando got a couple more corners but couldn’t make them pay off and the game ended all square at 0-0.

The Lions out-shot Miami 14-5, and got marginally more on target (3-2). Orlando held the advantage in corners (10-4), possession (55.4%-44.6%), and passing accuracy (91.1%-83.4%). It was a dominating performance everywhere but on the scoreboard.

Gallese’s shutout was his eighth in an Orlando City uniform, tying Brian Rowe for second on the team’s all-time list, five behind career leader Joe Bendik’s 13.

“Today to get back in goal for my team and to help us achieve our goals and continue advancing forward in this season is just great,” Gallese said through a club interpreter. “We had a very strong defensive game plan today coming into the game. We knew that Miami had a very strong attack with players like Pizarro and Higuain, so we just really needed to stay concentrated together as a unit, and being able to play that way defensively just really helped us have a strong game.”

Orlando’s six-game unbeaten run could have yielded more points with better finishing. The Lions have scored just four times in the last five matches.

“That’s the game,” Pareja said about the team’s missed opportunities. “It’s not easy. Scoring goals is all that we work for. But right now we don’t have that volume or we don’t have that clinical touch to put the ball in the back of the net — not even on a PK. I have to accept it but I have to see the whole thing. We will keep working. The boys have obviously the energy and the commitment to get better.”

Orlando City welcomes the Columbus Crew on Saturday, Sept. 4 in the Lions’ next match.

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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.

Published

12 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 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

14 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: 11/21/24

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

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17 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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