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PRO Substitution Officiating Fiasco Could Have Been Costly to Orlando City
One of the most bizarre sequences in Orlando City’s eight seasons in Major League Soccer took place late in the Lions’ 2-1 Decision Day win over the Columbus Crew. The officiating crew for the match seemed to struggle with a triple substitution by Orlando City in the 89th minute. It led to an unnecessary booking to starting winger Ivan Angulo, the Lions having to defend a Crew set piece with just 10 men, and a lot of confusion on the part of everyone watching.
The Lions had taken a late lead in the 84th minute on a successful Facundo Torres penalty kick and were looking to see out the final few minutes of normal time, plus what promised to be a great deal of stoppage time after a second half that featured a couple of goals, a video review, a hydration break, and several substitutions. Head Coach Oscar Pareja sent Tesho Akindele, Wilder Cartagena, and Andres Perea into the game and planned to withdraw Angulo, Mauricio Pereyra, and Torres. What seemed like a simple matter became a strange and bewildering scene.
Here’s what took place:
Angulo and Pereyra both picked up knocks at the time of the substitution and needed attention from the training staff. Pereyra merely got what looked like a cramp stretched out while Angulo also received treatment. The player numbers went up on the board on the touch line and Orlando’s substitutes waited for the starters to come off the field. Columbus also made a substitution during the stoppage — replacing defender Jonathan Mensah with forward Erik Hurtado — so there was a lot to keep track of in the area between the benches.
That’s not an excuse for what happened next.
On the broadcast, you can hear the fourth official giving Cartagena, Akindele, and Perea instructions that they can go on when the other players came off. Torres was the first to reach the sideline, and Perea went on for him. Pereyra then walked off and Akindele ran onto the pitch. Finally, Angulo was the last to reach the touch line.
The broadcast’s field microphone (which I couldn’t hear in the press box, obviously) picked up fourth official Eric Tattersall telling Angulo where he should wait to go back on the pitch after his injury, but Tattersall apparently didn’t know that Angulo had been subbed off. Orlando had only 10 men when Columbus restarted play.
Seeing his team playing a man down, Angulo ran back onto the field and referee Alex Chilowicz, who had his back to the sideline and couldn’t see Angulo, must have been radioed about the Orlando winger returning to the pitch. Chilowicz whistled to stop play and booked Angulo, sending him back to the touch line. Orlando’s bench was incensed at the confusion and Cartagena continued to wait without permission to go on. Tattersall could be heard trying to send assistants back to the technical area at this point. Both Angulo and Cartagena were standing nearby, still lost in confusion.
The game restarted with a free kick in a dangerous area near the right corner of the box and Orlando City having only 10 men on the pitch. Cartagena was finally allowed on the field during play while Pedro Gallese was catching a cross from Aidan Morris.
After the match, questions were sent from the press box via pool reporter Mike Gramajo to the officials’ dressing room, asking for clarification on what happened during those late subs.
Because we aren’t allowed to speak directly to the referee after the game, the pool reporter is the MLS mechanism by which the media can receive feedback from match officials on why calls were or were not made. One “pool reporter” is selected to be the point of contact for all of the assembled media, and questions are usually formulated via group effort. And it takes some critical thinking to present a question in a way that will hopefully provide a helpful response, because, to be frank, we sometimes get some pretty smartass answers — or non-answers — and rarely get any useful explanation. In terms of Sunday’s fiasco on the field, the questions were put forth at Austin David’s urging.
The truth is that despite the Professional Referee Organization’s (PRO’s) assertion under former leader Howard Webb that PRO wanted to be more helpful and transparent with the media, very little useful information is ever gleaned from answers to the pool reporter’s questions, and often the answers seem to be the bare minimum that is required, with little thought given to the job we’re trying to do of telling readers what happened.
On Sunday, it inexplicably took three and a half hours to get a response to the questions Gramajo sent as the game was concluding. This was the (eventual) response, which Mike emailed to me when it finally arrived:
1. WHAT WAS THE REASON WILDER CARTAGENA WAS NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER THE GAME FOR IVAN ANGULO IN THE 90TH MINUTE?
Multiple Orlando City substitutions were taking place at the same time. When Orlando City presented their substitution cards to the 4th official, Angulo was not being replaced by Cartagena, but rather by Akindele. However, Akindele ran onto the field early, prior to Angulo coming off. Akindele entered when Pereyra came off the field, who was actually being replaced by Cartagena.
2. AFTER ANGULO CAME OUT, WHY WAS ORLANDO FORCED TO PLAY WITH 10 PLAYERS?
When Angulo finally came off the field, due to the confusion caused by Akindele entering the field early, the officials held Cartagena off the field while they established exactly who was replacing who. This meant that Orlando City were temporarily down to ten players. This was an error by the match officials, who should have allowed Cartagena onto the field of play prior to the game re-starting, as both players who were being substituted had left the field of play by that time.
First off, it’s stupid that it took 3.5 hours to get a response to these two questions. Second, the answers are, as usual, wholly unsatisfying.
The response to the first question indicates that Akindele presumably ran onto the field to replace the wrong player. This was permitted by the fourth official and if it was in error, he should have been sent back to the touch line to replace Angulo when Angulo came off. If he did not have the fourth official’s permission to enter, he should have been booked. There was no indication live, or from anything the broadcast picked up, that Akindele was in the wrong or that he didn’t have permission to go on. So, if he was to replace Angulo and not Pereyra, that’s on the match officials.
The response to the second question actually blames Akindele — not the officials, whose very job it is to adjudicate the match — for causing the confusion during that period. Better handling of the substitutions was necessary in that instance, and it’s harsh to blame it on the Orlando player, who only knows he’s been told he is to go on when his teammate comes off.
The response by the referee to the second question also admits that the crew was at fault for not letting Cartagena onto the field before the restart. That admission would have been of no comfort whatsoever to Orlando City players, coaches, staff, or fans if the Crew had scored on the free kick, knocking the Lions out of the playoffs. (And it’s helpful here to remember that an erroneously awarded corner kick allowed Austin to draw Orlando, and an admittedly [by PRO itself] wrong overturning of an Ercan Kara goal in Chicago, helped put the Lions in that precarious postseason position to begin with).
And let’s talk about that free kick. The Crew took the initial restart from further up the field. But after Angulo ran back on to keep his team from being down a man, and Chilowicz booked him and sent him back to the sideline, an indirect free kick was awarded in a much more dangerous position for the visitors. Columbus had a numbers advantage on an extremely dangerous set piece in a one-goal game with a playoff spot on the line!
I will grant that tracking a large number of simultaneous substitutions seems like it might have its difficulties, but this wasn’t opening day. It was Match Day 34. If PRO officials can’t figure out how to give one team a single sub and the other team a triple substitution correctly in the same window after 33 prior weeks of games, it’s simply unacceptable.
The organization needs to do a thorough audit of its member referees to ensure they know the rules and procedures of the substitution process — and how to properly enforce those rules and procedures — to prevent this from ever happening again. This idiocy could have cost a team a postseason berth.
Match officials are humans (allegedly) and therefore not immune to mistakes, but this one seemed particularly egregious on a procedure that should be routine.
Get it together, PRO.
Orlando City
Orlando City vs. San Jose Earthquakes: Preview, How to Watch, TV Info, Live Stream, Lineups, Match Thread, and More
Orlando City restarts its 2026 MLS campaign late tonight out west at San Jose.
Welcome to your match thread for a late night midweek matchup tonight between Orlando City (4-9-2, 14 points) and the San Jose Earthquakes (10-3-2, 32 points) at PayPal Park (10:30 p.m., Apple TV). This is the only scheduled meeting between the teams in 2026 and the first time the teams have met since 2024.
Here’s what you need to know ahead of tonight’s match.
History
Orlando City is 3-1-3 in the previous seven MLS meetings with the Quakes since the club joined Major League Soccer in 2015. The Lions got their only away win in the series in the last meeting and enter tonight 1-1-2 on the road against San Jose.
The teams last met on May 18, 2024, with Jack Lynn coming off the bench to score the game’s only goal. Lynn’s strike in the 89th minute broke the scoreless deadlock and lifted the Lions to a 1-0 victory.
The teams met in Orlando most recently way back on June 22, 2021, with the Lions beating the Quakes down, 5-0. Orlando got things started with an early penalty kick goal by Nani, followed by braces from Benji Michel and Daryl Dike to easily put the game away. The lasting memory from the game is Michel’s celebratory dance wearing a cowboy hat that came out of the stands.
Prior to that Orlando City romp, the last time the teams met was on Aug. 31, 2019 when the Lions got freight trained 3-0 at Avaya Stadium, giving the Quakes their first win in the series. San Jose’s offense came via a Chris Wondolowski brace and an early opening goal by Magnus Eriksson. Orlando looked flat and weary out of the gate.
The Lions were victorious in Exploria Stadium in the 2018 meeting on April 21, a 3-2 Orlando win. It was the first win in the series for either side after three straight draws. Chris Mueller, Sacha Kljestan, and Dom Dwyer gave the Lions a 3-0 lead before Florian Jungwirth pulled two back in the game’s late stages.
The Lions led all of the first three matches in the second half only to see San Jose pull level, with two of those tying goals coming late. In the 2017 meeting, Carlos Rivas finally broke the scoreless tie and gave Orlando City the lead in the 81st minute, but Wondolowski spoiled the Lions’ night with an equalizer two minutes later as the teams drew at Avaya Stadium, 1-1.
In 2016, the Lions were gut-punched in the 94th minute in an emotional match that ended in a 2-2 draw. It was the first home match following the Pulse nightclub tragedy and what appeared to be a storybook ending to a cathartic win turned sour on a last-gasp equalizer by Shea Salinas. Seb Hines — now the Orlando Pride’s head coach — opened the scoring for Orlando, only to see Chad Barrett tie it up. Julio Baptista restored the lead in stoppage time, but Salinas ruined everything.
The two teams also drew in the first meeting, a 1-1 affair at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, with the Lions down to 10 men after Brek Shea was sent off in the first half. Kaká and Wondolowski each scored from the penalty spot four minutes apart in that initial meeting.
Overview
The teams meet tonight to get their post-World Cup portion of the season started. Orlando City has been terrible on the road all season long, keeping only one MLS opponent under two goals all year away from home and allowing five goals twice (at New York City FC and Nashville) and six goals twice (at LAFC and in the team’s most recent match away at FC Cincinnati just before the break).
Orlando City is a putrid 1-6-1 on the road this season, and now the Lions must face the Western Conference co-leaders tonight before coming home to face Supporters’ Shield-leading Nashville SC at home on Saturday. They’ll have to play at least tonight’s game without Martin Ojeda, who is out with a thigh injury sustained some time between his first-half goal a week ago in a friendly against FC Dallas and the time the availability report dropped on Tuesday.
But it isn’t all bad news for the Lions, who should have both Antoine Griezmann and Dike in the lineup. Griezmann was the club’s highly prized and widely publicized summer Designated Player signing, while Dike’s return to Orlando came together more recently, following his departure from West Bromwich Albion. They’ll help the club’s offense, but the attack hasn’t been the issue in 2026 — it’s been the historically porous defense, which is on pace to shatter the MLS record for goals conceded.
Meanwhile, San Jose is one of the first half of the season’s biggest surprises, as the Quakes have been outstanding in 2026. Scoring 34 goals while conceding just 15, San Jose is among the league leaders in goals scored (tied for third), goals conceded (third), and goal differential (+19, third).
The Earthquakes are 4-2-1 at home and are coming off a 3-1 road win at Portland in their last game prior to the World Cup break. San Jose boasts Golden Boot challenger Preston Judd, who leads the Quakes with 11 goals, adding two assists in his 15 appearances. Ousseni Bouda has chipped in five goals and three assists. Niko Tsakiris leads the team with seven assists to go along with his two goals, but he’s still recovering from a lower body injury and is not available tonight. However, the arrival of Timo Werner (four goals and five assists in just seven games) has truly elevated Bruce Arena’s Quakes, and he’ll need to be one of the main focal points for the Orlando defense.
To have any shot at taking something from this game, the Lions will need to play better road defense than they have all season. Orlando can score goals, but with Ojeda out, Griezmann will need to adapt quickly, and someone other than the team’s leading scorer will need to find the net.
The Lions will play without Ojeda (thigh), Joran Gerbet (knee), Nolan Miller (knee), Colin Guske (international duty), and Clovis Archage (international duty). In addition, Marco Pasalic may or may not have returned to the team after the World Cup. He was not in training Monday, although interim head coach Martin Perelman said he expected the Croatian back soon. The Earthquakes will be without Nonso Adimabua (lower body), former Lion Earl Edwards Jr. (lower body), DeJuan Jones (lower body), and Tsakiris (you guessed it, lower body…come on, San Jose).
Match Content
- Our most recent PawedCast includes our key matchups and score predictions for tonight’s match.
Official Lineups:
Orlando City (4-4-2)
Goalkeeper: Maxime Crepeau.
Defenders: Adrian Marin, David Brekalo, Robin Jansson, Griffin Dorsey.
Midfielders: Ivan Angulo, Braian Ojeda, Eduard Atuesta, Tiago.
Forwards: Justin Ellis, Antoine Griezmann.
Bench: Javier Otero, Bernardo Rhein, Tahir Reid-Brown, Zakaria Taifi, Iago, Wilder Cartagena, Luis Otavio, Harvey Sarajian, Tyrese Spicer
San Jose Earthquakes (4-2-3-1)
Goalkeeper: Angus Gunn.
Defenders: Jamar Ricketts, Reid Roberts, Daniel Munie, Benjamin Kikanovic.
Defensive Midfielders: Beau Lerouox, Ronaldo Vieira.
Attacking Midfielders: Timo Werner, Nick Fernandez, Ousseni Bouda.
Forwards: Preston Judd.
Bench: Jonathan Gonzalez, Dave Romney, Paul Marie, Jack Skahan, Jack Jasinski, Ian Harkes, Francesco Montali, Max Floriani, Darius Johnson.
Referees
REF: Elijio Arreguin.
AR1: Adam Wienckowski.
AR2: Mike Nickerson.
4TH: Timothy Ford.
VAR: Jose Carlos Rivero.
AVAR: TJ Zablocki.
How to Watch
Match Time: 10:30 p.m.
Venue: PayPal Park — San Jose, CA.
TV/Live Stream: Apple TV.
Radio: AM 810 FOX Sports Radio Orlando (English), Mega 97.1 FM (Spanish), Nossa Rádio 1160 AM-WRLZ (Portuguese).
Social Media: For rapid reaction and live updates, follow us on Bluesky Social at @themaneland.bsky.social or follow Orlando City’s official Twitter (@OrlandoCitySC) or Bluesky (@OrlandoCitySC) feed.
Enjoy the match. Go City!
Podcasts
PawedCast Episode 542: Tampa Bay Friendly, McGuire Traded, OCB Beats Cincinnati, and More
Lions maul the Rowdies in friendly action, OCB wins on the road, and it’s transfer season.
Orlando City welcomed I-4 Derby rival Tampa Bay to Inter&Co Stadium for a friendly match on Wednesday and then proceeded to bludgeon the Rowdies with a couple of hammers named Antoine Griezmann and Justin Ellis. The two attackers combined for a goal and four assists in a 6-0 beatdown of the team from the Gulf Coast, with five different Lions scoring and Griffin Dorsey forcing an own goal. We discuss Griezmann’s first minutes with Orlando City, what the team showed in its formation, and how good Justin Ellis’ vision is.
Oh, and it’s also transfer season now. Duncan McGuire is on his way out and Marco Pasalic reportedly will follow soon, while a new left back may be headed from Spain to Orlando.
Following all of that, we discuss Maxime Crepeau being added to the MLS All-Star Team and the announcement that he’ll participate in the 2026 MLS All-Star Skills Challenge.
Our mailbagbox asked us about which World Cup semifinalist players we’d want to join Orlando this season (if we could only pick one), and more. Remember, if there’s anything — and we do mean anything — you want us to address on the show, just ask us by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC, or hitting us up on Bluesky Social with that same hashtag.
After the mailbagbox, we dive into OCB’s 2-1 road win at FC Cincinnati 2. It wasn’t the prettiest game by the Young Lions, but they managed to do enough to earn three points on the road, where they’ll stay to face Chattanooga on Saturday. We briefly preview that game.
Finally, Orlando City will be in Dallas Wednesday for the second of two friendlies leading up to the restart of the MLS season. It’s unlikely we’ll get a lot of details about that one, but we’ll see what happens. Maybe the FC Dallas folks will help us out.
Be sure to rate and review our show wherever you get your podcasts. Remember, we’ll read any five-star reviews we get on Apple Podcasts on the next show.
If you’d like to support our independent writing and podcasting efforts, we’d love to have you as a subscriber or donor over at our Buy Me a Coffee site.
Here’s how No. 542 went down:
0:15 – Orlando City crushed the Rowdies, the transfer season is in full swing, plus: hey now, Crepeau’s an all-star.
28:50 – The mailbagbox is always good for a hypothetical scenario.
36:54 – The Young Lions slipped past Cincy and head to Chattanooga, while the senior Lions head to Dallas.
Podcasts
SkoPurp Soccer Episode 119: International Break, USWNT, Louisville Preview, and More
The Pride return from a long international break looking to get their first-ever road win against Racing Louisville.
It feels like months since the Orlando Pride last took the field, but the calendar says otherwise. If you believe calendars, it’s only been a little less than three weeks, but time moves strangely in the post-pandemic apocalyptic world.
Anyway, we don’t have a match to recap, so we touched on a couple of Pride players putting the ball in the net during the international break and chat a bit about the United States Women’s National Team’s three-game friendly series against Japan. Emma Hayes used a lot of players, and the team looked solid for two of the three matches, but the rotated middle game seemed a bit disjointed. Hayes has greatly expanded the player pool and will have plenty of options when the World Cup approaches.
Our mailbagbox had questions about a potential change in the NWSL schedule, as the league explores adopting the fall-to-spring slate, and opposition own goals. Remember, you can ask us anything by hitting us up on Twitter at either @TheManeLand or @SkoPurpSoccer and using the hashtag #AskSkoPurp. You can use that same hashtag and hit @TheManeLand.bsky.social up on Bluesky. Or you can visit our show page, scroll down, and fill out the handy form. We’d also appreciate any ratings or reviews you can leave wherever you get your podcasts, and if you do that on Apple Podcasts, we’ll find them easily and read them on the show.
After the mailbagbox, we turned our attention toward Friday’s late afternoon tussle with Racing Louisville in Kentucky. The Pride have never won on the road against Louisville, and it’s about high time they did. This match begins a congested push to the June World Cup break, and although Friday’s hosts aren’t high in the table, the Pride must be at their best to get a road result in this fixture. We look back at the series history, compare the two sides, provide our key matchups in the game, and make our final score predictions.
If you’d like to support our independent writing and podcasting efforts, we’d love to have you as a subscriber or donor over at our Buy Me a Coffee site.
Here’s how Episode 119 went down:
0:15 – We open the show with a little banter about the Pride in the international break and the USWNT’s series vs. Japan.
9:03 – The mailbagbox features questions via both eletronic mail and social media. We welcome all modes of delivery.
19:59 – The Pride travel to Louisville to face Racing. They’ve never won in Kentucky, but we inform them how to do so.
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