Congratulations on making it to Friday. It’s been a long week, but we’re rewarded with Orlando playoff soccer both today and tomorrow. Before we dive into today’s jam-packed links, let’s all wish a happy birthday to Orlando City B defender Manuel Cocca!

Barbra Banda Shares Her Soccer Journey

Orlando Pride forward Barbra Banda sat down with The Athletic ($) to talk about her time playing soccer both as a young girl in Zambia and in her first season in the City Beautiful. She also discussed her upbringing, including her mother’s initial disapproval in her playing soccer until she joined Bauleni United Sports Academy in Lusaka. Now one of the best players in the world, Banda has lived up to the lofty expectations set since joining Orlando and has excelled at both the club and international level this year. Banda also spoke about her friendship with teammate Grace Chanda, the differences in her playstyle since joining the Pride from Shanghai Shengli, and what it’s like playing alongside Marta in Orlando.

Celia Announces Her Retirement

Pride right back Celia announced that she will retire following the end of the 2024 season. The 29-year-old joined the Pride before the 2022 season as part of a trade with the club then known as OL Reign, and she’s appeared in 37 matches with the Pride. She was also the Pride’s nominee for the 2024 Lauren Holiday Impact Award for her work with SpaceKids Global. Celia will hang up her cleats after a playing career that’s also included stints with European clubs and trips to the World Cup with Spain in 2015 and 2019. We wish her the best of luck in whatever path she takes moving forward!

NWSL Playoffs Kick Off Tonight

This year’s NWSL playoffs will get started in Orlando tonight when the Pride host the Chicago Red Stars. Although the Red Stars will be without forward Ludmila due to suspension, they should still be a tough opponent for the Pride. Temwa Chawinga’s availability looms over Saturday’s clash between the Kansas City Current and the North Carolina Courage, as the Golden Boot winner did not play in the Current’s season finale. Sunday’s slate includes the Washington Spirit hosting Bay FC before NJ/NY Gotham FC squares off against the Portland Thorns.

San Jose Earthquakes Hire Bruce Arena

Bruce Arena is back in MLS, as the San Jose Earthquakes have hired him as the club’s head coach and sporting director. The 73-year-old has a stellar coaching career that’s included success at the collegiate, club, and international levels. He’s the winningest coach in both MLS and United States Men’s National Team history and was named to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2010. He returns to MLS after resigning as the New England Revolution’s head coach in 2023 while on administrative leave amid a league investigation into allegations of insensitive remarks made by him. While he’s had successful rebuilds in the past with the LA Galaxy and the Revolution, Arena has his work cut out for him with a San Jose team that finished last in the league this season and conceded a record 78 goals.

Jim Curtin and Philadelphia Union Part Ways

The MLS coaching carousel is in full swing as Jim Curtin is no longer the head coach of the Philadelphia Union. Curtin has been with the Union since 2014 and was named MLS Coach of the Year in 2020 and 2022. While the Supporters’ Shield in 2020 may be the only silverware Curtin put in the Union’s trophy case, the team reached the U.S. Open Cup final three times, the MLS Cup final once, and the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals twice in his tenure. Philadelphia finished 14th in the Eastern Conference and missed out on the playoffs for the first time since 2017. With a rebuild looming, it makes sense for both Curtin and the Union to part ways. It will still be admittedly weird seeing Curtin coaching anywhere but Philadelphia.

Free Kicks

• Orlando City and Pride owners the Wilf family applied to develop parts of the Osceola Heritage Park complex. While the land that encompasses Osceola County Stadium or Silver Spurs Arena isn’t included, the former Johnson University campus is available.
• United States Men’s National Team Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino will be in Orlando this weekend for the Lions’ playoff match against Charlotte.

• Real Salt Lake midfielder Diego Luna was named MLS Young Player of the Year after recording eight goals and 12 assists. The 21-year-old narrowly beat out Inter Miami’s Diego Gomez in the voting to win the award.
• University of Texas forward Trinity Byars became the first active NCAA player to sign with an NWSL team since the NWSL Draft was removed. She signed with the San Diego Wave on a deal through the 2025 season and is recovering from a torn ACL suffered in September.
• Amid reports linking him with the coaching job at Arsenal’s women’s team, New York City FC Head Coach Nick Cushing confirmed that he will be with NYCFC next season.
• U-17 U.S. Men’s National Team Head Coach Gonzalo Segares called up 24 players for the team’s training camp in West Palm Beach to prepare for Concacaf qualifiers in February.
• Victor Osimhen had a brace in Galatasaray’s 3-2 win over Tottenham Hotspur. Manchester United beat PAOK Salonika 2-0 thanks to a brace from Amad Diallo that included a worldie for the second goal.

• Kylian Mbappe was not called up for France’s UEFA Nations League games this month against Israel and Italy.
• Let’s wrap things up with a moment of zen courtesy of Orlando right back Dagur Dan Thorhallsson.

That’s all I have for you on this fine Friday. I hope you all have a fantastic day and rest of your weekend. Go Orlando!

My wife recently went to a Hoobastank concert at EPCOT, and while standing in line, waiting to be allowed to enter the general admission seating area, she asked one of the Disney employees working the event which band had had the longest line queued up in advance of being allowed to enter. The answer, to her great surprise (and later to mine), was Yellowcard. I have nothing against that band, it just would have taken me approximately 15-20 days worth of guesses to even think of them as generating that much demand.

If you were to ask me which current Orlando City player would be most likely to receive a yellow card, however, that would not even take 15-20 seconds. Since joining Orlando City in 2022, Wilder Cartagena averages 0.35 yellow cards per 90 minutes in MLS regular-season play, or about one yellow card per every three games.

Quick trivia question for our diehard Orlando City fans: Cartagena’s 0.35 yellow cards per 90 minutes ranks fourth all time on the Orlando City leaderboard among players who played at least 1,000 MLS minutes. Who are the three players who received yellow cards more frequently?

I’ll show a table shortly that reveals this answer, but before then I will point out that Cartagena has also played in five MLS playoff games, and he is currently on a…hot?…cold?…terrible and please stop doing this?…streak of earning a yellow card in four consecutive postseason matches. His playoff yellow-cards-per-90-minutes average is a ridiculous 0.85, so for all intents and purposes, one yellow card in every game. That is the kind of performance that gets you…suspended.

More on this after I reveal the answer to the trivia question in the chart below. Thanks to the coders at Opta and fbref.com and their Stathead site for tracking yellow cards received. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane this provided, as during some of those early Orlando City years the team was far better at earning yellow cards than the Lions were at things like scoring goals and winning games. Maybe I actually did not enjoy this as much as I thought.

Without further ado, here are your Orlando City players who most frequently received yellow cards in MLS play:

For all of you who correctly identified Cristian Higuita, Brek Shea and Sebas Méndez without doing any research, I suggest bringing this knowledge of arcane Orlando City trivia and joining us at The Mane Land!

Back to Cartagena and suspensions, MLS rules for the playoffs are that if a player receives three yellow cards during the opening round and conference semifinal games, then they must sit out the next game. So, since Cartagena received two yellow cards during the first two opening-round games against Charlotte, if he receives a yellow card in Game 3, he would be suspended for the conference semifinal, if Orlando City defeats Charlotte.

I have shared similar data before, but while Cartagena may not be the player that most fans or pundits think of when thinking about Orlando City, there is the little matter of the fact that he leads the team in plus-minus (goals scored while a player is on the field minus goals given up while a player is on the field) across all competitions this year:

Not only does he lead the team in plus-minus while he is on the field, he is also one of only two Lions (Cesar Araújo is the other) who has a season-long negative on-off value (negative in this case is good, as on-off is calculated by the goals scored when a player is off the field minus the goals given up while a player is off the field). Cartagena is +22 while on the field and the team was -5 while he was not on the field, so he is a net +27 for the season, an outstanding number.

The website fbref.com tracks on-off for MLS regular season games only, and among non-goalkeepers Cartagena ranked 26th in 2024 and and 24th over the 2023 and 2024 seasons combined, with Orlando City being more than one goal worse per 90 minutes in goal differential when the Peruvian midfielder was not playing. Said another way, having Cartagena play a full 90 minutes during the last two seasons was basically tantamount to Orlando City starting the match with a 1-0 lead.

This was not meant to be a Cartagena fawning session, so let me step down from this soapbox (I do not think the crowd could have been any wilder (see what I did there?) while I was speaking though) and walk down to a place off Ocean Avenue to get back to the topic of yellow cards. I do not regret writing that line.

As mentioned earlier, Cartagena is carrying two yellow cards into the upcoming match with Charlotte, so if (when) he receives one, he would be suspended for the semifinal if Orlando City wins. As he is averaging nearly a yellow card per match in his five-game playoff career, it feels very likely that he will receive one at some point in the game. While it would be devastating for him, and the team, to think about having to play a conference semifinal without him on the field, there is a playoff cliché that applies here first, which is that in the playoffs, teams have to survive and advance and think about games one at a time.

Orlando City cannot play Atlanta or Inter Miami before it plays Charlotte, so the Lions need to play the style that they believe will bring them the best chance of winning. That means Cartagena needs to be a midfield destroyer and not be constantly on edge and trying to avoid a card. During the 2024 season he averaged 2.0 fouls committed per 90 minutes, which is 36th in MLS and 19th among MLS midfielders, and he needs to be the same aggressive player he has been all season. If he is thinking about yellow cards, he is not fully focused on winning, and that will not benefit the Lions.

If Cartagena does receive a yellow card, and as a reminder, he averages 0.85 yellow cards per match in MLS playoff games, so this is quite likely, then I believe it would be most beneficial if it were to happen in the middle third of the match. All cards in the opening third of an elimination match are brutal, as those players are now on the referee’s radar and have to consider the risk of a second yellow on any play they make for the rest of the match. It would be doubly brutal for Cartagena, as he would then also have the extra mental strain of knowing that he is definitely missing the next match if the Lions win, and in an elimination game, one moment of distraction or loss of focus can mean the difference. By the way, Tim Ream, feel free to be distracted for many moments.

Elite athletes like Cartagena are usually far better at compartmentalizing than we normal humans are, so perhaps an early yellow card would not impact him that much, but it would be better for Orlando City if it does not happen, so there is not the additional concern around if Oscar Pareja needs to sub him off to avoid going down to 10 players. Just as an early yellow card would be brutal, I also believe that a yellow card in the final third of the game would be brutal, because that would mean that the game was still competitive enough that Cartagena had to be on the field and taking risks to make plays, and then there would be the immediate letdown of a yellow card and the knowledge that if Orlando City advances, he would not be available.

An early card changes the game for Cartagena and the coaching staff, and a late card means a close game and a risk of short-term loss of focus late in the match, so therefore I am going to go with a yellow card in the middle of the match being the best scenario, even though none of these are actually good options. I do not want to disrespect any of the other central midfield candidates, but there is not really another good option aside from a midfield pairing of Araújo and Cartagena for as long as Orlando City can have them on the field. If this was Inter Miami, I’m sure Darth…sorry, Don…Garber would find a way for an emergency one-game contract signing of someone like Arsenal’s Declan Rice, but this is Orlando City, so no such luck for the Lions.

Make no mistake, the best outcome for Orlando City is a clean game from Cartagena, and while his playoff booking numbers are not ideal, he played 20 card-free MLS regular-season games this year, so he certainly can do it. My hope is that he does not allow the yellow card accumulation to influence his play at all and just plays with the same vim and vigor that made him the most valuable player for Orlando City in terms of goal differential.

If it helps at all, I am happy to write this message up in big bold letters and display it inside Inter&Co Stadium on Saturday night, though I will definitely not write it on a yellow card.

Welcome to Thursday, Mane Landers. Playoff soccer looms here in the City Beautiful, as Orlando City and the Orlando Pride both host games in which defeat means elimination. I’ll unfortunately be spending the next few days working but am still looking forward to following along when I can. Let’s dive into today’s links!

Orlando Pride Focus On Playoff Game

A historic season for the Orlando Pride will continue Friday when they host the Chicago Red Stars in their first playoff game at home. Preparing for the postseason is unfamiliar territory of sorts for this Pride team, but NWSL veterans like Morgan Gautrat and Carson Pickett can help the team get in the playoff mindset. Emily Sams, who is in just her second year with the Pride but has experience winning an NCAA championship with Florida State, spoke on how the team is focused on its goal of winning the championship that’s driven the team forward this year.

“We’ve come back to that at different points in the season and reminded ourselves that our big goals are to win the shield and to win the championship,” Sams said after training. “We know that it’s very serious and that if we don’t perform well, we could possibly go home. But also knowing that Chicago’s in the same boat, they’re coming to our environment, they’re in front of our fans, where we can control things and just know that we’re the better team and that we can, if we play our best and play up to the standard that we want to, that we’ll be the ones happy at the end of the game.”

Lewis Morgan Named MLS Comeback Player of the Year

New York Red Bulls midfielder Lewis Morgan was voted 2024 MLS Comeback Player of the Year for his performance this season after undergoing hip surgery in September of last year. The 28-year-old led his team with 13 goals and also had seven assists to help the Red Bulls clinch a spot in the playoffs. Morgan was also called up by Scotland for the Euros and UEFA Nations League. Injuries kept him out for most of the 2023 season and there were concerns over whether he would be able to return to form this year. He received 37.69% of the vote to win the award over Robin Lod and Maxi Moralez.

Hector Herrera Not Returning to Houston

The Houston Dynamo declined the option on captain Hector Herrera’s contract for next year. Herrera joined the Dynamo from Atletico Madrid in the middle of the 2022 season and helped the club win the 2023 U.S. Open Cup and make the playoffs the past two years. He had five goals and 21 assists over 62 regular-season matches and was named an MLS All-Star twice. It will be interesting to see what the Dynamo do with the now open Designated Player spot. Only two Western Conference teams scored fewer goals than the Dynamo’s 47 this season, so we’ll see how they add some firepower to the attack heading into next year. Houston is also in discussions with five players regarding returning for next year, including goalkeeper Steve Clark and midfielder Latif Blessing.

Champions League Reaches Midway Point

The fourth round of the UEFA Champions League wrapped up and there were plenty of great games held across Europe. Atletico Madrid went to France and left with all three points after a win against Paris Saint-Germain that included a winner in stoppage time from Angel Correa. A penalty kick right before halftime was the difference in Inter Milan’s 1-0 win at home against Arsenal. Aston Villa was handed its first loss of its campaign in a 1-0 loss to Club Brugge due to Tyrone Mings picking up the ball in his own box. Barcelona, Atalanta, and Bayern Munich all won, while RB Salzburg got its first win of the tournament by beating Feyenoord on the road.

Free Kicks

• Verizon was named an official partner of both Orlando City and the Orlando Pride. As part of this, fans can meet Jeorgio Kocevski and Jack Lynn at a Verizon store in Kissimmee today.
• Tottenham Hotspur’s clash against Victor Osimhen and the rest of Galatasaray highlights what should be an exciting day of soccer in the Europa League.
• Here’s a nice breakdown of the biggest conference tournaments in women’s college soccer heading into this weekend. Florida State is in the ACC semifinals and will square off against Wake Forest today at 5:30 p.m.
• Bayern Munich is reportedly interested in Burnley winger Luca Koleosho, who is eligible to play internationally for the U.S. along with three other national teams.

That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a great Thursday and rest of your week.