The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Orlando City’s Youth Movement, Looking for Goals, and the new U.S. Kits

With a week off for Orlando City, I thought it a good time to reflect on the recent past. What I found was that I was inspired, dejected, and agitated at what I found in my own soccer ecosystem. They say that sharing your burdens is good therapy, and so that is what I’m going to do today. Hopefully, if you’re having any of those same feelings we can work through it together.

The Good

Sometimes it’s nice to focus on the good things in life, especially when your senior teams both manage to post losses on the same weekend. This week, the good is Orlando City B and the U-17 and U-15 squads. The youth movement was a bright spot over the weekend with all three squads getting results.

OCB won its home opener and a second straight match, defeating Huntsville City FC, 2-1 at Osceola County Stadium. Alex Freeman scored his first professional goal and then followed it up with another for a brace to give OCB the victory. You can check out The Mane Land PawedCast interview of Freeman here. Goals and results are what ultimately matter and OCB is 2-0-0 with five goals on the season so far.

The academy lads did their part as well, with both the U-17s and U-15s winning their respective groups and going undefeated in group play at the Generation Adidas Cup. The U-17s beat Nashville SC 1-0 to secure the top spot, and the U-15s defeated Minnesota United 2-1 to do the same. The U-15 team then defeated Seattle on Wednesday to reach the quarterfinals, while the U-17 squad unfortunately fell to New York City FC’s U-17s.

The Bad

Orlando City currently sits in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and just above the playoff line. At this point in the season, that hardly matters, as those standings will fluctuate quite a bit before everything is said and done. What is slightly concerning is that the Lions have scored the fewest goals — five — of any team above the playoff line.

I say slightly because there are a bunch of valid reasons for it. Ercan Kara has been injured, there are two newcomers filling in at striker, with Duncan McGuire and Ramiro Enrique sharing the load. There are also so many new players on the offense that it is bound to take time for them to get to know each other and coordinate an attack successfully. These are all valid points.

However, we have recently seen an attack that is seemingly effective right up until it enters the 18-yard box. At that point, it’s as if physics works differently or that Orlando City players need corrective lenses. Or both. Lack of quality finishing has been a problem for several years, and it needs to get fixed. I do think that these players can do so, but someone needs to flick the switch to get them started.

The Ugly

I know there are some people out there who might like the new U.S. kits, but there has been a lot of “ugly” reaction online to Nike’s latest offering (peruse the comments in the Tweet below for examples). Then there are many who are indifferent to the new look. I generally fall into the group that thinks the kits are fine. However, like Roy Kent says in Ted Lasso, “Don’t you dare settle for fine.”

I have my own thoughts on why Nike keeps giving us “fine” but not awesome kits, and I’ll get to that. One potential reason is that the U.S. doesn’t have one iconic kit from its history for fans to point to. Brazil, Argentina, and others are usually instantly recognizable. Not so much for the U.S. at least of late. Yes, there were the “Denim,” “Bomb Pop,” and “Waldo” kits from the past, and many would like to see one of those make a comeback — looking at you, Waldo — but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

Another potential reason is that Nike is phoning it in. This is a popular sentiment online, but I’m not entirely buying that line of thinking. Yes, the kits look like they might be better suited as a training kit rather than the match kit, but I don’t think it’s because Nike is being lazy. The U.S. kits have featured some of the latest Nike trends and I think that is because the company wants the U.S. to be the face of those trends. Nike is a U.S.-based country and it makes more sense that Nike wants the U.S. in its most current stuff rather than Nike hates U.S. supporters.

My personal belief is that the kits we keep getting from Nike are actually the epitome of America. A giant corporation keeps churning out “fine” kits every year — or every other year — while not listening to the rabble online begging for the good old days. They are able to do so because the sales are enough for Nike to be fine with continuing the strategy. Nike almost came out and said exactly that at a pre-launch event with FOX prior to the 2022 World Cup.

“People always hate the new jerseys at first,” Aaron Barnett, Nike’s senior director of soccer apparel, told FOX Sports at a prelaunch event last month in New York. “Then your team wins its first game, and it’s the best jersey they’ve ever had.”

I don’t believe that anyone thinks those kits were the “best jersey they’ve ever had,” but there’s no incentive for Nike to change the strategy. Without some maverick designer at Nike sliding in an updated Waldo there’s very little chance we’ll get anything other than “fine.” How everyone reacts to each iteration — whether ugly or not — may determine if things change.

That will do it for today. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.