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Orlando City vs. D.C. United: Final Score 3-1 as Lions’ Home Futility Continues

Level at the break, the Lions gave up two goals early in the second half and continue to struggle both at home and in all games against D.C.

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2 years ago

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC

Orlando City simply cannot figure out D.C. United. The Lions (3-3-2, 11 points) fell behind early but leveled the game before halftime, only to fall flat in the second half in a 3-1 loss to D.C. (3-4-2, 11 points) at Exploria Stadium. Duncan McGuire scored again, to offset a strike by Taxiarchis Fountas in the first half, but Donovan Pines and Christian Benteke scored in the second period to lift the visitors to the win.

Orlando dropped its third consecutive home match and hasn’t won at Exploria Stadium since opening night, going 0-3-1 sincethe end of February.

“Certainly a very disappointing night, not getting the results at home after the big effort that the team (had) in the games away,” Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the match. “The development of the game, I thought it was very clogged. The game did not flow and we did not find that rhythm. We couldn’t find a way to hurt them. And they did it in those key moments. There’s no excuse. They took advantage of it and that’s why they get the points tonight.”

Pareja’s lineup included Pedro Gallese in goal — tying Joe Bendik for the most appearances in goal in club history, with 92 — behind a three-man back line of Rodrigo Schlegel, Robin Jansson, and Antonio Carlos. The midfield was made up of Gaston Gonzalez and Ivan Angulo outside of Cesar Araujo and Mauricio Pereyra. Facundo Torres and Martin Ojeda flanked rookie Duncan McGuire up top.

The teams played an uneventful first 10 minutes as they struggled to settle into the match. Each team got an early set piece but did nothing with it.

The Lions were particularly poor connecting passes and gave the ball away cheaply, in the early stages of the game and it cost them in the 15th minute. Angulo gave the ball away in the middle of the pitch and the ball quickly found its way from Mateusz Klich to former Lion Ruan on the right side. He played Fountas in behind the defense and the Greek forward scored his fifth goal in three matches against Orlando. In just three games, Fountas has become D.C.’s all-time goal-scoring leader against Orlando City.

After a few minutes of playing in the middle of the pitch, the Lions leveled things out of nowhere. Carlos started the play with a great tackle in the middle of the pitch, knocking the ball to Ojeda. The Argentine turned and played a through ball for McGuire to run onto and he beat Tyler Miller to equalize in the 23rd minute. It was the rookie’s third goal of the season.

“We executed a perfect press the way that we like to do the majority of the time in the way that we like to press,” Ojeda said about the tying goal. “Antonio was able to recover (the ball) very quickly, and I saw Duncan using his space well. So, I just tried to hit him on the counterattack to put him in one on one with the keeper. With luck, it happened and he was able to score the goal.”

A couple of Orlando long balls nearly sent Ojeda and Torres in behind the defense but the delivery was a little long on both and Miller was aggressive in coming off his line.

Angulo got down the right and put in a good centering pass to Ojeda in at the half hour mark. The Designated Player tried to flick it to himself to work past a defender but his touch was a little heavy and the ball rolled in to Miller.

The mixed night for Angulo continues moments later when he made a poor cross out of play and then got another blocked after being sent down the wing by a good flick by Torres.

The half saw a couple of good chances for Gonzalez to make something happen in the final minutes. His header across the box hit Victor Palsson in front of goal and required Miller to save it by knocking it over the net in the 40th minute. Gonzalez then forced Miller to make a save in stoppage time when Torres’ blocked cross reached him and he headed toward goal. The shot, however, was right at the goalkeeper.

Orlando City held a slight edge in possession (52.4%-47.6%) at the break, with both clubs firing three shots, but the Lions edging the visitors in shots on target (2-1) and corners (3-1). Orlando was slightly more accurate in the passing game (75.9%-70.9%), but neither team was spectacular.

Orlando came out of the locker room strong, sending a few crosses through the box but nothing came of them. But it was the visitors who took the lead. It started wtih an inattentive moment from Angulo, who drifted from Pedro Santos and by the time he recovered he could only knock a cross out for a corner. Behind the play, McGuire was down with what appeared to be a hamstring issue. Ramiro Enrique subbed on prior to the corner kick.

On D.C.’s corner kick, Pines ran through Araujo, knocking him to the ground and easily towered over Enrique to give the visitors the lead on a header in the 52nd minute, literally adding insult to the McGuire injury. The Lions appealed for a foul on Pines but none was given and there didn’t appear to be much of a delay to account for the play being reviewed.

The Lions had a couple of half chances to pull the goal right back but as has been a problem this season so far, both Ojeda and Torres had shot opportunities blocked by the defense. That proved costly, as D.C. added to its lead shortly after those chances.

Benteke got his goal in the 63rd minute and it was a preventable one. The Lions had ample opportunity to clear an aerial ball but couldn’t knock it away from the penalty area. It eventually found its way back in to Benteke who played it to himself, held off Schlegel, and then turned on a dime and fired past Gallese to make it 3-1.

D.C. United Head Coach Wayne Rooney said preparing for Orlando was difficult because of the varied formations the Lions have used in recent weeks, but he added that he felt his team had the size and strength to take advantage on set pieces.

Pareja inserted Ercan Kara and Rafael Santos for Ojeda and Schlegel to try to change the game and Kara nearly scored on his first touch off a corner, forcing Miller to knock it ofout for another in the 69th minute.

Orlando came frustratingly close to pulling one back a couple of times with Carlos and Angulo sending crosses through the six that just needed a touch but no one could provide one. The Lions should have had a second goal in the 77th minute on a counterattack with Torres laying off to give Araujo a wide-open look but the midfielder hit his shot right at Miller.

Benteke had two good chances to make the score even more lopsided. The first came on a free header that he missed well wide of goal and the second was stopped by a diving Gallese.

The Lions have now gone four straight without a win against D.C. — all four since Rooney became United’s head coach.

Orlando finished with more possession (55.2%-44.8%), shots (13-9), corners (9-3), and passing accuracy (82%-77.3%), but both teams got five shots on target and D.C. won the only stat that matters.

“We thought we got into that final part of the field more than a few times where we needed to be more pointed in our finishing and taking those opportunities at the end,” Ojeda said. “We had some good chances. Gaston had a header. We had a couple of opportunities where we came through. Obviously, we had the goal. But it’s just got to be more pointed and we’ve got to finish when we get into the box and into the final portion. It just has to be better.”

Pareja said after the match that it was too soon to tell the severity of injuries sustained by McGuire and Pereyra in the match, but those would be big losses for City to shoulder.

Gonzalez said the players aren’t feeling any pressure building with the lack of home results.

“I’d say we’re all calm right now. We know that there’s things that we need to fix to be able to take these results at home,” he said. “We’re faulting on the details here at home. That’s costing us some of these points. To the fans, I’d say, we know that we’ve got work to do to be able to bring those victories at home and to give them the results they deserve,” Gonzalez said.

The Lions will get another shot to right the ship at home next weekend, with the LA Galaxy visiting Exploria Stadium on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

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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.

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7 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

9 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.

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13 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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