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Orlando City vs. Houston Dynamo, Leagues Cup: Final Score 1-1 (5-4) as Lions Win Penalty Shootout after Controversial Draw

The Lions conceded a highly questionable penalty at the end of the first half, then battled back to equalize and won the postgame shootout.

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1 year ago

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Dan MacDonald, The Mane Land

Orlando City kicked off play in the South 2 group of Leagues Cup with a 1-1 draw against the Houston Dynamo in front of an announced crowd of 14,005 at Exploria Stadium, but claimed an extra point by winning the postgame shootout, 5-4. It was a bit of a disappointing result for Orlando (0-0-1, 2 points) considering the Dynamo (0-0-1, 1 point) were awarded a penalty that never should have been given.

Amine Bassi scored Houston’s goal from the penalty spot in first-half stoppage time, but that was canceled out in the opening minute of the second half by Duncan McGuire’s strike.

“A very difficult match against a team who in the first half came with ideas we neutralized well but we couldn’t create with our sequences that many chances that we wanted,” Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the match. “At the end (of the half) the PK that was not, in our opinion, unbalanced the result. We came out in the second half much more sharp.”

Pareja’s lineup was nearly the same as the one that beat Atlanta United a week ago. Pedro Gallese started in goal behind a back line of Rafael Santos, Robin Jansson, Antonio Carlos, Kyle Smith. Cesar Araujo and Wilder Cartagena played central midfield behind an attacking line of Ivan Angulo, Martin Ojeda, and Facundo Torres, with Duncan McGuire up top. Mauricio Pereyra picked up a knock in training late in the week and was not in the lineup, nor was Junior Urso, who is still awaiting the arrival of his international paperwork.

The teams played a cagey first half and it took a while for either side to get a look at goal. Ojeda took the game’s first shot in the 12th minute from outside the area, spinning and firing a weak shot that was easy for Andrew Tarbell to handle. Orlando City then won a couple of corners and nearly created something from them.

On the first, the service found Araujo at the back post but his shot was deflected out off of Griffin Dorsey for another corner. The second found Carlos in front of goal but the defender sent his header whistling just over the bar in the 15th minute.

Houston grew into the game a bit for the next 10 minutes after that, with Nelson Quinones causing problems for Smith with his speed.

Orlando City didn’t generate too much for the rest of the first half hour, but Torres sent a shot over the bar in the 23rd minute.

Jansson blocked a headed shot from Dorsey after Smith again was beaten by Quinones to allow the cross.

Just after the hydration break, Smith knocked a ball in traffic toward the middle in his own end. Carlos gave it away and Aliyu Ibrahim intercepted but fired his shot over the bar.

Angulo was sent in front by Torres in the 39th minute but his first touch was too heavy and all he could do was win a corner. On the ensuing set piece, the Lions played short and Ojeda eventually fired a blast toward goal that deflected wide off a defender. Two minuts later, Torres again fizzed a shot over the bar.

Disaster struck in first-half stoppage time as Dorsey flopped in the corner of the box. Rafael Santos was called for a foul, a penalty was awarded to Houston by referee Filip Dujic, and somehow the video assistant referee did not overturn the awful call and penalize Dorsey for the obvious dive. To make matters worse, Jansson was booked for dissent and Gallese for time wasting before the penalty took place. Bassi stepped up to the spot and scored to put Houston ahead.

Following the penalty, Dujic didn’t even add the full amount of time the penalty took back onto the clock. The Dynamo took a 1-0 lead into the half.

Orlando City held the advantage at the break in possession (54.8%-45.2%), shots (8-3), shots on target (3-1), corners (4-1), and passing accuracy (84.9%-79.7%) but the horrible call had the Dynamo ahead at the half.

“I think the heat played a fairly large role today and really made us take a passive role in the first half, and that’s something that we talked about coming into halftime — that we had to change the energy of the team,” Torres said.

Pareja brought Dagur Dan Thorhallsson on for Smith at the break, and he played well in the second half, but that’s not what changed the energy of the team.

The Lions struck back right after the restart. A back pass from the Houston defense to Tarbell went badly wrong for the visitors. Tarbell’s pass was picked off by the onrushing McGuire who slotted into the empty net to tie the game in the 46th minute.

“When he dropped it back, I didn’t see any defenders helping out, running back, so I decided to press, and hopefully he’d kick it long, so we could win that. That was my thought process,” McGuire said. “I saw the defender to my right and I thought maybe he’d go there, so I just put my foot out and it came right to me, so it was pretty easy for me from there on out. I’m really glad we got that one early and set the tone for the rest of the game.”

Corey Baird tried to pull the goal right back for Houston but hit his shot over the bar at the other end.

Araujo won the Lions a corner after the ensuing goal kick and that got knocked out for a long throw. During the long throw-in by Araujo, Carlos went down in the box under heavy contact but Dujic suddenly wasn’t concerned with actual contact in the penalty area and waved play on.

Houston Head Coach Ben Olsen sent on MLS All-Stars Adalberto Carrasquilla and Hector Herrera after that to go after the win. The move helped the Dynamo who controlled more of the midfield and Orlando players didn’t help themselves with some poor passing in the middle of the pitch and in the attacking third.

Just a minute after the substitutions, Carrasquilla was set up near the top of the box and had an open look but his shot hit Carlos in the back.

Torres’ best opportunity came in the 70th minute but his shot was blocked behind for a corner. Three minutes later, Ramiro Enrique got to a fantastic long ball from Jansson. Tarbell was well off his line and Enrique tried to chip him but his shot went just over the crossbar and landed on the roof of the net.

Ercan Kara, another second-half sub, had two decent chances to break the deadlock as time wound down. He freed himself up for a shot in the 76th minute and hit it with a ton of power, but it skipped off the outside of the right post, going just inches wide. In the 81st minute, he made a sliding lunge at a Santos cross that was a tad too far out in front and he made contact with it but it deflected off of Tarbell and the goalkeeper was able to collect it.

Torres cut inside and smashed a shot on target in the 87th minute but again Tarbell was able to save it. Thorhallsson couldn’t keep it from going out but rather than a corner, a goal kick was awarded.

Neither team could find a winner late and the game ended in a draw. Orlando City dominated the stat sheet, finishing with the advantage in possession (54.6%-45.4%), shots (16-7), shots on target (5-1), corners (8-2), and passing accuracy (84.8%-77.2%).

The format of the competition means that in group play, draws go to penalties to determine which team gains an extra point in the standings — much like in MLS NEXT Pro.

Gallese made a huge stop on Houston captain Herrera to start the penalty shootout, giving Orlando City the advantage.

Pareja called the save “tremendous.”

“With Pedro’s experience and the way he manages himself and the confidence that he brings to us is incredible,” Pareja said. “So, his professionalism and that confidence is inspiring for us.”

“Every penalty kick shootout that we go into, Pedro has started off by looking at us in our faces and saying he’s going to stop at least one,” Torres said. “Obviously, he was able to get the first one and it just filled us with a ton of confidence, knowing that all we had to do is score our penalties, because he had already stopped one, and we were going to come out on top.”

Kara then scored for Orlando to push the Lions out front.

The rest of the shooters all found the mark. Thor Ulfarsson got Houston on the board, but Santos put Orlando City back in front after two rounds. Carrasquilla leveled things but Jansson responded by scoring. Dorsey tied the shootout at 3-3, but that was followed by a goal by Carlos to push Houston to the brink.

Gallese got his hand to Brad Smith’s penalty as the Dynamo’s fifth shooter, but it still got past him and Orlando needed a goal to end things. Torres stepped up and smashed home an unstoppable shootout winner.

The Lions gained two points in the standings but it should have been three, if not for the insanely soft penalty given to Houston at the end of the first half. But winning that shootout left Orlando City players feeling better than the way the game could have gone after that late first-half penalty was awarded.

“It feels just as good as winning any other game,” Torres said. “Obviously, going to penalties and being able to win in the PK shootout and get that extra point put us further up in the group table standings is always great.”

The Lions will host Santos Laguna in their final group stage match in the 2023 Leagues Cup next Saturday, July 29. Game time is 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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6 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

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?

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8 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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12 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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