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Orlando City

Orlando City vs. Flamengo, Preseason Friendly: Final Score 1-1 as Ivan Angulo’s Goal Erases 1-0 Deficit

The Lions held against a strong Brazilian side in their first test of the 2024 preseason.

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10 months ago

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Orlando City fell behind early but Ivan Angulo’s goal just before halftime brought the Lions back in a 1-1 preseason draw at home against Brazilian giants CR Flamengo. Pedro opened the scoring for the visitors in front of a crowd of 22,678 that skewed heavily toward fans of the Brazilian side, but the Lions were able to fight back and get a result.

“I thought it was a game that was very rich on soccer and we enjoyed it a lot,” Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the match. “We’re proud of our boys. Both teams played with a lot of quality.”

Pareja’s lineup was unusual for a preseason friendly, in that most of the expected starters began the game on the pitch. Pedro Gallese started in goal behind a back line of Rafael Santos, Robin Jansson, Rodrigo Schlegel, and Dagur Dan Thorhallsson. With Cesar Araujo on international duty, draft pick Jeorgio Kocevski started in central midfield with Wilder Cartagena behind an attacking line of Ivan Angulo, Nico Lodeiro, and Facundo Torres, with Duncan McGuire up top.

The first half went back and forth, with each team seeing plenty of the ball and having opportunities to build attacks. The Lions got the first good opportunity of the game when Santos sent McGuire in behind with a fantastic ball but the defense was able to close and knock it out of play from behind before the striker could shoot. McGuire then fired wide off of the set piece, which the Lions played short.

Orlando came within inches of opening the scoring in the seventh minute when Lodeiro fired a shot off the woodwork. Flamengo was able to get to the rebound first and clear the danger.

Flamengo broke the deadlock in the 13th minute. A good cross in from the right wing found Flamengo forward Pedro slicing left to right through the box. Jansson was playing the passing lane and no midfielder tracked Pedro’s run. Pedro’s finish just inside the far post left Gallese no chance to stop it, giving the visitors a 1-0 lead.

Five minutes after the goal, Orlando nearly pulled level from an unlikely source. City took a long-range set piece near midfield after sending the defense forward into the box. A cross in from the left found the foot of Schlegel, who redirected it on target but Flamengo goalkeeper Augustin Rossi made a diving save to deny the shot and force a corner in the 18th minute.

Flamengo’s defense cleared the corner kick cross but it came back to Torres on the left. He gave off to Santos, who sent a cross fizzing into the area but McGuire couldn’t quite get onto it. McGuire headed over moments later after another Orlando corner.

Cartagena was booked for a dangerous challenge on Nicolas de la Cruz, giving Flamengo a free kick just outside the area on the left side. Rather than go for goal, the visitors sent a cross to the back post for Fabricio Bruno, who tried to head it back in front of goal, but Gallese was there to catch it in the 28th minute.

Flamengo had a golden opportunity to double the lead in the 40th minute when Kocevski turned the ball over in his own defensive third. The ball found its way to Pedro again but this time he sent his shot just wide of the left post. It was a costly miss, as the Lions tied the game moments later.

Santos had the ball out on the left side and played it into the box to Angulo. The Colombian turned and worked a quick give-and-go with Lodeiro, accelerating past the defense and taking the ball back from Orlando’s new playmaker. All alone in front of goal, Angulo calmly slotted past Rossi to make it 1-1 in the 42nd minute. Lodeiro got the assist on the goal.

“I’m very happy with the goal, and especially for helping the team,” Angulo said. “We trained that with Nico, that combination, and we made it this time. Nico is a great player. He’s helping us a lot, so I’m very happy overall with the result.”

“We trained a lot last week, especially with Ivan, Facu, Duncan and the forwards for this type of play,” Lodeiro said. “We are lucky we (could) do that in the game and I’m happy for Ivan because he played really well and he trained this play.”

Orlando nearly slipped in behind the defense again right after the goal. Torres got behind his man down the left flank and was taken down from behind. Guillermo Varela was booked and the Lions had a set piece a yard outside the left side of the penalty area. Lodeiro played it to the top of the box for Torres, but City’s Designated Player got under the shot, sending it over the bar. There was a lot of contact just after he released the shot but no foul was given and Flamengo was awarded a goal kick.

The last good look of the half fell to Kocevski, who found himself on the ball at the top of the box in space. The rookie tried to pick out the top left corner but missed just wide of the target. After five minutes of stoppage time, the teams went into the locker room knotted up at 1-1.

The second half wasn’t nearly as fluid as the first as both teams subbed liberally throughout, although Orlando City started the second half with the same lineup that started.

Flamengo got the first look of the second half as Gallese fought off a shot from Giorgian de Arrascaeta less than a minute after the restart.

The Lions then got on the front foot for a bit as Angulo sent a shot from outside the box that Rossi saved in the 51st minute, and Lodeiro went for goal on a free kick two minutes later but it was comfortably saved.

Jansson made a sparkling defensive play to track back and cut out a cross that would have presented problems in transition. Flamengo had a chance to go 2-v-1 after Schlegel was caught flat-footed on a sudden switch and Jansson’s effort saved the Lions some blushes.

Moments later, Pareja made his first subs of the match, sending Mason Stajduhar, Kyle Smith, Ramiro Enrique, and Felipe into the fray. That was just the first salvo, as Jack Lynn, Shak Mohammed, and Michael Halliday were introduced. By the end of the second half, Orlando’s lineup looked much closer to an OCB squad than an MLS side.

The next look in the match for either side came in the 67th minute, when Felipe attempted a range from extreme distance but the Brazilian midfielder’s attempt was off target. The Lions looked likely to take the lead two minutes later when Lynn sent a fantastic through ball that sprung Enrique in behind, but defender Fabricio Bruno made a great play to dispossess the Argentine in the penalty area before he could shoot.

Halliday, who was playing on the left side after replacing Santos, made a critical error in the 71st minute, turning the ball over, but the Lions were spared a dangerous counter when the flag came up for offside on Flamengo.

Thorhallsson tried his luck from a tight angle in the 74th minute but Rossi covered his near post and made the save.

OCB defender Zakaria Taifi made his first-team debut and picked up a yellow card with an unnecessary foul eight minutes later.

Luis Olieira got the last opportunity for either side early in stoppage time when he sent a shot over Stajduhar’s crossbar, and that was essentially it for the match.

“Impressed by how fit the boys were,” Pareja said when asked what he liked about his team today. “I was looking for 45 minutes today, just 45 minutes. And we discussed with the group if we see them fit then we will continue. I saw them fresh when we came back from the break. Just left us good sensations about how we are as a team. That part I like a lot. We’re still starting and they have a good understanding of what we want.”

“We showed a good intensity,” Felipe said. “We have only nine days of training but I believe we were a good match against Flamengo and it was a fair result.”

Next up for Orlando City is an out-of-town camp. It was originally supposed to be in Port St. Lucie, but now the team is going to Cancun, Mexico. The preseason match against Florida International University will no longer take place. The next scrimmage on the schedule is against Rhode Island FC.

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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.

Published

13 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

15 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: 11/21/24

Marta’s chance to shine in NWSL Championship, NWSL and MLS award winners announced, 2025 SheBelieves Cup details, and more.

Published

19 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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