Orlando City
Orlando City’s 2024 Offensive Blueprint (So Far)
An evaluation of how Orlando City has been trying to score goals in 2024.
Jay-Z released one of my all-time favorite albums, The Blueprint, in 2001. With apologies to him, and his track on that album called “Girls, Girls, Girls,” what we as fans want are goals, goals, goals, and we want our team to score as many of them as possible. In this article I will explore Orlando City’s attacking style — some might say their attacking…blueprint — thus far this season and evaluate how the Lions have been trying create those goals we do adore.
All right, now that we have pushed the limit on puns and wordplay about that album, let’s look at some numbers related to Orlando City’s offense. First, let’s start with the direction of play, because Orlando City has a very clear plan of attack in 2024, and it involves the left side. According to the tracking from whoscored.com, Orlando City attacks down the left side on nearly half of its possessions.
No team in MLS favors one side of the field as frequently as Orlando City’s 45% on the left side, and it is interesting that it is so high down the left because Facundo Torres, generally regarded as the squad’s most creative and dangerous player, plays most frequently on the right side of the field. I think there are three primary reasons for the left side favoritism:
- Iván Angulo is one of the fastest players in MLS and spends most of his time on the left side of the field, so the team tries to get him into space so he can use that speed to get the defense on its heels.
- Orlando City has three left-footed players who love a cross so much I am surprised they play for Orlando City and not Vatican City. Rafael Santos averages 5.1 crosses per 90 mins (27th in MLS), Nico Lodeiro averages 5.6 (16th), and Martín Ojeda averages 9.61 (second). Ojeda has been playing more centrally recently, but he still drifts to the left frequently. Lodeiro does the same, and Santos nearly exclusively stays on the left side. All three of them are crossing machines.
- Torres loves to cut back into the middle from his normal slot on the right side of the field, and so crossing it from left to right gives him space to operate, as the defense has to recover on a switch of field, and a scrambling defense against a talented attacking player is advantageous for Orlando City. Torres is fifth in MLS in receiving passes from 10+ yards away in the offensive area of the field, and his per-90-minute average for those receptions has increased from 2022 (8.4) to 2023 (9.8) to 2024 (11.4). Additionally, here is Facu’s shot chart for the year, courtesy of fotmob.com, and you can see that of his seven non-penalty-kick goals, all of them come from the right half of the field (his most recent goal against New England is highlighted with the red circle, because after a few minutes I gave up on trying to figure out how to show this without having one highlighted):
Expanding a little bit off of the direction of play, but returning to the second item in the list above, Orlando City leads all of MLS with an average of 21.32 crosses per 90 minutes. The other 28 MLS teams average 16.6 crosses per 90 minutes, so Orlando City is crossing the ball 28% more frequently than the average MLS team. The Lions have a physical presence in Duncan McGuire in the middle, so this makes sense to target him with crosses into the 18, and in fact the team is fourth in MLS this season with an average of 2.4 completed crosses into the penalty areas per 90 minutes.
It is not just Duncan though, of the 36 goals Orlando City players have scored this season (the other three are own goals), nine of them have come on a header and by eight different players. That 25% of goals scored on a header is the highest percentage for any Orlando City team in fbref.com’s tracking (goes back to 2018) and ranks the team only behind Austin FC’s 29% in MLS this season.
All crosses do not necessarily end in headers, but nearly all headers come from crosses, and the irony of the fact that Orlando City is scoring a high percentage of its goals from headers is that the Lions rank, to use a technical term, DFL in the league in percentage of aerial balls won (40.1%, and the next lowest is 45.4%). It’s kind of like the tagline to those Most Interesting Man in the World beer commercials from Dos Equis — the Lions don’t often win aerial balls, but when they do, they score goals.
Flipping from balls in the air to balls that are generally played on the ground, according to the data tracked by Opta on fbref.com, Orlando City is seventh in MLS in completed through balls per 90 minutes with an average of 1.5. The Lions have been in the top third of MLS in four of the last five seasons in this statistic, as this is clearly a staple of an Óscar Pareja-coached squad.
If you look at the individual MLS players who are leading the league in completing these dangerous balls, it is a veritable who’s who of creative players across the league. Say what you will about Luis Muriel, and I wrote a whole article about him a few weeks ago, but his passing ability is excellent, and it did not surprise me at all to see him high on this list and among the other well-known names. Here are the top 15, which also includes Lodeiro, among players who have played at least 500 minutes:
I touched on the left side focus earlier and how Angulo’s speed plays a large role in why the team plays more frequently down the left side, and that comes into play here as well with Orlando City’s predilection for playing through balls. It is also now time for Dagur Dan Thórhallsson to enter the chat, because he is just as much of a through ball target as Ruan was for several years in making speed runs up the right side of the field, and he ranks 24th among defenders in goal-creating actions per 90 minutes (0.24). Coincidentally, he also ranks 24th in shot-creating actions per 90 minutes (2.0). McGuire is also a target for these through balls as he makes excellent shallow runs behind defenders to then run onto balls played in front of him, and Ramiro Enrique is also pacey enough to do the same.
The completed crosses and through balls, as well as the fact that Orlando City is in the top 10 in total completed passes per 90 minutes, contribute to the team leading MLS with 10.1 completed passes into the penalty area per 90 minutes. The rest of MLS averages only 8.4, so Orlando City’s offensive tactics puts the team 20% higher than the rest of the league in terms of its frequency of completing passes to teammates inside the box.
Now, what teams want are goals, not completed passes into the penalty area, but you can see what the Lions are trying to do offensively by looking what these numbers reveal about how they are directing their attacking play.
Orlando City has a burner on the left (Angulo) and also several left-footed players who have the ability to whip in a dangerous cross (Ojeda, Lodeiro, Santos), so the focus is more on going down the left than the middle or the right. The Lions do have a fullback (Thórhallsson) with pace on the right too, so he is a target when they go right, and as a former midfielder, he has the ability to create offense coming forward, so he does with great frequency. The best finisher (Torres) is out on the right but loves to cut back to his left, and this year there is a higher focus on getting him the ball in space as opposed to having him leading the buildup.
Three players (Ojeda, Lodeiro, Muriel) are sharing the 10 role and releasing through balls to the outside and inside threats, and McGuire and Enrique are essentially serving as soccer versions of a basketball rim runner, attacking the goalmouth and trying to score in any way possible.
It all sounds great on paper, but for much of the season the offense was sputtering — so much so that Orlando City has scored more goals in the last seven games (20, 2.9 goals per game) than it did in its first 18 games (19, 1.1 goals per game). The first half of the season contained several issues that I believe contributed heavily to the low goal-scoring output, with several injuries, games missed for international duty, and competing in Concacaf Champions Cup at the same time as the start of the regular season, forcing squad rotation and players playing outside of their normal positions.
There was also just some poor play during those early months as well, some self-inflicted poor performances. I believe that Orlando City has found something though in the last few weeks, and while the Lions may not score 2.9 goals per game for the rest of the season, I think that what we have seen recently is a settled team of players who know their roles and understand the strategy, and who have the ability to execute that strategy.
Just 17 years after it was released, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Let’s hope that 17 years from now, in 2041, we are all looking back fondly on what became an athletically significant 2024 season for Orlando City.
Lion Links
Lion Links: 1/14/25
Orlando City begins preseason, Orlando Pride sign defender Zara Chavoshi, MLS transfer roundup, and more.
Happy Tuesday, everyone! It’s been a busy few days for me and sadly I won’t be getting much of a break as my work schedule continues to be packed this week. As is always the case, we have plenty of things to talk through this morning, so let’s jump into today’s links.
Orlando City Opens Preseason
It seems like the 2024 season just came to a close, but Orlando City had its first day of preseason training on Monday. The Lions didn’t quite have everyone in attendance, as Shak Mohammed, Jack Lynn, and Ivan Angulo were not present, while Duncan McGuire and Mason Stajduhar trained off to the side. It was a good first day back though, as the team got its first taste of life without Facundo Torres. One of the big talking points of this preseason will be how the team replaces Facu, with the upcoming preseason games set to evaluate where the team stands.
Orlando Pride Sign Zara Chavoshi
The Orlando Pride announced Monday that the team has signed defender Zara Chavoshi to a one-year contract. The 22-year-old spent the last four years with Wake Forest, where she played both center back and right back for the Demon Deacons. She helped the team advance to the championship of the NCAA College Cup, where the team fell to North Carolina. While she may not play too much during the 2025 season, this is a signing that should provide solid defensive depth while the team evaluates whether or not to award her a longer deal in the future.
MLS Transfer Roundup
Monday saw a slew of MLS teams not named Orlando City making transfer moves, and that means we have a lot to catch up on. We start with confirmation that the San Jose Earthquakes have signed Josef Martinez. Sporting Kansas City decided to continue the trend of signing forwards, as it announced the acquisition of free agent striker Mason Toye, who most recently played for the Portland Timbers. San Diego FC has signed midfielder Onni Valakari on loan from Pafos FC of the Cypriot first division. LAFC has announced the signing of midfielder Odin Thiago Holm on loan from Celtic. Finally, Toronto FC has sold winger Thiago Andrade to Cerezo Osaka of the J1 League.
Americans in Midweek Action
There are a ton of American players who will be taking part in games this week, and there are some good matchups to look forward to. Things get going today as Christian Pulisic, Yunus Musah and AC Milan face Como in Serie A play, while Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, and Juventus travel to take on a strong Atalanta side. Tomorrow has Chris Richards, Matt Turner, and Crystal Palace taking on Leicester City in the Premier League, while Johnny Cardoso and Real Betis have a tough Copa del Rey test against Barcelona. Luca de la Torre and Celta Vigo will then have a similarly tough task on Thursday when they face Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey. Things wrap up on Friday when Gio Reyna, Cole Campbell, and Borussia Dortmund hit the road to play Nathaniel Brown and Eintracht Frankfurt in Bundesliga play.
Philadelphia Union Hit with Transfer Ban
The Philadelphia Union are currently on FIFA’s transfer ban list (paywall) handed down from FIFA — with the club currently unable to register new players for the next three transfer windows. The issue is reportedly linked to the 2022 signing of Venezuelan striker Jose Riasco. The Union owed $700 to Mineros de Guayana — Riasco’s boyhood club, as part of the sell-on percentage it was owed due to developing him. The Union had a difficult time finding a way to pay the club, and the missing money was reported to FIFA. While the Union have been trying to get the issue cleared up since December, they are not the only team dealing with a ban, so it’s uncertain how long it will take to resolve.
Free Kicks
- Check out some of the views from Orlando City’s first day of preseason training.
- MLS has reportedly instituted a cash-based internal trade system which will start immediately.
- Casey Stoney has been named the new head coach of the Canadian women’s national team.
- Kai Havertz’s wife has shared abusive messages she received on social media after Arsenal lost to Manchester United in the FA Cup.
That’s all I have for you this morning. Vamos Orlando!
Orlando City
Martin Ojeda Could Become a Star for Orlando City in 2025
Will Martin Ojeda replace Facundo Torres’ goal production in 2025?
Orlando City signed Martin Ojeda on Jan. 9, 2023, using the Designated Player slot formerly occupied by club captain Mauricio Pereyra. The signing came with quite a bit of hype as it seemed the Argentinian midfielder would line up alongside Ivan Angulo and Facundo Torres to bolster the attack. It’s been an up-and-down first two seasons for the attacker, but 2025 could be his breakout campaign.
Ojeda began his career in Orlando as a regular in the starting lineup before being relegated to the bench for most of the second half of the 2023 MLS season. He spent more time in the starting lineup in 2024, eventually winning a spot in the starting XI. From June 28, 2024, to the end of the season, Ojeda started all but one game for the Lions, including every game in the team’s playoff run to the Eastern Conference final.
Orlando City is beginning a new era after the departure of the club’s all-time top goal scorer Facundo Torres earlier this off-season. The Uruguayan left a lasting mark on the club in just three years, including lifting the club to its first major trophy — the 2022 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. In his three years in purple, Torres tallied 47 goals and 72 total goal contributions — both the most in club history, even if you include the USL era. He was the focal point of the offense, especially when the strikers weren’t scoring. His 20 goals in all competitions last year led the team and helped the Lions reach the Eastern Conference final for the first time.
It’s fair to expect the club’s strikers to pick up for the goals departing with Torres. However, the current striker group is unlikely to do so. Duncan McGuire netted 15 goals in 2023 before missing a chunk of 2024 while at the Summer Olympics. Ramiro Enrique started in his place, scoring 12 times, a significant increase from his four goals a year earlier. But the diminutive forward hasn’t shown that he can lead the team in scoring.
Making matters worse, the Lions will be without McGuire for a considerable part of next season. The striker was injured during the playoffs and required surgery on his shoulder this off-season. It will likely take time for him to return to action, resulting in Oscar Pareja depending on Enrique in the starting lineup unless another forward is signed.
Torres made up for the lack of goals from the striker position last year and that production has been tough for Ojeda to match. However, while some might consider the Designated Player disappointing in most of his first two seasons, he created plenty of opportunities in 2024. Torres played 858 more minutes than Ojeda last season and only had 12 more shots. While Ojeda didn’t get on the scoresheet as often as Torres, he created chances for others, racking up a team-leading 13 assists.
When it comes to goal scoring, Torres’ production largely has to do with his shooting accuracy. The Uruguayan put 41 of his 88 shots (46.6%) on frame. Meanwhile, Ojeda only put 30 of his 76 shots on goal (39.5%). This is a major reason why Torres netted 20 goals in all competitions and Ojeda only scored seven times.
Especially considering that Ojeda started 34 games last season, the midfielder is almost guaranteed a spot in the starting lineup. And with Torres now playing in Brazil, Ojeda will likely be a focal point of the Lions’ attack. This gives the attacker a chance to fill the hole left by Torres and live up to his Designated Player status.
Torres leaves Orlando with an impeccable reputation, and the way Ojeda is viewed as a Designated Player signing will largely depend on if he can replace Torres’ goal contributions. If he can increase his production and replace the goals scored by Torres, Orlando City fans will think much more highly of the attacker. However, his failure to produce similar numbers as the departed star could hurt his legacy as a Lion.
Expectations will be high for Orlando City in 2025. The Lions were widely expected to contend for the Supporters’ Shield and/or MLS Cup, and while they didn’t meet those lofty goals, they made it farther than any previous MLS incarnation of the team. To make it one step further in 2025, they’ll need Ojeda to step up and help to replace the star they lost in December.
Lion Links
Lion Links: 1/13/25
Orlando City preseason training starts today, Jaedyn Shaw reportedly set to join the North Carolina Courage, MLS transfer news, and more.
Hello, Mane Landers! I hope all is well with you down in Florida. It’s just been another busy week for me working at Under Armour, and I covered some high school basketball. Later this week, I’ll be working at the Chicago Cubs Convention. Let’s all wish Orlando City goalkeeper coach Cesar Baena a happy birthday, and also a happy belated birthday to Orlando City forward Jack Lynn, who turned 25 on Sunday. There’s plenty to cover today, so let’s get to the links.
Orlando City Preseason Training Camp Starts Today
Orlando City players completed their medicals over the weekend to get ready to kick off their 2025 preseason camp.
Robin Jansson and Ramiro Enrique discussed the benefit of working with Orlando Health and the team’s athletic trainers and medical staff to ensure the players are fit and ready to play. The Lions also had their sports science and performance testing on Sunday.
Jaedyn Shaw Will Reportedly Join the North Carolina Courage
The San Diego Wave are reportedly trading forward Jaedyn Shaw to the North Carolina Courage for an undisclosed amount of Allocation Money. Shaw had reportedly been seeking a trade from the Wave for the past year. For the Courage, this move would bolster their attack after they only scored 34 goals last season. Shaw spent three seasons in San Diego, recording 14 goals in 61 appearances across all competitions. She has also made 21 appearances for the United States Women’s National Team, scoring eight goals, and was part of the squad that won a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
MLS Transfer Roundup
Major League Soccer had another busy weekend with some notable transfer moves. The San Jose Earthquakes acquired forward Cristian Arango from Real Salt Lake in exchange for $700,000 in 2025 General Allocation Money (GAM), $700,000 in 2026 GAM, and a 2026 international roster slot. Arango will be a Designated Player in San Jose. The Quakes appear not to be done yet, as the club is reportedly close to a deal to add forward Josef Martinez.
The Seattle Sounders have re-signed midfielder Joao Paulo through 2025, with an option for the 2026 season. Lastly, Atlanta United has reportedly submitted a bid to EFL Championship side Middlesbrough for forward Emmanuel Latte Lath.
English FA Cup Weekend Recap
The third round of the FA Cup continued over the weekend in England with some notable results and plenty of drama. On Sunday, Tottenham Hotspur needed to go to extra time to defeat National League side Tamworth 3-0. Despite playing the second half with 10 men, Manchester United defeated Arsenal 5-3 on penalties following a thrilling 1-1 draw. Manchester United goalkeeper Altay Bayindir stopped a penalty in the second half and made a clutch save on Arsenal’s Kai Havertz in the penalty shootout, while Joshua Zirkzee scored the winning penalty for Manchester United to advance.
On Saturday, Liverpool shut out Accrington Stanley 4-0, Manchester City defeated Salford City 8-0, and Wolverhampton edged Bristol City 2-1. We did get one upset, as Plymouth Argyle defeated Brentford 1-0.
The draw results for the fourth round were announced and there are some intriguing matchups. Manchester United faces Leicester City, Plymouth Argyle hosts Liverpool, and Aston Villa takes on Tottenham.
Free Kicks
- Former Orlando Pride defender Ali Riley lost her home in the Los Angeles wildfires. We here at The Mane Land extend our thoughts and best wishes to all those affected by the wildfires in Southern California.
- Former Orlando Pride goalkeeper Carly Nelson spoke up about her experience dealing with physical and emotional abuse with the Utah Royals on social media .
- The USWNT’s January training camp has been moved to Florida due to the Los Angeles wildfires. The USWNT will train at Inter Miami’s Florida Blue Training Center in Ft. Lauderdale.
- Forward Matthew Hoppe and Middlesbrough have reached a mutual agreement to terminate his contract, and he will leave the club as a free agent.
- Toronto FC named Robin Fraser as its next head coach. Fraser was previously the head coach for the Colorado Rapids and returns to Toronto after serving as an assistant coach under Greg Vanney from 2015 through 2019.
- After informing the club he wants to leave, Manchester City defender Kyle Walker has reportedly been linked to a move to Italy as AC Milan has expressed interest.
- Everton named David Moyes as its new manager over the weekend. Moyes returns to his former club for a second stint as manager. Everton is 16th in the Premier League, just one point above the relegation zone.
- Barcelona defeated Real Madrid 5-2 to win the Spanish Super Cup.
That will do it for me today, Mane Landers. Enjoy your Monday, and I’ll see you next time.
SkoPurp Soccer Episode 73: Marta Returns and an Interview with Director of Communications Jackie Maynard
Pride Transfer Goalkeeper Sofia Manner to AFC Toronto
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