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.
Orlando City
Orlando City Announces Signing of Iago on MLS U22 Initiative Deal
The Brazilian youth international joins the Lions through the 2028-2029 season.
Orlando City announced today the long-reported signing of Brazilian defender Iago Teodoro, colloquially known simply as Iago, from Brazilian top flight club CR Flamengo. The Lions signed Iago through the 2028-2029 season on an MLS U22 Initiative contract. Terms of the deal were not disclosed by the club, although unconfirmed online reports have stated the Lions will only get 50% of a sell-on in the transaction.
“Iago is a talented young defender with experience at one of the best youth and professional clubs in the world,” Orlando City General Manager and Sporting Director Ricardo Moreira said in a club press release. “He has shown a strong competitive mentality (and) leadership qualities beyond his years that took him to lead Brazil’s U-20 squad as a captain in the latest FIFA U-20 World Cup. Iago also has an ability to contribute on both sides of the ball. We believe his profile fits well within our long‑term vision, and we’re excited to bring him here (to) Orlando.”
The 20-year-old Brazilian youth international from Volta Redonda, Brazil came up through Flamengo’s academy, debuting for the club’s U-20 team in July 2022 and making his first-team debut in January of 2024. Iago has accumulated a combined 68 appearances and has logged more than 5,000 minutes across Flamengo’s senior and U-20 teams across all competitions. He’s scored 14 goals for his club, helping Flamengo win the 2021 U-17 Brazilian Championship, the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 U-20 Intercontinental Cups, the 2022 and 2024 Brazilian Cups, the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 Campeao Carioca, and the 2025 Serie A title.
On the international stage, Iago has 13 caps with Brazil’s U-20 team, scoring three goals and captaining the team in the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
If you like buying kits with unique numbers, Iago will wear No. 57 on his jersey.
What It Means for Orlando City
The Lions have filled all three MLS U22 Initiative slots and will likely have to press the young center back into service quickly with Robin Jansson out with an injury and the club short of experienced depth in the interior back line. Iago is young, has good size, and is athletic. He fits the club’s profile and is the type of player who could yield a big profit in a future sale, even if Orlando City gets only half the fee.
The defender will have a little bit of preseason to learn Oscar Pareja’s system and get to know his teammates, but getting this signing across the finish line earlier would have obviously been more optimal. Iago seems to have a better nose for the net than just about any previous Orlando City center back in the MLS era, but only time will tell if those skills will translate to Major League Soccer.
The back line depth is still sketchy and lacks experience with Jansson out. David Brekalo has to be a locked-in starter at this point, with Iago his probable partner to start the season. Nolan Miller, Wilder Cartagena, and Adrian Marin would serve as the depth until the captain returns, with the Lions perhaps employing a three-man back line and wingbacks at times. The Lions will need Iago and Miller to grow up in a hurry, or things could get dicey quickly if Brekalo picks up a knock or a suspension early in the season.
Orlando City
Orlando City’s Roster Short On Tenure, Long On Ambition
The 2026 roster is not yet finalized, but for the first time in years it will primarily be made up of players who only recently joined the club.
If you are like me and are a fan of both soccer and basketball, you likely have been overwhelmed during the last few days by transfer news in global soccer and trades in the NBA as teams shape their rosters for the stretch runs of their seasons (most soccer leagues around the world, the NBA) or the season about to start (MLS, a handful of other spring-to-fall leagues). The news around Orlando City has mostly been limited to rumors about possible defensive reinforcements in recent weeks, and while our Ben Miller became an overnight expert in Polish soccer X (the service that was formerly, and more successfully, known as Twitter), it turned out to be for naught, as the attempted acquisition of Dušan Stojinović fell through due to a failed medical.
The rumors persist about the coming acquisition of Brazilian central defender Iago (Shakespeare lovers surely agree that if he signs it is a good thing there is no longer a Rod(e)rigo on the roster), but as of this writing, the only official recent acquisition came when the Lions signed 2026 MLS SuperDraft draft pick Nolan Miller on Wednesday.
MLS roster construction is complicated, and if you are struggling with sleep I recommend you read through the rules and regulations from the league’s website (that link takes you to the 2025 rules, as they have yet to update them for 2026, which is good news because that means some new sleep-inducing material will be published soon). To simplify, however, teams generally have 20 players on their senior roster and then a supplemental roster of up to 11 players who are also available for selection on game days.
With more than two weeks until the season opener, the roster remains in flux, but we can assume that by the season opener the club will probably have signed a few more players in order to make use of most of those available roster spots. Unless they go out and bring a former OCSC player back to Orlando, the Lions will be acquiring a player who will be new to the club, and that, plus all of the turnover from the 2025 team, made me wonder about the average tenure of this year’s team, in comparison to other Orlando City clubs from the past.
The 2026 roster is not finalized yet, but in honor of the hopefully soon-to-be-announced acquisition, we can channel Othello’s Iago and manipulate the data a little bit to fill out the 2026 Orlando City roster like so:
- Goalkeeper: Maxime Crépeau, Javier Otero.
- Defender: David Brekalo, Robin Jansson, Adrián Marín, Nolan Miller, Tahir Reid-Brown, Zakaria Taifi.
- Central Midfielder: Eduard Atuesta, Wilder Cartagena, Joran Gerbet, Colin Guske, Braian Ojeda, Luis Otávio.
- Attacker: Iván Angulo, Gustavo Caraballo, Justin Ellis, Duncan McGuire, Martín Ojeda, Marco Pašalić, Harvey Sarajian, Tyrese Spicer, Tiago, Yutaro Tsukada.
- Roster Spots That Will Be Filled: Designated Player (attacker), Defender (likely Iago), Defender (outside back), Additional Player, Additional Player.
I held the line at 29 players, though I will not be surprised if the club maxes out the full 30. It is also possible that some of the young players like Caraballo, Ellis, Guske, Miller, Otávio, Reid-Brown, Sarajian, and even Tsukada play very few or even zero minutes this year at the senior level. It is always exciting to think about the potential of young players, especially those who came up through the academy or were signed via the MLS U22 Initiative, but Óscar Pareja plays every game to win, and over the years he has shown a preference for going with veterans as opposed to young players.
Pareja is not completely opposed to youth, however, and with a roster this full of young players he may not have a choice but to give a serious chunk of minutes to players in their teens or early 20s this season. According to fbref.com, last season’s team had a weighted average age of 27.4 years old during MLS play (10th oldest among all teams), but unless the next few acquisitions are veterans in the twilights of their careers (I am looking at you, Antoine Griezmann), that average age is likely going to drop in 2026.
If we take that theoretical roster that I outlined earlier, and instead of using their actual ages use the number of years that each player has been with the club (assigning a value of one for all of the players who have never played for the senior team), we get the distribution below:
- Goalkeeper: Maxime Crépeau (1), Javier Otero (3).
- Defender: David Brekalo (3), Robin Jansson (8, most in the MLS era), Adrián Marín (2), Nolan Miller (1), Tahir Reid-Brown (1), Zakaria Taifi (2).
- Central Midfielder: Eduard Atuesta (2), Wilder Cartagena (4), Joran Gerbet (2), Colin Guske (2), Braian “Defensive” Ojeda (1), Luis Otávio (1).
- Attacker: Iván Angulo (5), Gustavo Caraballo (2), Justin Ellis (2), Duncan McGuire (4), Martín “Offensive” Ojeda (4), Marco Pašalić (2), Harvey Sarajian (1), Tyrese Spicer (2), Tiago (1), Yutaro Tsukada (2).
- Roster Spots That Will Be Filled: Designated Player (attacker) (1), Defender (likely Iago) (1), Defender (outside back) (1), Additional Player (1), Additional Player (1).
Before anyone yells at me, Cartagena and Tsukada both have actually been with the club for one more season than I represented above, but I am counting soccer-playing seasons, and they both missed all of 2025 due to injury. The math is not as elegant as it was to Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, but the chart below, which shows the counts by player tenure for every season going back to the team’s inaugural MLS season, will either look beautiful or hideous to you, depending on your artistic perspective. I think it looks fantastic.
The first few years are clear outliers, with every player being new to the club in 2015 (some players had been with the club in the USL era, but my definition of tenure was playing in a game for Orlando City’s MLS team) and no players being able to get to a “longer” tenure until at least 2019. That said, the 2026 team looks like it will be heavily populated by players in their first two seasons with Orlando City (the purple and gold bars in the chart), with that combined number likely being the most since the 2020 team.
Until the roster is finalized and the games begin my 2026 forecast is just that — an estimate of who will play in at least one game for the Lions this season. Just because the team will most likely be full of newer players, it does not mean that they cannot be successful. Inter Miami won the league title last season with 19 players in their first two seasons with the club and only four who had been there for more than three seasons.
The sports world writ large is moving to shorter contracts, with teams changing a lot from year to year, and after two years of relative stability, it looks like this Orlando City season will follow the same pattern and we will see the debuts of more players than in recent years — and also see more appearances by recent acquisitions (i.e. last season or this season) than in a long time.
Hopefully, some more new acquisitions will be announced soon, helping fill out the roster and answer some of the depth chart questions that we frequently talk about in our internal The Mane Land Slack channel (if you are reading this article, you are clearly incredibly intelligent and a passionate fan, so why not come join us and add your opinion to the mix?).
All those new acquisitions would come in as brand new Lions, bringing down that average tenure, but in the end what really matters is not whether a player has been with the club for three years but whether in a game they can help bring the club three points. The crowds at Inter&Co Stadium will be ready to roar for any Lions who can deliver, and I am looking forward to the next announcement from Ricardo Moreira on who will be taking their talents to Church Street and taking Orlando City back to the playoffs.
The club’s lofty goals remain the same, even if many of the players scoring the goals may be playing for the team for the first time.
Vamos Orlando!
Opinion
Likes and Dislikes From the Fourth Week of Orlando City Preseason
Let’s talk through some of the good and bad from the fourth week of Orlando’s preseason preparations.
The fourth week of Orlando City’s preseason preparations is (almost) in the books. The Lions will be kicking off the 2026 MLS season against the New York Red Bulls in a little over two weeks’ time, which seems impossibly near at hand. Let’s take a look at some of the good and some of the bad from the week that was.
Likes
Nolan Miller Earns a Contract
OCSC announced on Wednesday that it signed 2026 MLS SuperDraft selection Nolan Miller to a deal through the 2026 season with several additional option years tacked on. The center back was the ninth overall pick in the draft, and it’s good to see another high selection earning a contract after Harvey Sarajian was the first from the current draft class to do so back in January. Part of the motivation behind the move may be due to Orlando’s center back situation that we’ll touch on later, but either way, the youngster has his foot in the door and will have a chance to get on the field, contribute, and potentially extend his stay in the City Beautiful.
Iago Reportedly on Track
It’s been a trying week for Orlando City fans (more on that below), but another piece of news to be happy about came on Wednesday, when Oscar Pareja noted during his media availability that the team is continuing to work towards finalizing the signing of center back Iago from Flamengo.
This is one that’s been rumored for awhile, and devoted social media users may have even seen specific numbers thrown around, like a transfer fee of $1.5 million and Flamengo retaining a sell-on clause of 50%. Whether those are accurate or not, only time will tell, but for now it’s good to hear that talks are ongoing. While it would be nice for the process to go a little quicker, signing players from Brazilian teams seems to be a bit tricky at times, so it isn’t necessarily surprising that this deal is taking its sweet time. Hopefully negotiations wrap up quickly and Iago can join the Lions sooner rather than later though, because as we’re about to discuss, the team is almost certainly going to need him.
Dislikes
Robin Jansson’s Injury
Robin Jansson had surgery to repair a Jones fracture in his right foot. While no specific recovery timeline was announced and it’s difficult to estimate one since we don’t know when exactly the surgery happened, this is not great news so close to the start of the season. David Brekalo is currently the only experienced center back available to take the field, and we’re 15 days away from the first game of the season. A lot can change in that amount of time, but it’s a nervy place to be regardless. I also don’t love the fact that the injury is a Jones fracture. The fifth metatarsal, where the break occurred, is an area of the body that’s notorious for not getting great blood flow when compared to other bones, and Jones fractures have a reputation of being tricky injuries to heal. The captain is in good hands with the club’s staff and the good folks at Orlando Health, but I would caution restraint when it comes to expecting him to make a speedy return to the field.
A Signing Falls Through
The news of Jansson’s injury might have been slightly easier to bear if not for this piece of news that Tom Bogert broke on Monday.
The wording that the deal fell apart after a failed medical implies that all of the particulars were sorted between the clubs and the player, and that it was the very last hurdle that proved its undoing. That’s brutal enough on the face of things, as it deprived Orlando of a starting-caliber center back who is only 25 and would presumably have time to grow and improve at the club for a number of years. When Jansson’s injury is taken into account, it hurts even worse. As I said earlier, a lot can happen in two weeks, but due to unfortunate and uncontrollable circumstances the Lions’ center back corps is looking positively threadbare at the time of this writing.
While it’s very easy to get lost in the negatives, this week wasn’t all bad. Losing one potential center back and then a nailed-on starter and club captain in the space of two days hurts, there’s no getting around it. But on the bright side, a young player will get a chance to prove himself, an MLS U22 Initiative signing will reportedly be on the way sooner or later, and there’s still some time for additional reinforcements to arrive before the season opener arrives. Keep your heads up, take things one day at a time, and pray for good things from the soccer gods. Vamos Orlando!
Orlando City Announces Signing of Iago on MLS U22 Initiative Deal
Orlando City’s Roster Short On Tenure, Long On Ambition
Likes and Dislikes From the Fourth Week of Orlando City Preseason
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