How Much Longer will Duncan McGuire be Dunc-ing on Orlando City’s Opponents?

I love dunking. Oreos, Dunkaroos, my son in the pool, basketballs on a lowered rim — I love all types of dunking. You do too, I know you do. In fact, I think dunking is universally loved by everyone, except the NCAA during the 1960s, when they outlawed dunking in basketball because Lew Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) was unstoppable and they were trying to find a way to make college basketball games more interesting.

Frédéric Weis probably also does not love dunking (France, Olympics, basketball, this is the time of all times to reference that dunk), but that may be it for those who were or are anti-dunk. I also love Dunkin’, and their slogan, “America runs on Dunkin’,” which Orlando City fans co-opted to Orlando runs on Duncan (McGuire), who is the subject of my focus this week. Duncan has returned from the Olympics but the question on all of our minds now is: for how long?

That we are even asking that question two years into McGuire’s professional career is a testament to his skill and will, because he is one of only four players from the entire 2023 MLS SuperDraft (88 selections) to have played more than 2,500 MLS minutes, and as the sixth overall pick, he was drafted four spots behind teammate Shak Mohammed, who has played only five MLS minutes in his career thus far. MLS draftees generally do not blossom so quickly that they are European targets after their first season, though Orlando City has had more success than most in the SuperDraft, as they drafted Cyle Larin, Chris Mueller and Daryl Dike, all of whom play(ed) in Europe after starting their careers in Orlando.

While Duncan was not Orlando City’s top pick in 2023 he was still a top six overall pick, so he did come in with some pedigree, but he was not a player who came up playing on youth national teams and with the expectation that he would walk right into minutes as a professional player. He did not play in either of his first two professional matches, and for the opening half of the 2023 season he generally sat behind Ercan Kara and then came in as a sub at some point in the final third of the game. But in those limited minutes he showed that his style of play was better suited to partnering with the rest of the Orlando City attack than that of Kara, leading to Kara’s return to Europe and McGuire taking over as the team’s primary striker.

Looking at his stats in 2023, it is easy to see why he took over that starting role, as using stats found on fbref.com, McGuire finished tied for 12th in goals (13), was third in goals per 90 minutes (0.84), and led MLS in shots-on-target percentage (72.7%), percentage of shots that became goals (39%), and goals – expected goals (+7.7). In general, I do not love bringing in expected goals as a stat, but in some cases it can be instructive, and in this case I think it is, because expected goals measure the average likelihood of a player scoring a goal from a specific location. That means McGuire scored 7.7 more goals than the average player would have been expected to score from where he took his shots in 2023.

Here are his 2023 MLS shots, courtesy of fotmob.com’s shot chart (the red circle is his final goal of 2023, because the site does not have a view without at least one shot highlighted):

Interestingly, that shot from near the midfield line has an expected goal value of 0.03, meaning the coders who set the values expect a goal about once in every 33 shots from there. I disagree. Vehemently.

Coming back to Duncan, let’s look at how he has been doing in 2024 as compared to 2023 in those same categories where he did so well, with one additional stat added in for comparison purposes (MLS rank among qualified players is shown in parentheses for the metrics; t means tied for):

Yes, the numbers on the right do not look quite as impressive as those on the left, as there are no top 10 rankings in any of these metrics so far this year. However, McGuire’s 2024 numbers are not bad, they are just not quite as good as 2023, except for the fact that when he shoots it on target he scores at exactly the same clip as he did in 2023, which is likely not coincidental and is a product of his shooting proficiency.

With about one quarter of the season left to play, he will have plenty of chances to increase his goal tally (unless he’s transferred out), and he also can make some improvements on the other percentage-based metrics as well. I do not think he will get to 13 goals again, but he has a shot to get to 10, which could make him the third or fourth (depending on if Facundo Torres also scores 10 goals) Orlando City player ever to have multiple 10+ goals in an MLS season. McGuire also now has 20 MLS goals in his first two seasons, and I expect he will get a few more before the end of the 2024 campaign, which I will come back to after a quick detour to look at those 20 total goals.

That 20 goals made for a nice round number, so I took a look at this decade (the 2020s) to see how many players in their age 23 or younger season had scored at least 20 MLS goals. The answer: 17. My dad, the world’s foremost pointer outer (go with it) of the prevalence of how often 17 shows up in the world is nodding his head and saying he knew it would be 17.

For those wondering, the leader this decade in goals scored by young players is FC Dallas forward Jesús Ferreira, who has scored 43 goals and will not turn 24 until this December. Ferreira has scored those 43 goals in 8,950 MLS minutes, McGuire’s 20 goals were scored in only 2,730 MLS minutes, the fewest of any of those 17 players. Duncan’s career MLS goals per 90 minutes is 0.66, which ranks him first among those 17 young players and also fourth in all of MLS (among players of any age) in this decade. The other three in the top four (Giorgos Giakoumakis, Chicho Arango, and Cucho Hernandez — presented in order of rank) were/are all Designated Players and all had/have salaries at least 20 times higher than McGuire’s, according to the MLS Salary Guide.

I mentioned that I would come back to the fact that I expect Duncan to score a few more goals this season, and that is because I think that he will finish this season with Orlando City. I have no inside information. I just think it makes more sense for him to finish this MLS season strongly and then depart in the MLS off-season, which is right smack in the middle of European seasons, when there will be teams who really need a striker due to injury or a relegation battle or because they are chasing promotion — like Barnsley was several years ago when the club made a loan deal for Daryl Dike to try to win promotion to the Premier League. It is no secret that McGuire wants to play in Europe, and he clearly has the ability to do so based on his stats and the eye test, but as it usually comes down to, it will be about timing and the purchase price.

Transfermarkt values Duncan at €5 million (approximately $5.46 million), third highest on Orlando City behind Facundo Torres (€14 million, $15.26 million) and Martín Ojeda (€6 million, $6.54 million), tied for 33rd overall among all MLS players, and tied for 12th among players 23 or younger. For a player who cost Orlando City nothing to acquire, any compensation would be nearly pure profit, so the team has an incentive to sell him as opposed to letting him play out his contract and leave for free.

McGuire had an opportunity to break out at the Olympics and drive up immediate interest, but the U.S. Olympic Team was not really set up in a way to maximize, or really even utilize at all, his talents, and he did not contribute any goals or assists. I do not think this Olympic performance will affect how talent evaluators and other teams view him, but had he scored some goals or contributed more than just his trademark max effort at all times, that could have been a catalyst for a move before the end of the MLS transfer window on Aug. 14.

Alas for Duncan, it did not go the way he had hoped, but as he always does, he left it all out on the field…and then left France the following day (Saturday), returning to Orlando in time to sub in during the Leagues Cup match on Sunday night. That’s impressive dedication, and it indicated to me that he is locked in on getting on the field and showing what he can do again.

He did return to a different Orlando City team though, one with a scorching-hot Ramiro Enrique playing in what was McGuire’s striker role and on a five, which became six, game scoring run. We may see the return of supersub Duncan for a while, reminiscent of his first few months in 2023, but I think that by the end of the season we will see McGuire back as the starting striker. If so, it will mean he is in good form, because Enrique is only going to be beaten out by a deserving player.

I think this is a best-case scenario for Orlando City — a highly motivated McGuire who wants his spot back and who wants to show European evaluators that they should bring him across the Atlantic, and a highly motivated Enrique, who wants to keep his starting spot and who will want to be the clear choice to be the starter when Duncan eventually does leave.

Orlando City fans are in for 90 minutes of strong striker play in every match now that McGuire is back and Enrique has come on like the proverbial freight train, and I think we have a good chance to see another end-of-season run coming for the Lions down the stretch.

As the Pride’s Kerry Abello always says, vamos!