Orlando Pride

How the 2024 Orlando Pride Stack Up against the Best Clubs in World Soccer

The Pride are off to a tremendous start to their NWSL season, but how do they compare to many of the other top clubs across the world?

Published

5 months ago

August 15, 2024

S. Andrew DeSalvo

Image courtesy of Orlando Pride / Jeremy Reper

As someone who majored in mathematics in college, I love when I find an answer to a problem and it is undoubtedly and unassailably correct. I like the analysis and the problem-solving parts too, but for me the best part of any math problem is when I find the answer and I know that there is no more work to do for that problem. In mathematics there is a defined answer, and the only question is why did Dr. (Redacted) at the Harvard of the South Rollins College always take points off for not showing my work even though I had the correct answer ~~all~~ most of the time? I fear I may have gone off track.

Where I want to go this week is an evaluation of the Pride and whether the 2024 version is one of the best clubs in the world — a question that, unlike those math problems I like so much, does not have a simple, defined answer. I mean, in the end the answer will be either yes or no, which is about as simple as it gets, but the dreaded phrase “it is a matter of perspective” looms large over any question about “who is the best?”

Mathematicians like questions that end in “st,” like ones about answering who/what achieved the most, highest, farthest (though not furthest, thank you Finding Forrester), fastest, or was the least, lowest, nearest, or slowest, but even though best qualifies as ending in those two letters, there is no simple mathematical way to show best in most cases. State fairs and the Winchester Dog Show’s judges may disagree with their Best in Show awards, but when it comes to the “best” teams in women’s soccer, we can try to quantify, but we also have to qualify, because women’s soccer does not yet have a true global competition pitting leading clubs against one another.

In the last two years we have had an incredible Olympic tournament and World Cup in the women’s game, both viewed by millions across the world, and both of those tournaments will play a large role in my evaluation of how to determine which club teams are the best right now in 2024. While we have a limited sample of club vs. club games that we can use to compare teams from different leagues all over the world, what we can do is look at the players who are on high-performing teams and look at collections of talent to compare those against one another.

I looked at the rosters of all the club teams across every women’s league tracked on fbref.com, which includes the following (apologies for the long list, but it is important to see for perspective): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. There are of course many other women’s leagues across the world, including some with outstanding teams, but I am relying on the available data to evaluate teams, and Opta, the company that tracks all the data and provides it to fbref.com, has not yet decided to track women’s leagues in China, Mexico, Portugal, Scotland, and many others.

Across all of those tracked leagues are nearly 200 women’s teams, and that includes the leagues that have produced most of the winners of the continental competitions in Europe and South America for as long as they have existed (Europe since 2001 and South America since 2009). Asia and North America are both rolling out continental women’s “Champions Leagues” for the first time in 2024 and 2025, and Africa has had a women’s Champions League since 2021, but aside from the leagues in Japan and the United States, none of the leagues in Africa, Asia, or North America are tracked in as easily accessible places. I hope this changes soon, and once more data is available, I will certainly use it when I compare players, leagues, and teams.

That said, I do have a working database of nearly 200 women’s club teams for this season (2023-2024 for the leagues where their season has finished and 2024 year to date for the clubs that are currently in season). I also have a thorough database of all the players who played in the 2024 Olympics and in the 2023 World Cup, since tracking is much better at the national team level. Looking at the 190+ teams, here are the total players in each league who competed in either, or in some cases both, tournaments (Notes: a player like Grace Chanda, who has not yet dressed for the Pride, does not count toward the NWSL’s totals; Medal winners means the teams that finished first, second, or third):

Looking at this list, which was sorted by the count of participants who competed in the 2023 World Cup, there is a clear top three among the leagues when looking at which leagues produced the most participants in the last two major international tournaments. Some of this data may include a little double counting, as players may have played for multiple teams during the season, so they show up in the same league multiple times, but I do not believe there would be any major shifts were I to get the fine-tooth comb out. And I have shaved my head since 2006, so in all honesty I would have to get my son’s comb and that one is designed for boys, so it would be so fine toothed it might not even allow any data to stay. I think we just move on.

England’s WSL, Spain’s Liga F, and the NWSL in the U.S. all are top three in Olympians and World Cup participants, and while that does not mean that they have all of the best (and again, how is best defined?) players in the world, it does mean that they have the most (ah, a beautiful word with a clear definition) players who were selected to compete on behalf of their nations in the two most recent major tournaments.

Injuries do play a role here, as Mallory Swanson, for example, would have played in the 2023 World Cup except for an injury, and she is but one of likely double digits’ worth of players who play on a club today but did not make their national team due to injury. Some national teams are extremely deep as well, so a player like Alex Morgan did not make the U.S. team for the Olympics but she almost certainly would have made the roster for several, if not many, of the other nations that qualified.

That said, the numbers are the numbers, and looking at them you can see that the three deepest leagues seem to be the ones at the top of that chart. This will be critical when we try to compare team performance across leagues, because being at or near the top in a league full of elite players is much different than being at or near the top in a league where only a few teams have all of the elite players.

Now, let’s take a look at that same chart, but looking at club teams instead of leagues (Note: there are five other clubs that also had six World Cup participants, but none had as many Olympians as did the Pride so I did not include all of them on the chart):

The Pride are tied for 19th for World Cup participants, which is pret-ty, pret-ty good. And if you look at the total medal wins for the Olympics plus the World Cup, the Pride have five (you are welcome for me doing the tough addition of five plus zero for you), which ranks them tied for seventh. I mentioned earlier that I was not able to pull in every league and club into my dataset, but I did look at every Olympic and World Cup medal-winning player, and there are no clubs from other leagues that would rank higher than the Pride for medal winners, though there are some clubs like Benfica of Portugal and Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa that had more than the Pride’s six World Cup participants.

So the Pride are looking pretty good for participants in recent major tournaments, but tournaments have qualification rounds and sometimes good teams have a bad spell and miss a tournament. A better indication might be looking at FIFA’s list of the top-ranked national teams, since that is determined by all games played by a national team and not just in the two most recent major tournaments. Zambia, for example, played in both the World Cup and the Olympics but is currently ranked 64th in the world, so having a player on Zambia, as the Pride do, may actually not be as impressive as having a player on Iceland, which is ranked 14th in the world but did not qualify for the World Cup or the Olympics.

Looking at clubs in this manner changes the analysis quite a bit, and the Pride fall from being a team in the top 20ish to a team in the top 40ish if I change the evaluation to be clubs with players on national teams ranked in the top 25 of FIFA’s rankings. The Pride have five players who have played on top 25 national teams this season — Adriana, Angelina, Marta, and Rafaelle from Brazil and Emily Sams from the U.S. — but there are 15 clubs that have twice that number or more, and the list is topped by Chelsea (22), Arsenal (20), and Barcelona (18). Going back from club to full league and ranking the leagues by count of players on top 25 national teams, the list still is led by England, but now the gap is even larger, and Germany has surpassed Spain into the top three. There really is a clear number one and then four sitting tightly bunched behind, and then another gap after that:

Looking at the data this way again shows the depth of the league in England, with well more than 100 players who play on top 25 national teams and who also ply their trade in England’s Women’s Super League, and that is across a league of only 12 teams. By contrast the NWSL had less than half as many players who play on top 25 national teams and our league has 14 teams.

As I mentioned previously the Pride have five players on top 25 national teams, which ranks them tied for fifth in the NWSL, behind San Diego (10), Gotham (9), Portland (8), and Washington (6) and tied with Kansas City, Chicago, and Houston. In fact every NWSL team except for Louisville has a player on a top 25 national team, and 10 of the 14 teams have at least three. Only the leagues in England and the U.S. have 10 or more teams with at least three top 25 national team players, which leads me to my next chart.

The Pride have earned 79% of the possible points they could earn this season (38 points out of a possible 48), but the team only has five top 25 national team players out of the NWSL’s total of 63, for a total of 8%. That 79% number seems like pretty high percentage of total points earned, but it actually ranks 20th among the 189 teams among all the 2024 leagues I have been writing about thus far, as you can see below:

There were two other takeaways from this chart:

A total of 12 of the 16 leagues have at least one team that earned a higher percentage of points than the Pride, who are leading the NWSL thus far this season and are well ahead of the pace of last year’s champions, the Wave, who finished the season earning 56% of their possible points.
The Pride are leading the NWSL but with a much lower percentage of top national team players on their roster, meaning that: a) the top teams in other leagues are disproportionately heavy with elite national team players (all leagues have at least 10 teams, so if players were evenly dispersed, the expected percentages would be closer to 10% or lower), and b) the makeup of the Pride is markedly different than most of the other highly performing teams.

Markedly different does not mean worse, it just means in a different manner. The Pride have an elite level talent in Barbra Banda, who plays for her national team but that national team is not an elite team, even though she is an elite talent. And speaking of elite talent, since 2021 ESPN has used a panel of experts to rank the top 50 players in women’s soccer, and during the three seasons (2021, 2022, and 2023) when the outlet has put out these rankings, the Pride are one of fewer than 30 clubs in the world that currently have at least one player who was ranked in the top 50 during at least one of the last three years, and as you surely guessed, that is Marta, who was in the top 50 in 2021, though not on the 2022 or 2023 versions of the list.

When ESPN comes out with its 2024 list, I expect that Barbra Banda will be ranked high on it, meaning that in most games the Pride are rolling out one player who is currently considered one of the world’s best (Banda), one who was in a recent year and who is still playing at a high level (Marta), four others who are on elite-level national teams (Adriana, Angelina, Rafaelle, and Sams), one who was recently called into the camp of an elite national team (Anna Moorhouse), one who can successfully dribble through a hospital full of people chasing her while also interrupting an MRI, a surgery, and physical therapy without hurting anyone (Kerry Abello — I believe she is the only player in the world who has done this), one who made the roster for the U-20 USWNT World Cup squad (Ally Lemos), and then a full rest of the roster that has contributed to an undefeated start and taking 79% of the possible points from a league that is deep with talent from top to bottom. This is a strong team.

There is one site I found that does have a ranking of women’s teams across the world, and you can find its 2023 club ranking here. The site does not disclose its algorithm, but it did rank the 2023 Pride tied for 132nd in the world, and that was a team that did not win a game in the NWSL Challenge Cup and did not make the 2023 playoffs either.

The 2024 Pride are objectively much better than the 2023 Pride, and in looking at their record (top of the league) and goal differential (+20 overall, +1.25 per game played) in a league that is clearly one of the three, and debatably one of the two, best leagues in the world, as well as the pedigree of the players the Pride have on their team, I think that I can answer the question in the title of this story with a yes. The 2024 Pride are one of the best clubs in the world, and I think they are likely in the top 10-15%.

How close are they to the top of the list, though? That is for another article…at the end of the season.

Orlando Pride

Orlando Pride Re-Sign Marta through 2026 Season

The Pride captain returns to Orlando for two more seasons with a new deal that could take her through the end of her playing days.

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2025

Michael Citro

Image courtesy of Orlando Pride / Jeremy Reper

Orlando Pride talisman and team captain Marta will most likely end her illustrious playing career in the City Beautiful after inking a new two-year contract with the club through the end of 2026. The club announced the signing today, just 47 days after concluding her most productive season since 2017 and the Pride’s — and arguably any NWSL team’s — best season ever.

The 38-year-old Brazilian, who will turn 39 in February, said after the Pride won the NWSL Championship in November that she’d like to play one or two more seasons. This contract will allow her to do just that, putting her on track to play 10 seasons in Orlando and retire (if she chooses to do so at that time) at age 40.

Marta, who was out of contract after captaining the Pride to the NWSL Shield and the NWSL Championship in 2024, was a priority for Orlando this off-season, with the Pride announcing Dec. 10 that the club was in negotiations with the captain over her return. That business is now concluded with today’s announcement.

“Coming off the most successful season in our club’s history and, personally, one of the best of
her professional career, re-signing Marta was a key business priority for us during this offseason,” Orlando Pride Vice President of Sporting Operations and Sporting Director Haley Carter said in a club press release. “The impact she has made on our team, our locker room, and our community is evident, of course through her incredible skill as a player, but even more so through her selfless and exemplary leadership style. We are thrilled to have secured her as a member of the Pride for the next two years and look forward to seeing what more we will accomplish during her tenure.”

“This is a team where everybody works for each other, where everyone believes in each other,
and I’m so excited to continue this journey with this club,” Marta said in the club’s release. “Last year we proved everyone wrong and did something so special as a team, and that’s why I’m so happy to have the opportunity to sign for two more years. Personally, it also means a lot to me that I will reach 10 seasons as an Orlando Pride player, a special number for me as I have worn the No. 10 jersey most of my career. As I have said many times, I love living in Orlando, I love the community, and I love the way that people embrace and enjoy Orlando Pride soccer. I can’t wait for the season to start.”

Marta has been a fixture with the Pride since 2017, signing on April 7 from Swedish side FC Rosengard on a two-year deal with a club option for 2019. On Oct. 24 of that year, Marta signed a new one-year deal with a club option for 2020, although ultimately the NWSL regular season was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pride further extended her stay in Orlando on Feb. 17, 2021, with a new one-year contract through the 2021 season with a club option for 2022, using Allocation Money. In 2022, she signed a new two-year contract, taking her through what turned out to be a magical 2024 championship season.

The attacking midfielder is coming off a season in which she was a finalist for NWSL MVP and NWSL Midfielder of the Year, scoring nine goals and adding one assist in 23 games (19 starts), logging a total of 1,739 minutes. In all competitions, Marta scored 11 goals. Following the season, Marta was named to the 2024 NWSL Best XI First Team and the 2024 FIFPRO Women’s World XI.

Since her arrival in Orlando, Marta has become the franchise’s all-time leader in games played (128), goals (42), and assists (19). Of her 42 goals, 14 were game winners, including the strike against the Kansas City Current in the 2024 NWSL semifinals that ultimately pushed the Pride into the NWSL Championship game against the Washington Spirit.

Marta is simply magical🪄

This one will be on repeat forever! #NWSLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/MZh3gJryCL
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 17, 2024

A professional player since 2000 — at the age of 14, when she broke in with Vasco de Gama — Marta became one of the most feared attacking players in the world, winning FIFA World Player of the Year six times over her considerable career, including five straight times (2006-2010). The native of Dois Riachos, Alagoas, Brazil has represented her native Brazil on the world stage since 2002, scoring 119 goals in 204 caps for her country. With 17, Marta holds the world record for career goals in the World Cup and scored in five different iterations of the competition. She has also scored in five consecutive Olympic Games, finally calling an end to her international career after the 2024 Paris Olympics, in which she led her team to the Silver Medal — her third time claiming silver.

Marta has become such an icon in women’s soccer that FIFA named an award after her — the FIFA Marta Award. She won the very first Marta Award in December for a goal she scored for Brazil against Jamaica in 2024.

What It Means for Orlando

Orlando has its captain back and even at her age, she’s one of the league’s best attacking midfielders. She had been slowed in recent years by injuries, including an ACL tear that cost her almost all of the 2022 season. Working her way back from that injury throughout the 2023 campaign, which saw the Pride tie for the final playoff spot, only to see the position go to Gotham on goal differential, Marta turned back the clock in 2024 with her MVP finalist performance. Her nine goals in 2024 were second in her Pride career only to her 2017 season, in which she scored 13 times and finished second to Sam Kerr in the Golden Boot race.

If the Pride get the 2024 version of Marta — or even close to it — for the next two seasons, the club will take that every day of the week.

However, this is not a move without risk. Marta figured to be one of the team’s most expensive players under her previous few deals, and she is about to turn 39 next month and 40 just before the final year of her new (final?) playing contract. Although it would be foolish to bet against Marta turning in another outstanding season, the reality of age catches up with everyone eventually. With her in the lineup, the Pride will have someone who can keep possession with her on-ball and passing skills. She’ll continue to smartly release pressure in the midfield with her timely and accurate switches of play. And she’ll likely continue to contribute to the team’s offensive numbers, looking first to set up striker Barbra Banda. She will be the port the Pride turn to in a storm.

The Orlando icon is a lock to be a future member of the Legends Terrace at Inter&Co Stadium, with her name likely being enshrined next to inaugural inductee, Kaká’s. Having the opportunity to potentially sign Marta through the end of her playing days is worth the risk for the Pride. Although Seb Hines would do well to try to get his aging star as much rest as possible during a long season, she’ll be on the pitch for almost every meaningful minute as long as she remains fit.

Orlando Pride

Orlando Pride Need to Address Center Back Depth This Off-Season

The Pride’s starting center backs are strong, but departures have created a depth issue that Haley Carter must address.

Published

4 days ago

January 6, 2025

Sean Rollins

Image courtesy of Orlando Pride / Jeremy Reper

The Orlando Pride are in arguably the best roster scenario of any off-season in team history. While the team was breaking records on the field, Vice President of Soccer Operations and General Manager Haley Carter was busy keeping the team together for the foreseeable future. The result is that most of the roster is intact for 2025, but there are some issues that need to be resolved.

Following the 2024 NWSL campaign, only two contracts expired — 21-year-old midfielder Evelina Duljan and club captain Marta. While Duljan will depart the club, the Pride stated they’re in discussions with Marta about returning next season. If the club re-signs Marta, it will have its entire double-winning starting lineup back.

With the possible exception of replacing Marta, the biggest issue for the Pride this off-season involves the three retirements announced prior to the end of the season. Right back Celia, center back Megan Montefusco, and versatile defender Carrie Lawrence all ended their professional careers. Celia’s absence won’t affect the team much as it has plenty of right back options, but the loss of Montefusco and Lawrence — both of whom have plenty of experience at center back — leaves the team short of depth at the position.

The lack of central depth on the back line was on full display during last season. Montefusco had surgery on her right foot, ending her season before it began. Head Coach Seb Hines moved left back Kylie Strom to a center back role alongside Rafaelle and Emily Sams — who played most of 2023 at center back — to right back. However, Rafaelle’s absence due to injury forced Sams into her natural center back position.

In addition to Strom, Sams, and Rafaelle, three other players started at center back last season. Hines used a center back pairing of Brianna Martinez and Kerry Abello once, putting the two together in the second regular season game, a 1-1 draw with Angel City FC. Cori Dyke was only used in the position late in the season when Sams was given a rest. While all three have played center back before, it’s not the first choice for any of them.

Abello and Dyke played the position in college but have primarily played in different positions professionally. Abello started as a left attacking midfielder before moving back to left back last season. Dyke moved from central midfield to center back for her senior year at Penn State and became the starting right back after the Olympic break. Martinez has usually played right back since joining the Pride. The trio only made five combined starts at center back in 2024, with Abello appearing three times and Dyke and Martinez once.

While there are players that can play center back, only three have at least one full professional season of experience at the position. If Hines has the same vision as last year, Strom and Rafaelle would start at center back and Sams at right back when everyone is healthy. While Sams and Strom proved to be an effective partnership, the Pride boss will want the Brazilian international in the lineup if she’s available. However, Rafaelle suffered a partial tear to her right quadricep tendon late last season and it’s unclear when she’ll be ready to play again. As a result, the Pride could begin the season with only two regular center backs.

If Rafaelle isn’t ready to go when the season starts and Strom or Sams go down, it’s currently most likely that Abello would move over to center back and be replaced by Carson Pickett on the left. Considering that it’s the position that Abello has the least experience of her three potential roles, that’s a less than ideal scenario. Signing a natural center back would enable Hines to make a like-for-like change in the lineup and keep everyone else in their familiar spots.

Carter and Hines have built a team full of versatile players, preparing them for these situations. Nearly everyone on the team has played multiple positions in league games and some have played offensive and defensive roles. As a result, players can take over positions they’re less familiar with when needed with at least some experience, even if just one game.

While Abello, Dyke, and Martinez are capable of filling in at center back in an emergency, the Pride would ideally have someone more experienced in that role. Since the rest of the roster is nearly complete for the first game, Carter can focus on ensuring there’s plenty of depth. The first position in need of additional bodies is the center back position.

Orlando Pride

Top 10 Moments of 2024: Orlando Pride Win NWSL Championship

Our No. 1 moment of 2024 features the Orlando Pride bringing home an NWSL Championship to clinch the league’s double and cap a historic season.

Published

1 week ago

December 31, 2024

Michael Citro

Image courtesy of Orlando Pride / Mark Thor

As we count down to the new year of 2025 — which will be Orlando City’s 11th in MLS, the Orlando Pride’s 10th in the NWSL, and OCB’s third in MLS NEXT Pro — and say goodbye to 2024, it’s time to look back at the club’s 10 best moments of the year as selected by The Mane Land staff via vote.

What do you do after you’ve won the NWSL Shield, went unbeaten for 24 consecutive games, set NWSL records for wins, points, clean sheets, and consecutive shutout minutes? Well, to paraphrase Jake Taylor in Major League, there’s only one thing left to do…win the whole f#@%ing thing! That’s exactly what the Orlando Pride did after the 2024 NWSL regular season. The Pride earned the right to play at home up until the championship game by virtue of finishing with the league’s best record in the regular season, and doing all those things I mentioned above. So, the team entered the postseason needing three victories to leave no doubt about which team was the league’s best.

It’s not that a regular-season title would be a hollow victory without a playoff championship, but it had been a few years since the league’s shield winner had completed the double and won the NWSL Championship. Orlando had high aspirations after such a successful regular season, and three wins in a row — even against a trio of the better teams in the league — seemed like child’s play for a Pride team that had winning streaks of eight, six, and three matches during the regular season. On the other hand, every team wanted to be the one to bring down the mighty Pride.

The team’s run to the double started at home against the Chicago Red Stars, a team that the Pride have famously struggled against, especially in Orlando. I won’t belabor it here, as it was the No. 5 moment in our countdown of the club’s biggest moments of the year in 2024. I’ll simply point out that the Pride breezed past the Red Stars so easily that Barbra Banda and Marta were playing goal frame challenge after Orlando built up a big lead, and Anna Moorhouse gave up a silly goal just to give Chicago one solitary moment of happiness in the match. I kid, but only just. Few playoff wins have come more easily.

That left the Pride with an NWSL semifinal matchup against the Kansas City Current — a team desperate to beat Orlando for perceived slights earlier in the season and because the title game was scheduled to take place in their home stadium. If Current players didn’t like Orlando celebrating in their stadium, they hadn’t seen anything yet. But first, the Pride had to get past Kansas City, a team they beat while down a player on the road July 6 and played to a scoreless stalemate in Orlando on Sept. 13.

The Pride took care of business, building a 3-1 lead after falling behind early, with Haley McCutcheon and Banda starting the comeback and Marta ultimately scoring the game-winner (our No. 7 moment of the year). Orlando had to withstand a desperation rally attempt by the Current that came too close for comfort after a late penalty kick goal cut the lead to one, but the Pride held on as they did throughout the season and booked their ticket to Kansas City to face the Washington Spirit.

If fans needed some good omens, there were a few. The Pride had swept the season series, so they knew they could beat Washington. Orlando had played the Spirit in a trophy-clinching game weeks earlier, beating them to clinch the NWSL Shield (our No. 2 moment of the year). The Pride and the Spirit headed to CPKC Stadium on Nov. 23 with a championship trophy on the line.

The game was every bit as tight and nervy as you could expect from a championship match. The teams were physical with each other, and referee Alyssa Nichols was letting them play. Well, everyone except Banda, who was called for every collision and bump, even when she was trying to fight through a hold by the defense. The Spirit and their fans no doubt weren’t happy when the physical play wasn’t called on the game’s only goal.

Angelina won the ball in the midfield and Washington’s Leicy Santos bodied her from behind, trying to win it back. The Brazilian fought Santos off in a physical confrontation and then launched a good long ball down the right channel for Banda to run onto.

Despite getting to the ball first, Banda had a lot left to do from the right flank. She cut inside, flicked the ball with her back heel to beat her defender, working her way nearly to the corner of the six. Former Pride goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury saw the ball on Banda’s left foot and thought Orlando’s striker might try to pick out a runner in the middle of the box. Instead, Banda smashed the ball with her left foot. Kingsbury got a piece but the shot had a lot of powper and surprised the goalkeeper, opening the scoring in the 37th minute.

PURE BANDA-MONIUM!!!

Barbra Banda scores the opening goal in the #NWSLChampionship pic.twitter.com/5oK0B1h50m
— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 24, 2024

That was the only goal celebration in the 2024 NWSL Championship. The Pride held off Washington’s repeated advances into the final third. The Spirit chased the game hard, finishing with advantages in many statistical categories, including possession (58%-42%), shots (26-9), shots on target (5-3), corner kicks (8-3), crosses (25-11), and passing accuracy (79%-69%). But the league’s best defense in the regular season held strong, and the Pride had their second major trophy in a 48-day span with the 1-0 win over Washington.

The Pride were even more effusive in their celebrating than they’d been in their last trip to Kansas City, when they’d suffered down a player for more than half the game and won the battle of the NWSL’s last two undefeated teams in the Current’s seemingly impenetrable home fortress. Team captain Marta can perhaps be forgiven for getting on the bad side of the television censors when expressing the intense relief of finally winning the league championship. Pride fans, who had suffered through some miserable seasons since the team’s inception, likely were experiencing similar feelings.

Upon returning home, the Pride were honored with a parade through downtown Orlando, showing off the team’s two trophies to a huge crowd downtown in front of City Hall. The players, coaches, and front office were showered with adulation from the fans, and rightfully so. Even entering the season with raised expectations, few could have foreseen the club achieving so much, and it was the culmination of an extraordinary amount of work and chemistry from everyone.

While winning the NWSL Shield is considered by some to be the bigger accomplishment of the two trophies Orlando won in 2024, doing the double was twice as nice. With the victory, the Pride became the first professional sports team from Orlando to win a major league trophy. As such, the NWSL Championship is worthy of the top spot on our list of the biggest moments of 2024. It wasn’t a unanimous choice by our staff in the voting, but it was the overwhelming winner.

This concludes our list of the the top 10 moments of 2024 for Orlando City, the Orlando Pride, and OCB. There’s no doubt the list was heavy on the Pride accomplishments this season, but that’s what happens when you win the double and set so many league and club records along the way. We had a lot of fantastic moments to choose from in 2024, so if we didn’t pick yours, well…maybe next year. We tried to work OCB into the list, but the Young Lions didn’t make the final 10 in our staff vote. Hopefully you enjoyed reliving these moments as much as we did writing about them.