Orlando City vs. Nashville SC: Five Takeaways

The Lions returned to the City Beautiful after dropping their first match following the Leagues Cup last weekend to Sporting Kansas City. Fortunately for Orlando City, winning cures all ailments, and a home matchup against struggling Nashville SC was exactly what the soccer gods ordered. What follows are our five takeaways from a strong 3-0 rebound win at home.

Limited Rotation

Head Coach Oscar Pareja elected to change very little from the squad which lost by three goals to Sporting Kansas City. When the starting 11 was announced, the only swaps were on the back line, with center back Rodrigo Schlegel stepping in for David Brekalo and Rafael Santos starting over Kyle Smith. It is almost impossible to know what the coaching staff sees in training to warrant roster changes, but many, including our own David Rohe, spoke last week that it may be time again to shake things up in order to find a victory. I don’t expect major changes down the home stretch, with the exception of an injury or suspension, and against Nashville, Pareja tipped his hand as such that he more or less has his established squad at this point. As for effectiveness, Santos didn’t play notably better than Smith and Schlegel picked up a needless yellow card and was replaced by Brekalo at halftime.

Flirting with Disaster

Nashville opened the match on the front foot, commiting heavy numbers forward in the attack in the hopes of finding an early goal. Throughout the opening minutes, there were at least two golden opportunities for Nashville that should have seen the visitors up one or two goals. Fortunately for Orlando City, Sam Surridge hit the post with an early chance, and Pedro Gallese stood strong on a 1-v-1 situation against Alex Muyl to kept the visitors from finding success. It was a nervy opening but did not hurt the Lions in the long run.

Blink and Miss It

Any fans who had to take an early bathroom break inside Inter&Co Stadium might have returned back to their seats to find the game in a very different position than they left it as Orlando City took control of the match with two goals in the span of four minutes. Ivan Angulo and Facundo Torres made it 2-0 before the quarter-hour mark, capitalizing on a defensive mistake and then a beautiful cross. A week removed from squandering scoring opportunities with poorly placed shot attempts, it was refreshing to see Orlando capitalize early. Martin Ojeda did well to knock a wayward Joe Willis cross to Angulo (while in the air) to set up the first goal and Dagur Dan Thorhallsson provided excellent service on the second.

Yellow after Yellow

Who hurt referee Victor Rivas? While overseeing a match is a challenging job, requiring part skill and part art, it seemed as if the match got away from Rivas early with the physical nature of two teams that generally do not like one another. In a game that was fairly even in terms of number of fouls called, Rivas was quick to pull the yellow after a few scuffles to try to regain control — to the tune of three cards in the opening 45 minutes, which were all directed at Orlando City. Schlegel, Ramiro Enrique, and Robin Jansson all picked up bookings early and, fortunately for Orlando City, none of the cards came back to negatively effect the match outcome.

In the second half, three more cards were issued to Santos, Wilder Cartagena, and Cesar Araujo for various infractions. If you were keeping score at home, it took until the 68th minute for a Nashville player to get booked, and the yellow score tab ended 6-1 in sarcastic favor of Orlando. Again, Mr. Rivas…are you ok?

A Brace for Facu

With two goals against Nashville SC, Torres is now up to 10 goals on the season and 15 goal-scoring contributions for the campaign. That puts the Designated Player just four goal-scoring contributions short of his Orlando City career high of 19, which he set in his first season with the team. After a slow start to the year, Torres has now scored six goals across all competions since July 1. Orlando City will need to lean on its star player down the stretch and to see Torres bag a brace against Nashville should be a reassuring sign to all OCSC fans. A fingertip from Willis is all that prevented a hat trick, as the Nashville keeper did well to deflect a possible third goal onto the roof of the net in the second half.

Those are our takeaways from a great rebound victory. The Lions have a bye week before welcoming the New England Revolution to town on Sept. 14. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and as always Vamos Orlando!