Orlando City extended the stay of attacking midfielder Martín Ojeda today, announcing a new contract that runs through the 2028-2029 season with a club option for 2029-2030. Ojeda, whose deal was set to expire at the end of 2026 (though the club held an option year for 2027), remains in purple in the wake of the best overall offensive season in Orlando City’s MLS history.

This deal takes place after recent reports indicated teams in Brazil and Europe were potentially targeting the Argentine playmaker for a winter transfer.

“This is a major move for us as we enter our next competitive cycle,” Orlando City General Manager and Sporting Director Ricardo Moreira said in a club press release. “Martín is central to our attacking identity. He is a consistent creator, proven match-winner, and emotional leader whose presence elevates everyone around him. He has set numerous club records during his time here, and this renewal reflects both his sustained excellence and our commitment to building a roster with long-term flexibility. We’re thrilled to keep Martín in purple as we continue our push for trophies.”

Orlando signed Ojeda to a three-year deal from Godoy Cruz Antonio Tomba in Argentina with two option years on Jan. 9, 2023. He scored just five goals in the 2025 MLS regular season, starting slowly with his new club and spending the bulk of the season coming off the bench despite carrying the Designated Player tag. Although he appeared in 33 games in 2023, he started only 15. His 2024 season was much better, although he hadn’t yet found his shooting boots, scoring just four times but providing 12 assists in 34 matches (24 starts). His production in the league jumped by leaps and bounds in 2025, as he scored 16 goals and added 15 assists in 33 appearances (30 starts). He set MLS career highs in goals, assists, starts, shots (103), shots on target (40), and key passes (101).

Ojeda, 27, set a club record with 39 goal contributions across all competitions in his 2025 breakout year, shattering the previous mark of 29 set by Facundo Torres the year before, and he tied Torres’ club mark of 20 goals across all competitions in a single year. In his three seasons as a Lion, Ojeda has appeared in 130 matches across all competitions (91 starts), amassing 33 goals and 42 assists.

“It’s an honor to renew and continue being part of this club until (at least) 2029,” Ojeda said in the club’s release. “We will keep working with ambition and commitment, always showing up and giving everything to defend these colors. Let’s keep growing together.”

Ojeda developed in the youth academy of Argentine side Ferro Carril Oeste, joining the club’s senior squad at age 18 in January of 2016 and scoring on his debut on Jan. 30 of that year against Atlético Paraná. He scored five goals in 43 games with Ferro before joining Racing Club in July of 2017, spending two years with the famous side before being loaned to Huracán for the 2019-2020 season. In August of 2020 he was loaned to Godoy Cruz and was signed by that club when his loan ended. Across 139 competitive professional matches, Ojeda has scored 35 goals and added 23 assists.

What It Means for Orlando City

Ojeda was about to enter his option year, so Orlando getting him to sign a new contract was important. The fact that Ojeda committed to the Lions through 2028-2029 is significant as well, indicating that he’s happy both with the trajectory of his career and with being in Orlando. Situations can, and do, change (after all, Facundo Torres was sold after signing a contract extension), but if Ojeda’s feelings toward the club or the league change, Orlando City will be able to sell him — likely for a significant return. In the meantime, the Lions keep their biggest attacking weapon in Ojeda, a player who can score goals himself and provide them for others at a rate that compares to the top offensive players around Major League Soccer.

The Lions keep a player who spent most of 2025 operating at an MLS MVP and Best XI level. Had the team not stumbled down the stretch, he may have been in line for multiple awards at the end of the season. As it was, Ojeda provided quiet leadership and provided plenty of goal contributions. The team was always a threat to score on the counter or the buildup whenever he was on the pitch. If he can build on an outstanding 2025 — and as he won’t even turn 28 until November, there’s no reason to think he can’t — the Lions keep one of the league’s best players on the roster well beyond the current season and have financial leverage if his continued excellent play results in offers from clubs in bigger leagues.

This is a huge sigh of relief for Orlando City fans who were concerned about recent rumors that multiple teams were interested in buying Ojeda over the winter.

Orlando City opened up a valuable Designated Player slot today with the expected announcement that forward Luis Muriel has transferred to Atlético Junior in Colombia’s top flight. Muriel ends an inconsistent two-year stint with the Lions to return home to the club with which he began his youth career from 2001 through 2008.

Junior announced the signing on social media Wednesday evening, well before Orlando City released anything official.

Orlando City had to wait for league approval of the deal to make the announcement and that has now taken place. The club will retain a percentage of a future sale of the Lions’ former DP.

“We want to thank Luis for his contributions during his time here in Orlando,” Orlando City General Manager and Sporting Director Ricardo Moreira said in a club press release. “We wish him the best as he accomplishes his dream of returning to play for his boyhood club.”

The Lions signed Muriel as a Designated Player on Feb. 15, 2024, from Atalanta in Italy’s Serie A. Muriel signed a three-year contract that was slated to run through the upcoming 2026 season.

The club and the fanbase both expected a lot out of the former Italian top flight player, with his history of both scoring goals and working the type of quick, intricate passes that sets up his teammates for scoring chances. It seemed a skillset that was perfect for Oscar Pareja’s system in Orlando.

But Muriel got off to a slow start in 2024 and underproduced for a Designated Player. His 2025 campaign was much better, but the Colombian veteran was inconsistent — looking like an MLS Best XI player one week and largely disappearing the next.

Muriel leaves after making 84 appearances (47 starts) with Orlando City across all competitions. He scored 17 goals and added 18 assists during his time as a Lion.

The 34-year-old is coming off easily the best of his two seasons in Orlando, in which he scored nine goals and added nine assists in MLS regular-season play in 33 matches (25 starts). It’s likely he would have appeared in all of the regular-season games had he not taken a ridiculous red card late in a lopsided loss at Nashville. But Muriel, like most of the team, faded down the stretch as the Lions fell down the standings and crashed out of the playoffs by losing the wild card game on the road in Chicago.

What It Means for Orlando City

The biggest news is that this move opens up DP and international slots for Orlando City that can be used to bolster the team ahead of the 2026 campaign. The club gets its biggest contract off the books as well. This move has been in the works long enough that the club almost certainly has a target in mind for that DP slot, but whether it’s for this window or the midseason transfer window remains to be seen. The urgency would suggest the former.

Muriel was a mercurial player in Orlando, capable of the kinds of explosions that saw him score five goals across two games last August against Necaxa in Leagues Cup and Inter Miami during MLS play. He was also capable of disappearing, as he did after his last goal of the 2025 season in any competition on Aug. 23 in a 5-1 loss at Nashville. The Colombian ended the season in a nine-game goal-scoring slump. That came in the wake of an otherwise solid 2025 season, in which he exceeded 20 total goal contributions across all competitions.

Moreira will seek a Designated Player who can perform at a more consistent level and show up in the club’s biggest games. Muriel managed just one single shot on target in six MLS playoff games. He did not score a goal in the MLS playoffs, Concacaf Champions Cup, or the Leagues Cup knockout, although he did supply two assists in the 2025 Leagues Cup knockout rounds. Muriel’s time in Orlando wasn’t so much a bust as it failed to live up to the lofty expectations fans have of Designated Players. His time in Orlando will likely be remembered by many fans in a similar light as Ercan Kara’s stint with the Lions.

Orlando City kicked off (see what I did there?) its preseason Monday, but Luis Muriel was not in attendance, as he has almost certainly played his final game for the club and will be with a new team in 2026. Muriel did not reach the levels that many fans had hoped he would during his time with the Lions, but he was a solid player for the team and there is no ready-made like-for-like replacement for him on the current roster. His are important shoes to fill, but if he’s out, the club will have an available Designated Player slot, which means the Lions have carte blanche to fill that roster spot however they would like.

Carte blanche is a French phrase meaning “blank check.” Listeners of The Mane Land PawedCast and subscribers to our weekly newsletter will know that our Michael Citro would like the club to use that French phrase to sign a certain French forward named Antoine Griezmann. Bringing his je ne sais quoi to Inter&Co Stadium would enable the Lions to enact a coup d’état on Inter Miami and win the 2026 MLS Cup, which would obviously be a fait accompli were Griezmann to be le prince qui…sorry, the prince that was promised and sign with the Lions.

Griezmann has expressed interest in MLS, and according to transfermarkt.com his market value has dropped from its high of $175 million in 2018 to approximately $12.8 million today, but I do not believe he wants to come to MLS right now, and right now is when Orlando City is looking for a third Designated Player to join with the lethal lefties Marco Pašalić and Martín Ojeda.

Muriel’s departure would leave approximately 2,500 minutes to fill, but it is not yet exactly clear what the front office will be looking for to replace those minutes, as though he primarily played up top, Muriel was not a traditional striker, often dropping deep into the midfield to help initiate offense. After several years of primarily playing a 4-2-3-1, Orlando City played a 4-4-2 for most of 2026, but when Muriel was on the field he played more like a trequartista, roaming all over the field and trying to create goal-scoring opportunities. He finished 2025 with 22 goal contributions in all competitions, so he was decently effective, at nearly one goal contribution (0.88) per 90 minutes — second on the team behind Ojeda.

Muriel’s offense will need to be replaced, but the who, when, and where questions still are unanswered as to how the club will do that. Let’s review the club’s last 10 Designated Player signings, looking at their stats from the season immediately preceding joining Orlando City to see how they filled those spots recently (the table below is from Opta’s tracking on fbref.com across all competitions, and as a reminder, Opta only allocates assists to the player who made the final pass to the goal scorer):

• *These players came from European clubs during the middle of their season, so they are minutes played through half of a full season.
• **In order to get a season-long average for minutes played, I doubled the totals from the players who came from Europe, and kept the others as they were.

Taking a look at that list of players and their performances during the season before they arrived in Orlando, we see that while the average age ends up at nearly 26, that is because the club signed four young (ages 18-23) players, two peak age players (24-29) and four older players (30+). Unsurprisingly, these players were logging a lot of minutes at their clubs and, aside from Colmán, they were contributing goals at a decent rate. At just 18 years old, Colmán is an age outlier on this list, and removing his stats lifts the average goals + assists per 90 minutes to 0.51.

Is Orlando City going to look for an attacking player who is 26 years old, on pace to play (or played, if he was in a league with a calendar like MLS) around 2,600 minutes, and contributes a goal every other game?

Probably not, because as both Orlando City and the overall caliber of play in MLS have improved in recent years, the club will want to target higher performing players with its valuable Designated Player slots. The rumor mill has been heavy around Richarlison (28 years old, plays in England, 0.47 G+A/90) and Robert Lewandoski (36 years old, plays in Spain, 0.89 G+A/90), and while those two and the aforementioned Griezmann (34 years old, plays in Spain, 0.76 G+A/90) definitely would all be the club’s biggest signing since Nani in terms of name recognition, there are also questions about if the Lions want to sign a left wing, attacking midfielder, or striker, and do they want someone who wants to be here for a few years (like Pereyra) or someone who wants to use MLS as a stepping stone in their career (like Torres)?

Either way, the expectations in Orlando have been raised during the Óscar Pareja era, and with the club clearly leaning into the South American pipeline more and more and with those raised expectations, I expect the club to look for a player from South America who is playing a lot of minutes at a club in one of the world’s top 25 leagues (using Opta’s world rankings), who is contributing goals at a rate of around two-thirds of a goal per 90 minutes (sorry Richarlison, though in league play he is at 0.70, so we could just look the other way on those other competitions), and is in the age range of 23-31, allowing for the potential for the player to be sold on in the future.

There are some great players who hit all of those benchmarks (including one Martín “don’t confuse me with Braian, I’m the offensive” Ojeda), and while players like Colombia’s/Bayern Munich’s Luis Díaz and Brazil’s/Real Madrid’s Vinicius Júnior likely have little to no interest in MLS at this point in their careers, fbref.com’s database spit out 38 players who qualify under the above parameters I set out.

Let’s remove the players already in MLS, since they likely are not going to switch teams at this point of the season, and also the following players who are either far too expensive (more than $20 million, according to transfermarkt’s estimated value) or already succeeding far too well in elite leagues: Díaz, Vini Jr., Julián Álvarez (Atlético Madrid), Antony (Real Betis), old friend Cucho Hernández (Real Betis), Kaio Jorge (Cruzeiro), José Manuel López (Palmeiras), Lautaro Martínez (Inter Milan), Pedro (Flamengo), Luis Javier Suárez (Sporting Lisbon), Igor Thiago (Brentford), and Rodrigo Zalazar (Braga).

Once we take all of those out, we are left with a list that contains 21 players, at whom I believe the club will take a long look for the soon-to-be-open Designated Player slot (the list shows the player, his nationality, Transfermarkt’s estimated market value, and where he is currently playing):

• Giorgian De Arrascaeta, Uruguay, $17.6 million, Flamengo (Brazil Série A)
• Mauricio, Brazil, $14 million, Palmeiras (Brazil Série A)
• Marcelino Núñez, Chile, $10.5 million, Ipswich (England Championship)
• Ángel Correa, Argentina, $10.5 million, Tigres (Mexico Liga MX)
• Clayton, Brazil, $9.4 million, Rio Ave (Portugal Primeira Liga)
• Talisca, Brazil, $9.4 million, Fenerbahçe (Turkey Süper Lig)
• Brian Rodríguez, Uruguay, $7.6 million, América (Mexico Liga MX)
• Juan Brunetta, Argentina, $7.6 million, Tigres (Mexico Liga MX)
• Miguel Merentiel, Uruguay, $7 million, Boca Juniors (Argentina Liga Profesional)
• Diber Cambindo, Colombia, $6.4 million, León (Mexico Liga MX)
• Nicolás Castro, Argentina, $6.4 million, Toluca (Mexico Liga MX)
• André Luiz, Brazil, $4.7 million, Rio Ave (Portugal Primeira Liga)
• Oscar Estupiñan, Colombia, $4.4 million, FC Juárez (Mexico Liga MX)
• Rafael Elias, Brazil, $3.7 million, Kyoto Sanga (Japan J1 League)
• Rafael Ratão, Brazil, $3.5 million, Cerezo Osaka (Japan J1 League)
• Léo Ceará, Brazil, $2.9 million, Kashima Antlers (Japan J1 League)
• Jesús Ramírez, Venezuala, $2.3 million, Nacional (Portugal Primeira Liga)
• Emiliano Gómez, Uruguay, $2.3 million, Puebla (Mexico Liga MX)
• Lucas Fernandes, Brazil, $1.4 million, Cerezo Osaka (Japan J1 League)
• Alfonso Trezza, Uruguay, $1.2 million, Arouca (Portugal Primeira Liga)
• Jay-Roy Grot, Suriname, $900,000, Odense (Denmark Superliga)
• Maurides, Brazil, $500,000, Radomiak Radom (Poland Ekstraklasa)

I will not pretend to be an expert on these players, but this is the list of those who qualified under the parameters I outlined earlier, which means they are in the prime of their careers and good goal-contributing form, and therefore should be of interest to the Orlando City front office, especially if any of them are looking for new opportunities in a different league.

I am sure the club will consider an even wider swath of players, including those like Richarlison, who just missed out via my hypothetical parameters, or players like Brazil’s/Arsenal’s Gabriel Jesus, who was injured all of last season, so he did not have any data to evaluate. Orlando City also found success by dipping into the European market with Nani and Pašalić, and so the Lions will certainly not exclude Europeans from their search — or players from any continent for that matter. And while Orlando has never spent a huge amount on a player, maybe the Wilf family really will get out that blank check and go above $20 million, which opens up the landscape for more top-level players to acquire.

In the coming days, we will surely hear about what type of player the club wants with that third spot, and see if that profile falls into the range that I found from who the team has signed recently, or if Ricardo Moreira goes in a different direction entirely. I am looking forward to seeing who comes in and joins the club, because if Orlando can acquire another high-level producer and a finally healthy Duncan McGuire returns to his form from his first two seasons, the team record of 63 goals scored during the 2025 regular season might no longer be the team record after 2026.

If so, then I think that the Eastern Conference final will be sending a répondez s’il-vous-plaît (you might be more familiar with the acronym RSVP) to the Lions this year.

Vamos Orlando!