Orlando City
Orlando City vs. New York City FC: Five Takeaways
Here’s what we learned from Orlando City’s 2-1 loss at NYCFC.

Orlando City went on the road to play soccer on a field meant for baseball and unfortunately forgot to play soccer on several occasions. The Lions were punished for that, losing 2-1. Here are my five takeaways from the match.
Lions Caught Watching the Paint Dry
Dennis Hopper’s quote from the movie Hoosiers (RIP Gene Hackman) about not getting caught watching the paint dry came to mind on both of New York City FC’s goals, as in each case the Pigeons beat the Orlando City defense to a rebound and scored from close range. Alonso Martínez raced past everyone to tap in the rebound of a shot off the post from Maxi Moralez, and then later Julián Fernández followed a Pedro Gallese save from a Martínez shot and crossed it back into the middle, where Hannes Wolf was wide open and headed it home. Watching the replays is a painful experience, because you can see the guard briefly being let down by the Orlando City defenders and then the sudden realization that they should not have done that, but it was too late. On a comically small field, constant vigilance is required, and the team in purple failed twice to stay engaged through an entire play.
Orlando City’s Depth Was as Deep as the Yankee Stadium Field Was Wide
Which is to say, not at all. The Lions were down a goal, up a man, and simply did not have any more proven attacking players to throw on the field to try to get the tying goal. In desperate need for a goal, the Lions turned to 16-year-old Gustavo Caraballo with their final substitution and did not even use all five of their allotted subs, even though they were behind. I think Caraballo played well, and has a chance to be good — and I mean really good (said in my best Ron Burgundy voice) — but the team needed more firepower in those final minutes and did not have anyone else who could have brought more than those who were on the field as the game ended. Duncan McGuire’s absence was felt in a major way during this game, especially on the late crosses and corner kicks that the Lions could not win and convert into a goal.
Designated Player Double Play
Luis Muriel had only started one MLS game since June of 2024, but he got the start against NYCFC and linked up with fellow Designated Player Marco Pašalić to score a beautiful goal to tie the game 1-1. Alex Freeman played a long ball up the sideline and Muriel beat his defender to the ball to tip it to Pašalić. The Croatian brought the ball down and attacked at full speed right down the middle of NYCFC’s defense in a 3-v-2 situation. Pašalić cut into the middle of the field, forcing Thiago Martins to stay with him and by moving Martins just enough, it allowed Pašalić to play a ball off to his right, perfectly weighted to allow Muriel to run onto it without breaking stride. The Colombian placed it into the far corner of the net. Orlando City probably should have scored more than one goal in this game, but the one goal they scored was well executed and hopefully portends more to come from the combination of Designated Players.
El Pulpo Needed to Use Those Tentacles for Catching Instead of Batting
Goalkeeper is an incredibly lonely position to play and is often one that does not receive the appreciation it deserves because of just how hard of a position it is. No other position has its mistakes as magnified as those of a goalkeeper, and unfortunately for Orlando City, Gallese made the split second decision that he would not be able to catch Martínez’s shot, so he batted it away — but not far enough away. That mistake led to the game-winning goal. The initial shot from Martínez was eminently catchable, as it was not struck well, and even though it could have been caught it, at the least itshould have been pushed wide instead of basically right down and still in front of the goal. Gallese had six saves in the game, including a fantastic stop on a Martínez shot from close range in the 49th minute, but with goalkeepers it is far more often that their mistakes are remembered than their saves, and the initial shot that turned into the second goal definitely should have been handled better.
Another Rusty Starting Defense Combination
Robin Jansson returned to the starting lineup against New York City FC, but he did not look like he was at full strength, and neither did the back line of Rafael Santos, Jansson, Rodrigo Schlegel and Freeman. Perhaps it was just the difficult nature of adjusting to a non-regulation field (FIFA recommends a field be 74 yards wide, the Pigeons claim their field is 70 yards wide — no word on if their fingers are crossed behind their back, though). The Orlando City defensive group did not look comfortable on the field in New York. The defense did not look crisp to me, with the aforementioned ball watching, the players being a step slow to close down an attacking player, and guys going to ground more often than in a usual match. The defense allowed eight shots on target, which is the same amount as the first two games combined. The group that started on Saturday is the likely starting group going forward — at least until Nico Rodriguez returns to add more attacking midfield depth that is currently being provided by Dagur Dan Thorhallsson —and now that Jansson is back in the lineup and these four have a game together under their belts, things should get better. They will need to if the team is going to get some results.
Those are my takeaways from a game that was frustrating, but predictably frustrating, considering that Orlando City’s recent road record against New York City FC is an abysmal 0-4-2. I thought there were periods of time when Orlando City looked dangerous, and even the better side, but in the end, the Lions could not take advantage of those moments and now will have to regroup before going on the road again next week.
Let us know your thoughts about the match in the comments below.
Orlando City
Converting More Big Chances Could Propel Orlando City’s Season Into An Epic Universe
An analysis of Orlando City’s conversion rate on big chances and an evaluation of the impact of a small improvement .

If you could all hop in the Wayback Machine with me, I would like to take you all the way back to Sunday, May 18, 2025. It was a glorious day, punctuated by a 3-0 victory over Orlando City’s southern rivals Inter Miami. The Five Takeaways article about that game was pretty awesome too, and in that article, the dashingly handsome and spellbindingly brilliant author noted that Orlando City “could, and probably should, have scored five or even six goals” against Miami.
You probably surmised that the author of that Five Takeaways article was me, and I appreciate your immediate recognition of my handsomeness and brilliance. I am also pretty confident that you believe that Orlando City should have scored more than three goals as well, and I am here to tell you that the eye test and the tracking data agree. The wonderful site fotmob.com tracks a statistic coded by analysts from Opta called “big chances,” which they define on their frequently asked questions page as:
A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances.
The key words in their definition are “reasonably be expected,” and so, while the word ‘expected’ is in this definition, do not confuse “reasonably be expected” with “expected goals” (xG). I think of expected goals more like a geography problem, kind of like the game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Was that an excuse just to mention that one of my best friends was a contestant on that show in 1994 and won a trip to Orlando? A gentleman never tells.
Back to the geography problem, expected goals is really just a mapping exercise, mapping conversion percentages to locations all over a soccer field and then summing up all the shots taken from those locations in a game. By that measure, fbref.com had Orlando City with an xG of 2.9 against Miami, extremely close to the actual output of three goals. Earlier in the season, however, the xG tracking was 1.6 against Toronto…but the Lions scored four goals.
There are countless examples of the real results not matching the xG. While I value xG and just finished reading a great book called How To Win The Premier League: The Inside Story of Football (soccer)’s Data Revolution, which details the history of expected goals and how the author — the former director of research at Liverpool — helped build the first analytics department at a Premier League club using xG as a foundational measurement tool, I still think xG needs to be used alongside other measures and cannot stand alone by itself.
One of the main reasons I think it needs to be combined with other data is that xG requires a shot to be taken, and sometimes that does not happen. Consider Orlando City’s third goal against Miami, if Duncan McGuire’s cross had gone untouched then the xG on that play would have gone from 0.56 to 0.0, because without a shot attempt there is no shot location, and no map coordinates to use to find the xG for that area of the field.
This takes us back to that definition of big chances, which notably does not include a requirement for a shot to be taken. Duncan McGuire’s pass clearly created a chance to score, and that pass, combined with the perfectly timed run from Dagur Dan Thórhallsson, meant that Orlando City had a great opportunity to score from a location where anyone with eyes would think that “a player should reasonably be expected to score.” If Thórhallsson had whiffed, then the xG would have said no sir, you get 0.0 xG, even though everyone who watched that pass would have said, “Oh my, he should have scored that, what a big chance missed.”
Note: Thórhallsson did not miss, and it was glorious.
According to Opta’s tracking, Orlando City had eight big chances in the game against Miami. Which sounds closer to your memory of that match: Orlando City’s xG was 2.9 or Orlando City created eight big chances to score? I think most people probably think of the latter and remember the breakaways and the close-range opportunities and how it seemed like Orlando City had so many clear chances to score.
Looking at the 2025 season to date, the Lions are tied for the MLS lead with 50 big chances thus far, and just as against Miami, you can see that their conversion rate on those big chances has not been great:
Club | Big Chances | Big Chances Converted | Conversion Rate |
---|---|---|---|
San Jose | 50 | 20 | 40% |
Orlando City | 50 | 14 | 28% |
Chicago | 46 | 18 | 39% |
Columbus | 46 | 14 | 30% |
Nashville | 41 | 12 | 29% |
Vancouver | 40 | 21 | 53% |
LAFC | 39 | 14 | 36% |
Miami | 39 | 20 | 51% |
Minnesota | 39 | 14 | 36% |
Portland | 37 | 16 | 43% |
MLS Average* | 34 | 12.4 | 37% |
- *The MLS Average is the average of every team except Orlando City
If you were wondering, yes, 28% is among the league’s worst conversion rates on big chances. It is tied for second worst, ahead of only Austin, which must be driving its fans up the wall with a 19% conversion rate on 31 big chances. Maybe the release of Wicked at the end of 2024 put the kibosh on good things happening to those in green for a while. Vancouver, on the other hand, is out there Burning Blue like Mariah the Scientist (contemporary pop song alert), converting a league-leading 53% of its big chances.
For Orlando City, however, 28% feels right. It feels terrible, but it also feels right. How many times did it seem like it would be harder not to score than to score, but then the Lions went ahead and did not score? Luis Muriel leads the team with 12 big chances missed (second most in MLS), and while it takes an extreme amount of skill and work to get into position to miss chances, the reality is that 12 times independent analysts thought Muriel should reasonably have been expected to score and he did not.
Anytime there is a lower-than-average performance there is always a question of whether that performance is reality or if there is a regression to the mean coming. In this case, regression to the mean would actually be positive, or something more akin to ascension to the mean. If Orlando City performs at a conversion rate similar to that of the rest of the league, the Lions will score about one additional goal per every 10 big chances, or an additional five goals over their next 50 big chances generated.
Considering that the Lions generated those 50 big chances in 14 games, it is easy math to double that and put Orlando City at 100 big chances after 28 games at the current pace. That extra five goals, were it to happen and the team continued to similarly convert its “small chances,” would net the team 32 goals in the next 14 games, and take the team to 59 after 28 games, with six more games still to play in the season.
Readers of UpRoar, the weekly newsletter for The Mane Land’s Buy Me a Coffee subscribers, which you can subscribe to by clicking this link, will know that Orlando City’s offense is already on pace to break the club’s MLS goal-scoring record, which is…wait for it…59 goals, and so, if the Lions could start converting more of their big chances, then the 2025 team could not only break that record but smash it — like, epically smash it like the Super Smash Brothers.
And speaking of…what better way to celebrate today’s official opening of Epic Universe but to imagine Óscar Pareja and the coaching staff out there training their goal-scoring dragons and super Marco and Luis-gi to tame the dark world of opposition defenses with their Harry Potter-esque offensive wizardry?
That would be epic, and if you are asking me what the coaching staff should do, that is what I pick.
Orlando City
Orlando City vs. Nashville SC: Five Takeaways
Here’s what we learned from a regrettable 3-2 loss to Nashville SC in the U.S. Open Cup.

Orlando City came into the U.S. Open Cup Round of 16 match against Nashville SC riding a 12-match unbeaten streak, including a 3-0 thrashing of in-state rival Inter Miami on Sunday. The Lions’ next match against the Portland Timbers looms on Saturday. Despite the glut of matches, Orlando fielded most of the normal starters in an effort to advance. Unfortunately, the Lions fell 3-2 to the visitors to end any hopes of another Open Cup trophy. Here are my five takeaways from a disappointing midweek match.
Pasalic Power
Marco Pasalic decided he wanted to do it all himself on the first goal. As he has so often, he went up the right side before cutting in to the left and burying an absolute rocket of a shot into the back of the net to give Orlando City the early lead. It’s the type of goal we’ve come to expect from Pasalic since his arrival and it was his first U.S. Open Cup goal on his debut in the competition. Unfortunately, he’ll have to wait until at least next year for his next USOC match.
Tired Starters
One could see that the Orlando City defenders were running on tired legs. It seemed obvious in the two goals given up in the first half. The first goal bounced around in the box and then off of Rodrigo Schlegel for an own goal. On the second goal, no one stepped to Ahmed Qasem at the top of the box, allowing him to put an easy shot into the bottom right corner of the goal.
Alex Freeman was near Qasem, but had to anticipate a pass to the wing. Cesar Araujo trailed Qasem passively, and he was not in position to do anything when the Nashville attacker opted to take the space the defense gave him. On the left side, Nashville’s attackers torched David Brekalo from the start. The defense simply looked tired, including Araujo in central midfield.
Enrique’s Equalizer
Orlando City came back out after halftime looking much better on the ball. The tactical adjustments worked as the team pushed for an equalizer. Working along the right side of the attack, Freeman sent the ball to Pasalic, who smartly provided a one-touch pass to Ramiro Enrique for the finish. It was a well-worked attack and a beautiful finish.
Handball Debacle
In the 72nd minute, there was a handball in the box on Nashville’s Wyatt Meyer. Unfortunately, referee Joshua Encarnacion did not make the call. To make matters worse, he then gave Freeman a yellow card for dissent a little further down the field seconds later. There is no video review in the U.S. Open Cup, so there was no second look available to make the correct call. It was a double whammy of a situation. To then pour salt on the wound, Meyer scored Nashville’s third goal to give the visitors the lead again.
Taking it Too Seriously?
Oscar Pareja takes the U.S. Open Cup seriously. So seriously that he started most of the regulars despite the emotional and physical toll taken in the match against Inter Miami and the volume of minutes they’ve played throughout May every three days. Initially, it looked to be the right decision, but the two first-half goals by Nashville put that into question. The number of minutes played by some of the starters — who will need to play against the Portland Timbers this weekend — may turn one loss into two. That being said, I wanted Pareja to prioritize the Open Cup over the Leagues Cup, and we’ll find out in July and August if that’s the case.
Those are my takeaways from Orlando City’s 3-2 loss to Nashville in the U.S. Open Cup. It was a disappointing result on a night where Nashville didn’t bring their A-squad, but did bring its A-game.
Let us know your thoughts about the Nashville SC match in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!
Lion Links
Lion Links: 5/22/25
Orlando City ousted from U.S. Open Cup, OCB’s Justin Ellis named Player of the Matchweek, Tottenham wins Europa League, and more.

Well, that could have gone better. It’s understandable to feel a bit deflated after Wednesday night’s game, especially after so many positive Orlando City results as of late. The good news though is that we’re another day closer to a holiday weekend that should include some good times or at least rest and relaxation. Let’s dive into today’s links!
Orlando City Eliminated from U.S. Open Cup
The Lions lost 3-2 at home to Nashville SC in the U.S. Open Cup’s round of 16, ending the team’s run in the tournament. Orlando struck first in a rollercoaster of a match, and Ramiro Enrique pulled the Lions level after they fell behind, but rookie Wyatt Meyer scored the winner for the visitors. The loss snapped Orlando’s 12-game unbeaten streak across all competitions and Orlando looked like a team that played five other matches already this month. Orlando will need to shake off this loss as it prepares to host the Portland Timbers on Saturday.
Justin Ellis Named MLS NEXT Pro Player of the Matchweek
Orlando City B midfielder Justin Ellis was selected as MLS NEXT Pro Player of the Matchweek for his role in the team’s 3-0 win over Inter Miami II. Ellis, who turned 18 years old last week, assisted on both of OCB’s first two goals before scoring from the penalty spot himself. It’s been quite the year so far for Ellis, as he also scored six goals in the Generation Adidas Cup to help Orlando win the U-18 title in April. The Young Lions are back in action Friday with a road match against rival Atlanta United 2.
U.S. Open Cup Round of 16 Results
Comebacks were a theme throughout the U.S. Open Cup’s round of 16. Minnesota United took the lead, gave it up, and ultimately advanced thanks to defender Anthony Markanich scoring two late goals to beat St. Louis City 3-2 at Allianz Arena. Markanich was traded from St. Louis to Minnesota last year, adding a little salt in the wound for the visitors. D.C. United and Charlotte FC battled in a back-and-forth match that ended up with D.C. winning the penalty shootout after a 3-3 draw. The match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas also went the distance, with the Red Bulls winning the shootout. The Philadelphia Union won 4-1 against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds to eliminate the last team from outside MLS. The draw for the quarterfinals will take place this morning.
Tottenham Hotspur Wins Europa League Final
Tottenham prevailed in this year’s Europa league final, winning 1-0 against Manchester United in Spain. Brennan Johnson’s goal was enough for Tottenham to end its 17-year wait for a major trophy. It was a bit of an underwhelming finish to what was a fairly exciting knockout stage, and this was United’s only loss in this year’s tournament. Tottenham has now qualified for next season’s Champions League despite currently being 17th in the English Premier League standings.
Free Kicks
- Christian Pulisic reportedly won’t play in the Concacaf Gold Cup so that he can recover from a lengthy season with AC Milan.
- Boston’s NWSL team will play its home games next year at Gillette Stadium due to delays with construction for its eventual home, White Stadium.
- NWSL Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Julie Haddon will leave the league this summer as part of the league’s restructuring. Chief Sporting Director Tatjana Haenni will exit in October as well.
- After winning the domestic treble in his first season in charge, Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has extended his contract until 2027.
- Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham will undergo shoulder surgery once the Club World Cup is over.
- London City Lionesses were fined for messaging a Southampton player through social media without Southampton’s permission back in August. London City earned promotion this past season and will be the first fully independent women’s team in the Women’s Super League.
That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and rest of your week!
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