Orlando City vs. Atlanta United: Five Takeaways

Ah winning, it is so much better than tying. After three straight ties, Orlando City returned to their winning ways on Saturday, dominating Atlanta United and reminding the Five Stripes that Orlando is the soccer capital of the south. No, Miami, you cannot join the adults’ table and conversation yet. The Lions dominated play for most of Saturday’s match, and once they scored that first goal, they never looked back, adding two more goals and taking home all three points. Here are my five takeaways from the match.

The Shutout Streak is Over!

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, but in this case Orlando City earned its luck as Luis Muriel was making a driving run in the box and was preparing to shoot when Bartosz Slisz tripped him, earning Orlando City a penalty. Initially there was no call, but after video review, Orlando City was awarded a penalty and Muriel sent Brad Guzan the other way and the Lions were on the board for the first time since their trip to Los Angeles. Orlando City dominated the opening segment of the game and could easily have already scored at least one goal prior to the penalty, and as the clock ticked closer to halftime, that uneasy feeling of “not again” was starting to creep in. But then, Muriel created an opportunity and converted the ensuing penalty kick, and everyone breathed a big sigh of relief with a side of purple smoke.

The Shutout Streak Continues!

On the other side of the ball, the defensive back line continued its run of recent form by preventing Atlanta from even getting one shot on target, forcing the visitors to take half of their shots from more than 20 yards away from the goal. Pedro Gallese was barely troubled throughout the game, and the back line of David Brekalo, Rodrigo Schlegel, Robin Jansson, and Alex Freeman all went the full 90 and yet only made a combined two tackles, showing just how little of an attack Atlanta was able to mount against the Orlando City defense. The Lions bossed the game all over the field, from the press by their attacking group through owning the midfield and the defense snuffing out the few threatening attacks Atlanta put together, and it was a full team effort to earn a fourth straight shutout.

Another New Midfield Combination

The injury bug bit the Orlando City defensive midfield once again, as after three straight starts Joran Gerbet was unable to go against Atlanta. With César Araújo still to return from injury, and away on Saturday for the birth of his daughter, that meant that Óscar Pareja turned to Kyle Smith to start the game as one half of the defensive midfield. Thankfully, Eduard Atuesta was finally cleared to return, and the Atuesta-Smith pairing became the fourth pair to start in the first 10 games of the season. I thought Atuesta was brilliant in this game, as his incisive passing and playmaking skills were on full display throughout. He did fail to convert on a wonderful chance to score off of a Marco Pašalić pass, but aside from that, he was outstanding on both offense and defense and breathed life into an Orlando City team that had sorely missed him.

For his part, Smith played much more of the defensive role between the two holding midfielders, and he was solid in the middle of the field, partnering with Jansson and Schlegel to wall off Atlanta from being able to attack through the middle. Time will tell if we see yet another new combination next week, but in this week’s game, Atuesta and Smith made it look like they had been playing next to each other for months, not days.

The Formation Was Fluid

As fans of Orlando City, we know that Pareja loves his 4-2-3-1 formation and has used that nearly exclusively during his tenure in Orlando. In this context, I found it interesting that multiple sites listed the Lions as having played a 3-4-2-1 in the match against Atlanta, but this makes sense with how far Freeman pushes up the field on the right hand side and how Brekalo, Jansson, and Schlegel hang back and hold down the defense while their young teammate joins the attack. Additionally, Orlando City makes a point to not lock its players into specific positions, but rather let the front group rotate as needed defensively, leading to times in the second half when it appeared like any one of Martin Ojeda, Muriel, and Nico Rodríguez were playing as a striker, with the others filling in behind. There were also times in the first half when it looked like Duncan McGuire and Muriel were both playing up top, and then others when it seemed like McGuire was the lone striker with Muriel dropped well behind him. These multiple looks caused some confusion among the Atlanta defense and also slowed down the Atlanta attack as well, as they saw players in different locations than they expected. The Lions have a lot of players who have “utility” skillsets, and they took advantage of those in this match.

Duncan Is Now Fully Open For Business

McGuire made his first start of the year on Saturday, and while he did not score a goal, it was good to see that he is now healthy enough to go 60 minutes in a match. Big Dunc was involved in a few chances, taking one shot and making one key pass in addition to drawing two fouls, but the big takeaway here is that he is now one more option that Pareja has available to him to start or bring off the bench. In this match, they decided to bring in Ojeda off the bench and give him a bit of a rest, but as the season starts to move from one game per week to many weeks having both a weekend and weekday game, it will be critical that the Lions can rotate the squad and keep all the key players fresh. McGuire looked like he still had something left in the tank when he subbed out, so I think it is safe to say he is back to full fitness.

Those are my takeaways from an enjoyable beatdown of one of Orlando City’s biggest rivals and a game that was much less stressful than the Pride’s come-from-behind victory on the same field the night before. The Lions will look to build off this victory when they travel to Chicago next weekend, though waiting for them will be an angry Fire team that was just embarrassed 7-2 by Nashville. There is no reason why Orlando City cannot also score seven, but we will settle for at least one more than Chicago scores.

Let us know your thoughts about the Atlanta match in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!