Orlando City vs. New England Revolution: Photo Gallery

The pregame lightning around the stadium must have struck Martín Ojeda, as he tallied Orlando City’s first hat trick since the club’s inaugural year in MLS. However, New England punished the Lions’ defensive lapses again, allowing the visitors to draw level twice for an unsatisfying draw.

Most of the first half was well controlled by the Lions, with Marco Pašalić and Alex Freeman getting the ball forward with ease. The home side could not find a finish until Ojeda finally smashed home a missile of a shot off the bottom of the crossbar in the 24th minute. Then in the 28th minute, Joran Gerbet played Ojeda through on a lovely one-touch line breaker, and he proceeded to baffle the two defenders that managed to bet back and beat the keeper for a 2-0 lead.

While the Lions were cruising at this point, apparently it went to their heads, as they allowed New England to pull their shape apart in the 38th minute to pull one back. That wasn’t enough of a wake-up call, and the Lions allowed a header from a short corner in the 45th minute to erase their lead heading into the half.

Coming out of the locker room, Orlando seemed to regain focus, mostly dominating the game for the first 30 minutes of the second half as well. One of the chances earned Gerbet a boot to the head, which after video review was finally awarded as a penalty (but mysteriously, not a yellow card). But the Lions could not close out the second half either, with a sequence of poor judgements earning yellow cards for David Brekalo and César Araujo and tiling the refereeing tolerance against Orlando. This may have played into the awarding of a penalty when Robin Jansson may have lightly clipped the heel of Ignatius Ganago at the corner of the six-yard box. The penalty stood after a lengthy review, and it was converted to re-tie the game.

Orlando woke up again and pushed forward, looking for the winner. In what is an apt occurrence for the game, the Lions even netted again in the 90th minute…off the back of an offside Duncan McGuire. (The goal was immediately and correctly disallowed.)

This game had all the emotions in it — excitement, elation, frustration, suspense, and everything in between. We hope you enjoy the pictures of a relatively well-fought match, and hopefully the Lions will figure out how to put offense and defense together soon.