PawedCast Episode 482: Portland Rewind, Atlanta and Chicago Previews, OCB Struggles, and More

Orlando City kept rolling in MLS play with a 1-0 home win over the Portland Timbers, cleansing the palate after a distasteful U.S. Open Cup last week against a star-less Nashville SC side. It wasn’t always crisp, and the Lions left several goals unscored, but Duncan McGuire’s blast off of Eduard Atuesta’s well-placed pass provided Orlando with the margin of victory. The Lions stayed focused for the full duration on defense, avoiding some of the issues they had against Nashville, and keeping a good Portland side off the scoresheet.

We discussed the game’s talking points, looked back at our score predictions from the last show, and made our unanimous selections for Man of the Match. We also discussed which Lion made the MLS Team of the Matchday bench.

After the first team recap, the OCB discussion was less upbeat, owing to a performance to forget from the Young Lions on a waterlogged pitch Sunday night in Kissimmee. It might have been a better game had OCB not handed the visitors an early goal, but the Young Lions were second best every minute of that game.

The mailbagbox asked about obvious future Lion Antoine Griezmann, Martin Ojeda coming off the bench, our expectations for the OCSC season, and more. Remember, if there’s anything — and we do mean anything — you want us to address on the show, just ask us by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC, or hitting us up on Bluesky Social with that same hashtag.

Following the mailbagbox segment, we discussed OCB’s upcoming game against Eastern Conference-leading Chattanooga, before moving on to our pair of previews.

First up is a trip to Atlanta on Wednesday, as the Lions try to keep their momentum through this final week of a busy and exhausting May. Then, there’s yet another quick turnaround as Orlando City hosts the Chicago Fire on Saturday. We discussed the series history for both games, provided our key matchups, and made our score predictions.

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Here’s how No. 482 went down:

0:15 – Orlando City bounced back from the U.S. Open Cup loss with a win over a difficult Portland team, and OCB did not put up any sort of resistance against Atlanta Untied 2.

23:28– Mailbagbox time!

43:06 – The Lions will visit Atlanta and then return home to face Chicago. We’ve got two previews, two sets of key matchups, and twice the normal amount of score predictions.