Orlando City Nailed the Signing of Eduard Atuesta

There was a lot of understandable hand-wringing among Orlando City fans when Wilder Cartagena went down with a ruptured Achilles tendon in preseason. The injury meant that the Lions would be without one of their most important players for the 2025 season, as Cartagena and Cesar Araujo had formed an excellent partnership in the engine room of Orlando’s squad. Fans needn’t have worried though, because the front office quickly identified Eduard Atuesta as the man it wanted to replace Cartagena and persevered through some public back-and-forth to land him from Palmeiras.

Not only did OCSC sign a proven MLS-caliber midfielder, but the Colombian assimilated into the team almost immediately and has been just as good as advertised.

For one, he’s been able to provide a consistent impact on the defensive side of things. Atuesta has made 15 regular-season appearances (13 starts) and has logged 1,172 minutes on the field. In that time, he’s recorded 22 tackles (tied for fifth on the team), 10 interceptions (tied for fourth), and 14 blocks (eighth). Out of he and Araujo, the Uruguayan is asked to do more of the defensive work, but Atuesta has still been a perfectly capable contributor on that side of the ball.

His impact has most been felt on offense though. We knew when the signing was announced that Atuesta should carry more punch going forward than Cartagena did, and that’s precisely how things have played out. His six assists is second most on the team, trailing only Martin Ojeda, who has nine. He also has the second-most progressive passes on the team with 92, again only behind Ojeda, who has 104. If that isn’t enough, consider that despite playing in defensive midfield, he’s third on the team in shot-creating actions with 65 (trailing Ojeda with 108, and Luis Muriel with 73), and he leads the team in goal-creating actions with 13. In fact, those 13 goal-creating actions are tied for the fifth most in the league, and his average of one goal-creating action per 90 minutes is third best in the league behind Lionel Messi and Ali Ahmed who average 1.25 and 1.04, respectively.

Really, the only area where his game is lacking on offense is scoring actual goals, as he has yet to get one in MLS play, despite having some good chances to do so. Despite the lack of direct goals, he’s become instrumental in Orlando being able to operate its offense at a high level — just cast your mind back to earlier in the year, when the Lions played to multiple scoreless draws when he was unavailable due to injury. OCSC eventually got its offense looking better in his absence due to Joran Gerbet growing more comfortable and the Designated Players getting back on track, but that took time, and the Lions just look much more cohesive when he’s on the field than when he isn’t. Those 92 progressive passes are an extremely important reason why, as he and Araujo (who has 84) are vital when it comes to joining the defense to the attack.

He’s also costing Orlando a reasonable amount of money for what the club is getting in return. His $725,000 in guaranteed compensation makes him the seventh-highest-paid player on the team, but so far he’s holding up his end of the bargain with what he’s bringing to the offense. That number places him 22nd among central midfielders in the league behind guys like Felipe Carballo ($1,199,777.00 in guaranteed compensation for two assists in 16 appearances), Mateusz Klich ($1,937,338.00 in guaranteed compensation for one assist in 16 appearances), and Sebastian Lletget ($891,250.00 in guaranteed compensation for one goal and one assist in 11 appearances). While those guys don’t all exactly match the profile of Atuesta, the point I’m making is that so far he’s been pretty good value for money when you look around at what some other teams in the league are getting.

His impact is perhaps best summarized by Fbref.com’s scouting report tool, which compares someone to other players in his position over the course of the last 365 days. While this isn’t a perfect tool for evaluating Atuesta as an Orlando City player, since it takes into account some of his stats while he was with Palmeiras, it still provides a useful look at his current level, and this is just exactly what you want to see.

In short, I can’t give the front office enough credit for landing Atuesta. The club didn’t try to cheaply replace the vastly important Cartagena and instead identified the guy the Lions wanted, went out, and made the signing happen. So far, that decision has paid off — most notably in what the Colombian midfielder has brought to Orlando City’s offense. If he keeps assisting at his current rate and also starts scoring a few goals of his own, then his signing could end up being one of the best pieces of business in recent years. Vamos Orlando!