Orlando City’s Depth Will Be Stretched to a New Limit Against Vancouver

October has arrived, and with it comes two of my favorite postseasons — Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. It is a major time of year, apparently. Even though this is an article about Orlando City, we will start with baseball, but I promise we will get to soccer shortly thereafter.

In my early teens I attended a summer camp amid the mountains of rugged New Hampshire, and my favorite activity at that camp was baseball. The camp counselors created all kinds of fun games for us to play. One of my favorites was called “Benchball,” when the counselors would hit increasingly more difficult balls to us in the field, and you would stay in the field until you did not field the ball cleanly or throw it back accurately, in which case you were sent to the bench.

In the later rounds of the game you had to start adding some flair to your plays, similarly to how the Savannah Bananas play with fun and fun-damentals. The counselors would take on the role of figure skating judges and could “bench” you, even if you made a good play, if they did not deem your play to have scored high enough on their artistic/creative scale. It was all in good fun, especially when I won, and even when I did not win it was a great way to spend time on a baseball field on a summer morning.

It was better when I won, though.

I was thinking about Benchball because Orlando City has a game Saturday night against Vancouver, and due to player departures, injuries, and international call-ups, several players who are going to start the game on the bench are going to quite possibly be the youngest and least experienced bench players in club history. We will not know the official lineup until about an hour before game time, but we certainly can make some educated guesses as to who will be in the starting lineup, and then take a look at those who are left who likely will be dressed but start on the bench.

Barring a major injury in practice, Pedro Gallese is the nailed-on starter in goal, and three of the four (assuming Óscar Pareja sticks with his usual formation) back line players are pretty easy to slot in as well, as it will likely be Adrián Marín at left back and Robin Jansson and Rodrigo Schlegel as the center backs. The right back will likely be Kyle Smith or Dagur Dan Thórhallsson, and that decision may come down to whether César Araújo is able to return from injury or if he is still out with a back injury.

If Araújo returns, he will start with Eduard Atuesta in the middle, but if he still cannot go, Smith probably partners with Atuesta and Thórhallsson starts as right back. There has not been an update on Joran Gerbet’s status, because soccer teams reveal roughly as much about player injuries as Bill Belichick did when he was the Patriots’ head coach, so in theory Gerbet could be back, but the odds are almost certainly not in his favor based on how that injury looked during the Columbus game.

Orlando City’s attacking midfield group will feature Iván Angulo on the left wing, but the central attacking midfield/secondary striker role that Martín Ojeda has played at an MVP level this season may be filled by Ojeda or perhaps by Luis Muriel, because there is a hole out on the right wing with Marco Pašalić unavailable. Pareja may push Ojeda out wide to try to start as many of his senior players as he possibly can. Muriel could also play out on the right and Ojeda could stay where he has been for most of this season, but I think Ojeda is the more likely candidate to go wide for one game.

If Araújo is healthy, Smith or Thórhallsson both also could be options on the right wing as well, since neither would be needed in the central midfield. Nico Rodríguez is a positionally like-for-like replacement for Pašalić, so he could also start at right wing, but in a game that has huge implications for playoff seeding I expect Pareja will prefer to start more experienced players.

The forwards in the 4-4-2 the Lions have used most of the season will depend on Pareja’s choice at right wing. If he goes with Rodriguez wide on the right, I expect Martin Ojeda and Luis Muriel to start up top with Duncan McGuire becoming one of the few experienced bench players. If Muriel or Ojeda start on the right, the one who doesn’t start on the right will likely play up top with McGuire to start.

What it boils down to is that Angulo, Atuesta, Gallese, Jansson, Marín and Schlegel are pretty much locked in to start and to play at their normal positions, and there are a lot of if/then statements (mathematicians love if/then statements, especially when we get to break out the abbreviation iff, which stands for if and only iff) at the other five positions, but those if/thens will be determined by the availability of Araújo and th positioning of Muriel, Ojeda, Smith, and Thórhallsson.

If you were counting along (and if not, why weren’t you?), that is six players who are locked in as starters at their normal players and six players for five positions, but it might be five players for five positions if Araújo is still injured. So, who does that leave for the bench? Here is the full list of the remaining players on the roster who have dressed for at least one MLS game and are not injured or away on international duty, ranked in order of minutes played for Orlando City in 2025:

That is the full list, and respectfully, it is not a list full of players who are likely to come off the bench and make a difference in a close game. Araújo being available to start would push one of the senior players to the bench. Note: both Zakaria Taifi and Tahir Reid-Brown have been on the injured list and were out against the Crew, and without knowing their status, it is probable that neither will be available.

With so many players unavailable this weekend, it is likely that at least one OCB player not on the list above will have to sign a short-term contract. If we sort those remaining who played at least 500 minutes by their season-long FotMob ranking the list goes:

For perspective, Justin Ellis led OCB with a FotMob rating of 7.43, and Platts’ 6.58 rated him ninth on the team and tied for 314th in the league. That 314 is delicious when you put a decimal after the three, but it is otherwise a very low ranking.

If any of these players sign a short-term contract — and Thalles would seem unlikely as he did not dress vs. FC Cincinnati 2 on Sunday in a must-win game — it would only be to fill out the full roster for Saturday night’s game. None of them would be serious candidates to make anything more than a last-second cameo appearance unless there were injuries or other unforeseen circumstances.

With this set of options on the bench, Pareja is likely to ride his starters even longer than he usually does, and that is saying something for the coach who plays his starters the fourth-most minutes in MLS. Even with the players who are unavailable, the Lions should still have a competitive starting lineup, but the giant concerns will be if a starter picks up an early injury and who, if anyone, is trusted to come on to help the team hold a lead over Vancouver (glass half full) or try to catch the Whitecaps if the Lions are trailing (glass half empty).

Let’s hope that on Saturday night the decisions over who to sub in off the bench are difficult, iff Orlando City is so far ahead that the difficulty is high because they are deciding which young player(s) deserve to get their debut minutes for the senior club.

Vamos Orlando!