On the Difficulty of Complicated Goodbyes

In sports, as in life, nothing lasts forever. That, in fact, is one of the core truths of being a sports fan. Your team won’t be at the top or the bottom forever (unless the team is the Cleveland Browns), your team won’t have the same owner(s) forever, or the same coach, or the same players. Change is inevitable, whether it comes as a result of trades, sales, career-ending injuries, old age, or even (god forbid) a franchise moving to a different city.

It’s also true that, as in life, some goodbyes in sports are easier than others. Maybe a player or club official torched their relationship with the fans a la Nico Harrison, formerly the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. Maybe a player, despite being successful with a certain team, never truly felt like they belonged there, similar to Zlatan Ibrahimovic with Manchester United. Or maybe a player both never found success with a team and never felt like a good fit with that squad’s colors either, which was unfortunately the case with former Lion Josue Colman. In those cases, moving on from the team concerned wasn’t a particularly bitter pill to swallow because it was best for all parties involved: the player, the team, and the fanbase.

By contrast, some departures feel positively torturous even if they’re rooted in logic and make sense. Take the sudden medical retirement of Andrew Luck, or Thomas Muller leaving Bayern Munich after having been at the club since 2000. In Luck’s case, it felt like he had more to give on the field but his body simply wouldn’t hold up anymore, and retiring was the right choice for his health. Of course, it stung for fans of the Indianapolis Colts, but anyone with sense could hardly begrudge him for prioritizing his well-being.

For Muller, who was a couple weeks away from turning 36 when he signed with the Vancouver Whitecaps, Father Time was simply catching up to him. He made his fewest-ever starts for Bayern and played his fewest-ever minutes in the 2024-2025 season, and his number of starts had declined in every season since the 2021-2022 campaign. It hurt to see him go, but he wanted to keep playing, and to keep playing regularly, which simply wasn’t going to be possible for a side that is regularly in the latter stages of the UEFA Champions League each year.

What about the area in between the two extremes, though? What about a situation where a player is still doing some good things, is a good fit with the club, and could easily continue with that same team if the circumstances were just a little different? Saying goodbye in cases like that can be much more nuanced and confusing, and that’s what we’re here to talk about with relation to three of Orlando City’s recent departures.

Pedro Gallese

Let’s begin with the most high profile of the exits, which is that of the Lions’ former starting goalkeeper. Gallese had been with OCSC just under six years after he signed in January of 2020, and the good memories with El Pulpo are too numerous to count. From backstopping Orlando to a U.S. Open Cup championship in 2022 to taking over against Toluca in the Leagues Cup quarterfinal shootout this year and burying the winning penalty himself, the Peruvian international gave the club and its fans plenty to cheer for.

The fact remains though that while his save percentage ticked up from 66.7% in 2024 to 70.1% in 2025, his clean sheet percentage fell from 27.6% to 25%, his average goals against per 90 minutes went up from 1.34 to 1.53, and he failed to save any of the three penalty kicks he faced during the run of play, making 2025 only the second time in six seasons in which he did not save a spot kick outside of a penalty shootout.

To be clear, none of those drop-offs are particularly egregious, but the in-game statistics also aren’t the only factors in play. There’s also the fact Gallese will turn 36 in February and was on a base salary of $960,000. Even signing him to a new contract at the same exact number is a big ask for a goalie on the wrong side of 35, despite goalkeepers having the longest shelf life of any position on the field. We don’t know what numbers were thrown around during contract negotiations, but we know that the two sides ultimately couldn’t agree on one, and there’s no guarantee that either side was in the wrong. Gallese likely wanted either the same salary or an increase, while the club almost certainly wanted to bring him back at a cheaper base number with incentives tacked on.

You can’t fault the player for likely wanting to be paid at the same level or better, while you likewise can’t fault the club for being wary of investing a large sum into a soon-to-be 36-year-old when so much work needs to be done to the rest of the roster. It’s going to be strange not having him between the sticks, but ultimately his departure makes the most sense for both parties. If a cheaper number could have been agreed upon, then I’d have been happy to have him back, because I do think he’s still good enough to be a starting goalkeeper in this league, just not at his previous salary. It’s tough, because under the right circumstances a return could have gone very well, but those circumstances simply didn’t materialize.

Rodrigo Schlegel

The next highest-profile departure is that of Rodrigo Schlegel. Like Gallese, the Argentinian center back spent six seasons as a Lion after being signed on Dec. 30, 2019, but he has now joined Liga MX’s Atlas via a transfer. While nominally a backup, he somehow always seemed to find himself in a starting role in place of either Antonio Carlos, Robin Jansson, or David Brekalo. Like Gallese, there were plenty of highs where Schlegel is concerned. He was a key contributor on the run to lifting the U.S. Open Cup, and don’t even get me started on the “Papi, I can do that” save on Gudmundur Thórarinsson’s penalty kick in Orlando City’s first-ever MLS playoff match. Like the goalkeeper he played in front of for so long, his time on the field was defined by passion, tenacity, and a willingness to give everything he had for the shirt.

The tricky thing with Schlegel was that he was maddeningly inconsistent, and his positional discipline could be…interesting at times. Too many times to count he would charge from his spot in the back line to attempt a tackle or an interception, and when it worked, it neutered dangerous attacks before they could even materialize, but when it didn’t, the Lions had an unfortunate habit of giving up goals as a direct result. He seemed to waver from being too good to be a backup yet too error prone to be a starter for a team with true championship aspirations.

Add in the fact that his base salary was $500,000 and multiply it with Orlando City not keeping a clean sheet after the month of June, and things start coming into clearer focus. While the club did not disclose how much the transfer was for, Transfermarkt lists it at €2 million, which would be a significant profit on the €410,000 that the site says it took to sign him from Racing Club. If those numbers are accurate or even roughly in the right ballpark, that’s another piece of the puzzle that can’t be ignored. As mentioned above, the roster needs to be reshaped, and having over a million extra in transfer fees and an additional $500,000 in salary budget isn’t going to hurt. It would be hard to justify keeping that much salary on the books for a guy who hasn’t consistently played at the level needed for a starter, but given the passion he played with and the brilliance he was capable of producing, it doesn’t make the departure an easy one to accept.

Kyle Smith

Though it may seem odd to some readers, this is easily the off-season departure that hurt me the most. Kyle Smith was signed all the way back in December of 2018, when he came onboard with James O’Connor, who had been his coach at Louisville City. No one at the time could have predicted he would play seven seasons with the Lions and finish second on the all-time list for appearances, and sixth and fifth for starts and minutes, respectively. That’s precisely what happened though, and after Mason Stajduhar’s departure in January of this year, Smith was the longest-tenured player on the team with Robin Jansson next on the list.

While Smith didn’t play with the visible ferocity of Schlegel, and might not have provided the sort of dramatics fans saw from Gallese, what he did provide was a versatility that at times bordered on the bewildering. During his time as a Lion, The Accountant appeared at damn near every position on the field except goalkeeper, and one can’t help but suspect that if he’d been called upon to don the gloves a la Schlegel, he would have found a way to do a perfectly serviceable job. Smith brought a level of reliability and flexibility that stood the Lions in good stead when the injury bug reared its ugly head, international breaks left the roster threadbare, and fixture congestion necessitated rotation. The 2025 campaign even saw him match his highest assist total in a season with the team, as he contributed three helpers while notching his best passing accuracy.

The issue with Kyle was likely twofold. For one, he’ll be 34 in January, and for another, he had a base salary of $270,000 in 2025, and a guaranteed compensation of $318,000. I am not joking in the slightest when I tell you that Smith is one of my favorite all-time Lions, but that’s simply a lot of money for a defender (by trade) that only made 12 starts this past season, especially when that defense gave up 51 goals in 34 games. It’s also likely that Smith was looking for an increase on his 2025 contract, and it would be tough to justify giving even more money to a guy who, if things go according to plan in 2026, should be a backup/rotational player. If he could have been brought back for cheaper or on an incentive-heavy deal then it would have made sense for the club, but likely not for the player. When that’s the situation, a parting of the ways is usually the solution.

I look at all three of these departures through the lens of a breakup. Ending any romantic relationship is rarely easy, but it tends to be slightly less difficult if its evident that things are bad. While it might not be fun breaking things off, it’s likely an easier change to come to terms with if your partner is being unfaithful, has gambled your life savings away at the horse races, or hates your family so much that they intentionally ran your parents over with their car.

By contrast, its much more difficult to decide to end things and process that decision when the relationship isn’t overwhelmingly horrible, but rather just isn’t right. When there are plenty of good things about the person and about the two of you together, but for some reason the relationship just isn’t clicking. That’s when things are hardest, because you can see how good the two of you could be together…if only the circumstances were a little different. Except, the circumstances aren’t different; the situation is what it is. They’re the person they are and they want what they want, while you’re the person you are and you want what you want; and the two of you simply aren’t meshing the way that you used to.

For me, that’s how it is with each of these three long-serving Lions. Saying goodbye to Gallese, Schlegel, and Smith would be so much easier if their performances had nosedived off a cliff, they’d become combative and hostile with fans, or they were retiring due to medical concerns or old age. That isn’t the case though, and it means that these farewells are complicated ones.

Freeing up the salary space they occupied will allow the club to rebuild and hopefully reach new levels of success, but it’ll be strange not having them around if/when that success does come. Still, they each brought us plenty of good times, and we’ll always have those times to look back on fondly. For one reason or another though, it simply doesn’t work for them to continue with Orlando City anymore, no matter how much them, the club, and the fans might have wanted them to.

If it hurts to end a relationship, that’s how you know it meant something. Saying goodbye to Pedro Gallese, Rodrigo Schlegel, and Kyle Smith hurts like hell, there’s no way around it. You can be damn sure though, that their time here meant something. Vamos Orlando.