Top 10 Moments of 2025: Homegrown Defender Alex Freeman Has Breakout Season

As we count down to the new year of 2026 — which will be Orlando City’s 12th in MLS, the Orlando Pride’s 11th in the NWSL, and OCB’s fourth in MLS NEXT Pro — and say goodbye to 2025, it’s time to look back at the club’s 10 best moments of the year as selected by The Mane Land staff via vote.

Every now and then in sports a rookie or young player enters a league and immediately shows that not only do they belong, but they are already one of the best of the best. Orlando City fullback Alex Freeman had that type of year in 2025, as he burst onto both the MLS and United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) scenes.

During the course of the 2025 calendar year, Freeman found himself playing in the MLS All-Star Game, winning MLS Young Player of the Year, becoming the first Lion to make the MLS Best XI, earning an 8 out of 10 in our The Mane Land end-of-season player grades, and scoring two goals after starting 10 games and appearing in 13 for the USMNT. All of those are amazing accomplishments on their own, and Freeman went out and bagged them all in 2025 — no big deal.

Outside of those who are actually part of the club, our writers at The Mane Land are almost certainly among the subset of those who most closely follow Orlando City, and while our staff writers all were excited by Freeman’s potential and thought he would contribute to the senior team, none of us predicted the meteoric rise that he would have this season. The coaching staff might not have seen it coming either, though they clearly saw something, because Freeman was the first sub to come in during the season opener (Luis Muriel technically stepped onto the field first, but he and Freeman subbed on in the same minute), and from then on he was the starting right back for the rest of the season.

I listed his overall accomplishments in the opening paragraph, but I think a few data points really will tell the story of Freeman’s 2025, as compared to other fullbacks in club history and to every fullback in MLS in 2025.

First, let’s start by looking back at all of the fullbacks in Orlando City history, and we will start with our friends at fotmob.com, who rate every player’s performance for every game that they play. FotMob has season-long player ratings back to 2016, and the chart below shows the best Orlando City fullbacks by their rating system for each season, on a 10-point scale:

Averaging the best fullback performances from each season during the 2016-2024 period gives a FotMob rating of 6.82. Freeman’s 7.41 is nine percent better than that average and four percent better than the next best individual performance. Four and nine percent do not sound like a lot, but again consider that Freeman was that much better than the previous best performances at that position club history, setting a new standard that will be difficult to beat.

Staying with the FotMob rating, Freeman’s 7.41 ranked third among all fullbacks in MLS in 2025. Philadelphia’s Kai Wagner (7.86) and Columbus’ Max Arfsten (7.51) slightly outperformed him by FotMob’s metrics, but Freeman tied for third with Jordi Alba out of 73 fullbacks who played enough minutes to qualify for a rating. The overall average among the 72 other fullbacks was 6.88, so FotMob had Freeman as eight percent better than the average 2025 fullback.

That eight percent gap between Freeman and the average 2025 fullback helps quantify how big of a deal it is that Freeman’s season was nine percent better on average than the best performances by Orlando City fullbacks from 2016-2024.

Moving over to a different site, American Soccer Analysis uses its own rating metric — goals added — to quantify how players contribute to their team’s goal differential. A goal prevented is as valuable as a goal scored, and the site’s rating system elevates defenders who primarily defend to be on equal status with offensive players who primarily attack, instead of only focusing on those who contribute to scoring goals. As you’ll see in the subsequent paragraphs, the two ratings systems are aligned but not parallel, with both rating Freeman highly, but American Soccer Analysis comes in much more favorably on the Orlando City fullback.

The American Soccer Analysis database includes metrics on season-long and per-96-minute (to account for stoppage time) bases, and to stay consistent with FotMob’s average rating per game we will look at the per-96-minute metrics for Freeman, which approximate a per-game basis. American Soccer Analysis scored Freeman as worth +0.33 goals added per 96 minutes in 2025, which is the second-highest mark (Federico Bernardeschi’s 2024 season in Toronto ranked first, with +0.35, although he played wingback for about half the season rather than being a natural fullback) by any fullback in the site’s MLS database, which goes back to 2013. That dataset includes 1,164 qualified fullback-seasons (seasons in which a player played at least 500 minutes), and you do not have to be a mathematics major like me to know that ranking second out of nearly 1,200 is an amazing feat from Freeman’s amazing feet.

It was not just that he ranked second that was amazing though. It was also how impressive that +0.33 was as compared to his fellow fullbacks. The average MLS fullback added +0.13 goals to their team’s goal differential per 96 minutes between 2013 and 2025 (Orlando City’s non-Freeman average was also +0.13 during that time frame), so Freeman exceeded that average by a cool 154%. Choose any superlative you want; they all apply when looking at exceeding the average by 154%.

As a quick sidebar into mathworld, Freeman’s 2025 performance was about 3.83 standard deviations higher than the mean (fancy word for average). To think about what that implies, in the United States, the average male height is around 5-foot-10. Freeman’s performance was the equivalent of standing 6-foot-9, and I don’t know about you, but outside of the Kia Center during an NBA game I rarely see any 6-foot-9 people walking around here in the Orlando area, as that type of height, just like Freeman’s excellent 2025 season, is exceedingly rare.

While he is only 6-foot-2 in real life, Freeman played like a giant in 2025, and that is what led to him earning his first call-up to the USMNT in May prior to two friendlies against Turkey and Switzerland. He debuted as a starter and played the full 90 minutes in the 2-1 loss to Turkey, and while he did not feature against Switzerland (remaining neutral, appropriately) he showed enough in the Turkey game that he made the Gold Cup roster, started all six matches, and played nearly every minute for the U.S. team that finished as runners-up to Mexico.

The USMNT played six friendlies after the Gold Cup and Freeman featured in all six, alternating appearances off the bench with starts and playing in 64% of the available minutes across those six matches. Freeman ended up playing the fourth-most minutes of any USMNT player in 2025 — another impressive accomplishment, especially considering he was the second-youngest player to feature for the U.S. this year.

There has been a lot of speculation around when Freeman will depart Orlando City for a club in Europe. Could it be in the January transfer window so he is playing at a higher level of competition in advance of the World Cup, or will it be after the World Cup, so he is guaranteed to have consistent minutes going into that tournament? The prevailing opinion is that either way he is not long for the City Beautiful, due to his outstanding year in 2025.

Transfermarkt tracks the projected market value of soccer players across the world, and in December of 2024 the site pegged Freeman at a value of approximately $177,000. The folks at Transfermarkt just released their updated projections on Dec. 10, and he is now valued at $4.1 million. A 154% increase sounded impressive earlier, but I am at a loss for words on how to define a 2,216% increase, so instead I’ll just tell you that the growth of his projected transfer value looks like the function f(x) = e^x, exponential growth where f equals Freeman.

The 2025 season will be a year to remember for Orlando City’s star right back, as he achieved top drawer success qualitatively (multiple awards and getting called up to the national team) and quantitatively (13 goal contributions for Orlando City and the USMNT combined and his top ratings across many websites). It was one of the best all-around seasons by a Lion in the club’s history, and for that it was an easy inclusion on the list of our top ‘moments’ of 2025.

Come back through New Year’s Eve as we count down the remainder of the top 10 moments of 2025 for Orlando City, the Orlando Pride, and OCB.

Previous Top Moments of 2025

10. Orlando City clinches a playoff berth for a sixth consecutive season on Alex Freeman’s late game-tying goal.

9. Luis Muriel’s hat trick powers Lions to Leagues Cup knockout rounds.

8. Martin Ojeda scores Orlando City’s first hat trick since Cyle Larin did so all the way back in 2015.

7. Orlando City sweeps rival Inter Miami during the regular season, winning both games by three goals.

6. Martin Ojeda breaks Orlando City’s single-season record for goal contributions.

5. Orlando Pride midfielder Luana returns to the pitch after being out for a year due to cancer treatment.