Orlando City Has Chance to Finish Strong Before World Cup Break

Orlando City only has four more league games to play before Major League Soccer takes a break until late July to accommodate the World Cup. While the Lions have started to move in the right direction with two wins in their last three league games, the good guys still sit 13th in the Eastern Conference table. Fortunately, Orlando has a good opportunity to make up some ground in the standings before the league goes on its summer sabbatical. Let’s take a look at why.

For one thing, despite the rough start to Orlando’s season, the Eastern Conference as a whole hasn’t had a particularly strong go of things either. Nashville SC is atop the standings with 23 points, but no other team has eclipsed the 20-point mark, and Orlando is just five points behind fifth place D.C. United. Contrast that to the Western Conference, where the San Jose Earthquakes have 28 points at the top of the table, five teams have 20 or more points, and Orlando would be 10 points out of fifth place.

Another factor in OCSC’s favor is who it’ll play in its next four games. The Lions will only face one team currently above the playoff line, while they’ll also take on the two teams directly below them, and the team directly above them in the standings.

First up is Saturday”s road match against CF Montreal — a team the Lions have beaten already this year — which currently sits one point and one place below Orlando in the table. After that, Orlando gets a midweek game on Wednesday when it hosts the Philadelphia Union. Philly is currently last in the East with six points, and while the Union’s 17 goals conceded is actually sixth best in the conference, the total of nine goals the team has scored is comfortably the worst.

A few days after hosting Philly at home, Orlando will welcome Atlanta United to Inter&Co Stadium on Saturday, May16. The Five Stripes are currently level with OCSC on points but sit one spot ahead of the Lions in the standings due to a superior goal difference. The toughest test, at least on paper, will come in the final game before the break when the Lions travel to face sixth-place FC Cincinnati. Anything can obviously happen once the games are being played, but in theory this stretch of the schedule is a more welcoming one than the period that saw Orlando play New York City FC, Nashville, and LAFC on the road in quick succession.

Then there’s the state of the Lions themselves. The defense admittedly still needs some work, as Orlando is yet to keep a clean sheet in the league and has conceded fewer than two goals in only four of its 11 games. Thankfully, the offense is improving though. Orlando has scored 10 goals in its last three league games, and bagged an additional four against a heavily rotated New England Revolution side in the U.S. Open Cup.

Outside of the actual product on the field, OCSC is slowly but surely starting to get healthier. Eduard Atuesta and Wilder Cartagena have both made returns from injury, Robin Jansson has been back in the starting lineup for a few games now, and Duncan McGuire also made an appearance from the bench in the 4-3 win over Inter Miami. Injuries haven’t been the only thing that have hampered Orlando this year, but they certainly haven’t made life any easier either, and having key players back is never going to be a bad thing.

Given how topsy turvy this season has been so far, it’s anyone’s guess as to how these next four games will play out on the field. But given the middling state of the Eastern Conference, the quality of the upcoming opponents, Orlando’s improved offense, and an increasing pool of healthy players, the Lions have a good opportunity to start digging themselves out of the hole they find themselves in at the bottom of the standings. The games still need to be played, but given how hopeless things looked in March, it’s just nice to have some reasons to be hopeful. Now all the Lions need to do is take advantage of the chance in front of them. Vamos Orlando!