Orlando Has Been The Goal-Happiest Place On Earth in 2026

Most public schools in central Florida have their final day for the 2025-2026 school year this week, which means that hundreds of thousands of kids will be celebrating not having to do any more math for a few months. This is, of course, silly, because math is the most beautiful of all of school subjects (they made A Beautiful Mind about a mathematician for a reason), but young people are comically uninformed about what is actually important still learning and are allowed to make mistakes.

The most common of those mistakes is to think that they will not need math in the future, when the reality is that math will be critical to their future lives. They may not need to remember how to find the first or second derivative, but they will definitely use math in a number (get it?) of ways.

One of the simpler uses of math is looking at a set of results and identifying outliers, which may not feel like math but certainly is. And speaking of derivatives two sentences ago, an outlier is a derivative of the words “out” and “lies” and the suffix “-er,” to describe something that lies out from all the others around it. Something like, for example, Orlando City’s goal scoring and goal allowing thus far this season.

Much has been made on this site, in our podcasts, in our exclusive weekly newsletter (which you can sign up for by clicking here), and on the broadcasts of the games about Orlando City’s leaky defense this season, but on the offensive side, the Lions have already scored four goals in a game five times. That is the most times in the club’s history that the team has scored exactly four goals in a match. Last year was the only season in club history the Lions have scored four or more goals more times, as the 2025 Lions reached or bettered the four-goal mark six times.

The five games in which Orlando City scored four goals are split between three in MLS play and two during the U.S. Open Cup, though surprisingly it was the two cup games against MLS teams when the Lions scored four, and not the game against FC Naples from the third division of American soccer. Orlando City is tied for second in MLS with those three games of scoring at least four goals, trailing only Inter Miami, which has four MLS games of at least four goals. If Miami had scored four goals in its game against Orlando City, it would not have lost to the Lions, but the Herons only scored three, and therefore took the L. Too bad, not sad at all.

Orlando City gave up “only” three goals in that game against Miami, and I say only because there have already been five occurrences thus far during MLS play when the Lions have given up four or more goals. Unsurprisingly, that leads the league, in a category in which teams most certainly do not want to lead the league, and those five occurrences of four or more goals allowed is tied with the 2018 and 2022 seasons for the most times Orlando City allowed that many goals in MLS games. Those were full seasons, whereas it has only been 15 games so far in 2026, so based on the opening stanza of the season the odds are that this year’s team goes down in inglorious history.

All those goals allowed may give Orlando City fans heartburn, but for independent fans or fans who just love to see goals going into the back of the net, Orlando City games have been great theater this year. Either the Lions or their opponents have scored at least four goals in half of this season’s games, and in 11 of the 18 games there were at least five goals scored between the two teams. Soccer is boring? Not when there are at least five goals scored in 61% of the team’s games!

The variances for the 2026 Lions are more stark than they have ever been, with the offense showing up in a major way in some games but not at all in others (the Lions have been shut out five times), and the defense kind of showing up in some games and not at all in others (nine games with three or more goals allowed). The two charts below show the percentage of games in every season since 2015 with each number of goals allowed and goals scored, including games across all competitions. The seasons since 2015 go left to right, with 2026 as the farthest to the right in each category and in purple.

We shall start on offense, and look at the goal scoring.

The Lions have only scored zero, one, two or four goals so far this season, and the counts of games scoring each number of goals is nearly evenly distributed across the 18 games played. The percentage of times that they scored four (28%) is much higher than in any other season, though with at least 23 games left in the season we will see what happens to that percentage by the end of the year. Ideally, the percentage of zero goals scored goes down, and preferably those in the 3+ range increase.

The opposite, of course, is true for the chart below on goals allowed, where preferably the high percentages at the larger numbers decrease. Through 18 games (in all competitions) Orlando City also has only recorded one clean sheet, and that 6% value is the lowest shutout percentage for any season. Shutouts are not required to earn points or advance in cup games, but they significantly increase the probability of positive results, and it would be a lot better for the team if it could record more than one shutout this season.

While the Orlando City offense has stuck with its zero, one, two, or four goals scored amounts, the defense has allowed every number from zero through six, and if not for some good goalkeeping by Maxime Crépeau, the numbers seven and eight might have appeared on the above chart. It is not by chance that the 2026 team is on pace to allow the most goals in MLS history (the Lions are currently on pace to concede 99.7 goals, bringing a new definition to the term “keeping it 100”), and if the club wants to achieve anything after returning from the World Cup break, then it needs to reduce all of the variance in its performances and find a way to limit those goals allowed numbers to zero or one in most games.

As the saying goes, the math isn’t mathing for Orlando City so far in 2026, as aside from in the U.S. Open Cup the team’s performances have generally been below the lower bound of expectations. At the same time, there are still 19 MLS regular-season games remaining, a U.S. Open Cup to play for, a Leagues Cup to play for, and an Antoine Griezmann to suit up in purple, so let’s hope the 2026 team has already hit its global minimum in terms of performance and that the rest of the season is nearly all positive like an absolute value.

Vamos Orlando!