Orlando City Taking Risk with No Immediate Plan to Hire New Head Coach

When a team that has made the postseason for six consecutive years is 4-6-2 under a head coach, as Orlando City is under interim head coach Martin Perelman, one of the last things the fan base will want to hear is that the club is not taking advantage of a six-week break in the schedule to install a new coach. On paper, it was always a great spot to make the change, giving plenty of time for a search prior to the break. During the break, it could give most of the team the time to get to know the new gaffer, as it could almost become a second preseason.

It’s understandable for the club to give Perelman a chance to turn things around. Perelman, however, had hardly distinguished himself in terms of wins and losses while in charge of the club’s reserve side, Orlando City B. In his two full seasons of 2022 and 2023, Perelman’s side missed the playoffs his first year and finished fifth in the Eastern Conference in his second, getting eliminated by Columbus Crew 2 in the first round of the 2023 postseason. His two-year record was 19-23-10 with five shootout wins, though he improved the team from a 6-13-5 mark in the 24-game 2022 season to 13-10-5 in a 28-match 2023. The improvement was good, but the roster was also better, led by Jack Lynn’s standout season of 19 goals and six goal contributions by a young fullback named Alex Freeman.

He then became an assistant with the first team under Oscar Pareja in early 2024.

This season, Perelman inherited an Orlando City team that was 0-3-0 and had been outscored 11-3. Since taking over, Perelman has led the Lions to the aforementioned 4-6-2 record in MLS games and Orlando City has been outscored 33-20. On the other hand, Perelman has managed to navigate through three U.S. Open Cup matches to get Orlando into the semifinals, but did that by squeaking past a third-division team, having to come from behind in a wild 4-3 match against what was essentially a developmental side and two aging veterans for New England, and then finally looking like the better side against an Atlanta United side — one of the few teams that has struggled worse than Orlando this season — that stayed on the road an extra three days to play in Orlando twice in a week.

Getting this far in a knockout competition isn’t nothing, but it is fair to point out that the Lions didn’t beat a murderer’s row to get there.

So, it’s understandable if some fans are raising eyebrows over Perelman continuing on as Orlando City’s coach for now, which is something Sporting Director and General Manager Ricardo Moreira recently said is happening, as reported by WESH.

Here is what Moreira said in the WESH story:

“I can confirm that Martin will continue to be the interim head coach of the team when the MLS season resumes after the break,” Moreira said. “We believe that this stability is really important for us right now, especially in the middle of the season and especially with bringing in someone like Griezmann.”

Moreira added: “We understand that bringing someone like Griezmann changes the whole landscape of the club. Integrating him into an existing group and a locker room that already has its own identity is really important. We want to maintain continuity and stability, and we believe Martin brings that to the club.”

Bringing in a star player like Antoine Griezmann makes it even more important to get the coaching situation sorted out. Moreira’s remarks about an identity are true, but the identity of a team is largely dictated by the head coach, while the style of play the club wants is dictated by the front office hiring the kind of coach who excels at whatever kind of soccer that is. If you want a run-and-gun style, you don’t hire Diego Simeone or Jose Mourinho. If you want your club to squeeze the life out of opponents defensively and grind them to bits, you’re not seeking the next Johan Cruyff. Those styles don’t align.

Moreira seems to want a more fluid attack than what Orlando had under Pareja. That’s fine. We all love seeing the team score goals. Perelman’s Lions have scored 20 goals in 12 MLS games, reaching four goals in four of those matches. That’s exciting.

Yet the same team continues to look completely inept on the road, with a record of 1-6-1 (1-5-1 under Perelman) away from Orlando. The Lions have been shut out three times on the road under Perelman and have been outscored 23-5 in the six non-wins and 27-8 in all road games under their interim manager. In only one match away from home has Orlando City held its opponent to fewer than two goals, and that was a 1-1 draw at Columbus in which the Lions led from the 14th minute until Diego Rossi’s equalizer in the 80th.

Perelman has yet to show he’s the guy who can get that done without completely throwing Pareja’s noted stability in the back into a wood chipper. The identity of the current Lions seems to be “score at least two or three goals just to have a chance.”

Pareja’s team gave up an uncharacteristic 11 goals in the first three games, which is terrible, but the Lions also played those matches without captain Robin Jansson on the back line, and with rookies, youngsters, and new arrivals were playing in front of the club’s new goalkeeper. One of those three games was also played a man down for 84 minutes. It was the worst start in club history but also a small sample size. Could Orlando have turned things around under Pareja? We’ll never know.

Under Perelman, the team has suffered losses of 5-0 (at Nashville), 6-0 (at LAFC), and 6-2 (at Cincinnati). Three of the worst outings in club history came in just a 14-game span and one of those was the team’s most recent game. The Lions also shipped two goals late in a 3-2 road loss to D.C. United, conceded three times to mainly MLS NEXT Pro players in a 4-3 U.S. Open Cup win against New England, gave up three goals in a half at Inter Miami before an astonishing and historic comeback win for their only road victory of the season to date, and conceded three times in a 4-3 home win against an offensively challenged Philadelphia Union team vying for the MLS Wooden Spoon.

There have been a few good performances as well, with the team’s most competent soccer coming in half a game against Miami, in a 4-1 home win over Charlotte, and in a 4-1 U.S. Open Cup win over an Atlanta United side that is struggling in its own right. But there hasn’t been enough quality to suggest that things are getting better, aside from the team’s offense at home. It’s only a matter of whether Orlando City scores enough goals to have a chance to win, because when the offense doesn’t score at least two times, this team hasn’t won a league game. It seems incapable of keeping a clean sheet, with even the one it kept in a U.S. Open Cup match against FC Naples perhaps coming only due to a lack of video review of a potential equalizer.

Perelman’s Lions are conceding an average of 2.75 goals per game in MLS play over 12 matches. That’s a much larger sample size than Pareja’s three games and Perelman has had a healthy Jansson and David Brekalo for most of his run and has had the benefit of Griffin Dorsey, Iago, and Braian Ojeda all having spent more minutes on the pitch with their teammates.

Even when it seemed the defense was starting to figure it out, having “only” conceded seven goals in a four-match span (all competitions) — soaring to new heights of allowing just 1.75 goals per game in that time — Orlando was embarrassingly torched for six goals by FC Cincinnati in the final match before the World Cup break.

Replacing Perelman doesn’t guarantee better defensive performances, but it’s hard to imagine them getting worse than the league-history-making pace with which the team is conceding goals through the first 15 matches.

While Moreira didn’t promise the job to Perelman or say he won’t hire a new coach, Orlando City fans will want improvement quickly when play resumes, because the remaining season is slipping away.

“We’re going to support Martin and stick with him,” Moreira said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t monitoring the market and understanding the full landscape of available coaches. There are a lot of coaches who have been discussed, and we’re aware of every situation. I’m very active in my networking and my knowledge of the market, and we’re well aware of the coaching landscape and the status of coaches who may be available. But the decision right now is to keep Martin.”

To be fair to Moreira, there is no doubt some coaches that are perhaps on his radar may not become available until after the World Cup, and they may also want a break before diving into their next challenge. That would mean not coming in until at least September, at which time Griezmann may or may not be able to make a difference in the playoff race on a team that can’t stop leaking goals. The Frenchman’s presence, work rate from end line to end line, and ability to make those around him better can help, but only so much.

Other available coaches may be better suited coming into the club in the off-season to lay their foundation. As we saw with Wilfried Nancy’s disastrous spell at Celtic, sometimes you can’t fix or change things on the fly.

Moreira undoubtedly knows when those on his list of potential coaches might become available, and that may be the driving force for the moment in continuing with the status quo. And yet, Perelman may still yet prove to be the right coach in addition to being a good soldier for Orlando City by ultimately turning the ship around. It hasn’t looked likely yet, but it’s still possible.

At this point, there have been few signs Perelman can find any sustained success — at least with the current roster. There is a lack of balance, and it’s hard to discern whether the players aren’t good enough, if Perelman’s system isn’t capable of providing a competent transition defense, if the pairing of Ojeda and Eduard Atuesta is simply not able to provide coverage to the back line, or if it’s a combination of some or all of those things.

One thing we know is that the team’s lack of success will continue if the defense doesn’t improve while maintaining the attacking capability it has shown since late April.

Moreira may have handcuffed himself to Perelman in a way that makes it hard for ownership to avoid changing general managers if things continue the way they’ve been. The team can’t just bounce around in positions 10 through 13 in the Eastern Conference and hope Griezmann can get the Lions over the hump. Defensive solutions must be found, especially on the road, where scoring goals is tougher, because the club isn’t on pace to just break the league’s record for goals conceded — it is on pace to destroy the record. The Lions can’t keep getting embarrassed in every stadium not colored purple.

The coming months are among the most critical in club history, as they will dictate whether Orlando City remains a perennial playoff team or squanders one of the biggest signings in MLS history.