Running the Numbers: Orlando City’s Fastest, Fittest Players

The calendar is finally showing less than two weeks until Orlando City’s next MLS game, though the team played a friendly against Tampa Bay Wednesday night and has another one scheduled against Dallas next week. When that next official game kicks off in San Jose on July 22, it will have been almost exactly two months since the Lions took the field, marking the continuation of what is an odd transition from the spring-to-fall schedule that Major League Soccer has employed since the league started in 1996.

There was a four-month break between Orlando City’s final game in 2025 and the start of the 2026 season, then three months of soccer, then this two-month break, then there will be five or possibly even six (if Orlando City can start playing defense more like lions instead of just lyin’ around) more months of soccer to close out 2026. After that, there will be a very short off-season followed by a “sprint season” from February to May in 2027, before the league moves to what I, as a former high school teacher, affectionally call the “school schedule” and start playing August to May like most of the soccer-playing world.

I miss the school schedule and two-month-long summer vacations. I digress.

The important thing to note here is that the 2026 season is going to restart soon, and then there will be a lot of MLS soccer in quick succession after that until a longer break in the summer of 2027. And speaking of quick, earlier this week I finally found some data I had long been looking for: tracking data on top sprint speed, number of sprints per 90 minutes, and total distance ran by MLS players. Sofascore started publishing this information for many top leagues in 2025, and for MLS, the outlet has the tracking information available for the 2026 season.

Unfortunately, the data display is not as simple as some other sites in terms of looking league-wide and ranking players all across the league, but it was set up to easily look at on a team-by-team basis. Sofascore did not share how it acquired this data, but presumably it either comes from the devices that you see all players wearing under their jerseys or some kind of automated tracking inside every stadium, as you could not rely on a tv broadcast to track running speed and distance traveled, considering not all players are on screen throughout the entire game.

Some context is important as well, especially for the top speed and number of sprints categories. From what I can tell, the top speed measured is a one-time top speed reached per player, which inherently gives an advantage to players who play in open spaces more often, like fullbacks, strikers, and wingers. Central defenders and midfielders certainly also have opportunities to go all out as well, but those positions do not lend themselves to as many chances for a player to get moving for the distance required to hit their top speed. As for the counts of total numbers of sprints, the site did not define what constitutes a “sprint,” but I am confident it tracked everyone in the same manner, so I think the data is unbiased by any subjective calculation.

As for the total distance ran, that is a straight-forward calculation, though it makes sense that some positions run far less distance than others. All of these distances run are exhausting to look at though. It takes most of us multiple days to accumulate as much distance covered as many players do in a single game. The “brothers” Ojeda have combined to run for nearly eight marathons worth of miles thus far this season. The only marathons happening in my house are tied to movies or TV shows.

That explanation felt more like a marathon than a sprint, so let’s get back on track (unintentional pun, I swear) and look at Orlando City’s running data for its players who have played at least 200 minutes (well, except for Colin Guske, who for some reason does not show in the database even though he has played nearly 300 minutes). We’ll skip the goalkeepers (Maxime Crépeau is faster than Javier Otero) and start with the defenders:

• *per 90 minutes

I was not surprised to see Griffin Dorsey near the top of these lists, but I was surprised to see Adrián Marín there, especially for the column on top speed reached. He must have really gotten moving on one run forward or, let’s be honest based on Orlando City’s defense thus far this season, a recovery run to get back on defense, because he ranks near the bottom of the group on the number of sprints per 90 minutes.

Robin Jansson, both for the position he plays and his age, unsurprisingly sits at the bottom of all three categories. All of the central defenders sit low on the number of sprints made and total distance covered, which makes sense based on how Orlando City deploys players in those positions — staying back on defense and rarely venturing up field unless it is in a dead ball situation.

The fastest defender tracked thus far this season was San Jose’s Daniel Munie, who clocked a 22.7 mph sprint, just a hare, sorry, hair, faster than Dorsey and Marín’s 22.3. San Diego’s Kieran Sargent leads all defenders by averaging 25.9 sprints per 90 minutes, but this is where Sofascore’s reporting was difficult to use. The site’s one chart with the top ranked players included every single player, meaning some players who had barely played all season were included, and their per-90-minutes values often looked out of whack compared to players who played lots of games. Sargent has only played 440 minutes thus far this season, enough that I included him as a top performer but far fewer than Orlando City’s primary defenders.

The same issue came up with total distance covered, and no defender in the site’s overall top 50 had played more than 400 minutes, so I could not find a good player comparison for a top defensive player in terms of distance covered.

On to the midfield (the positional allocations are Sofascore’s):

*per 90 minutes

The eye test has always said that Iván Angulo is not only the fastest player on Orlando City but also among the fastest in the league, but Sofascore says otherwise, as the site has him third on the team behind Dorsey and Marín and 25th overall in MLS. I’d like to see a race among the three Lions, my money is on the Colombian Lion.

Angulo may be listed as the third fastest on the team but he is the leader in sprints per 90 minutes, and his 27.3 also ranks first in the entire league among midfielders, and second overall among all qualified players (those who have played at least 400 minutes). Sporting Kansas City’s Capita boasts the fastest top speed for a midfielder at 22.4 miles per hour — slightly faster than Angulo by Sofascore’s measurements.

Orlando City’s central midfielders cover the most ground, but while Eduard Atuesta and Braian Ojeda do so without a high number of sprints, Luis Otávio plays a faster and more aggressive type of game when he is on the field. Fellow central midfielder Patrick Yazbek of Nashville is the distance covered leader for midfielders, averaging a whopping 8.0 miles per 90 minutes.

Justin Ellis is an interesting case, as he seems to be a player who is always in a good position without doing a lot of running all over the field, while moving at a cruising pace. I do not mean to burden him with a comparison to Lionel Messi, but Messi is renowned for his ability to affect games even though he tends to run the least among all players on the field (Opta ranked Messi 618th of 618 players in the World Cup group stage for distance covered). Ellis plays a similar position in a similar style, is showing advanced ability at a young age, and both players have six letters in their first name and five in their last name. I’m just saying.

We’ll close with the forwards:

*per 90 minutes

Duncan McGuire definitely leaves it on the field every time he plays, ranking second on the team with nearly 26 sprints per 90 minutes, well ahead of every other player except for Angulo. Spicer’s top speed being fourth on the team is another reason that it is often better to bring him off the bench than start him, as he can come in and leave it all on the field in 30-ish minutes against players that likely have tired legs. Martín Ojeda is a workhorse, covering nearly the same distance as box-to-box midfielders Atuesta and Braian Ojeda, and Tiago makes the most of his time on the field as well, putting in nearly 23 sprints per 90 minutes — sixth on the team.

The forward group in Orlando ranks well behind the league leaders in the two categories where there were qualified forwards in the league’s top 50, as Seattle’s Osaze De Rosario is the fastest at 22.5 mph and Columbus Crew’s Wessam Abou Ali (pre-ACL injury) is the leader in sprints per 90 minutes with 33.

For those wondering about about new Lion Antoine Griezmann, Sofascore shows him matching the speed of Tiago, the number of sprints of Nolan Miller (25% more sprints per 90 minutes than Ellis may be a more useful comparison), and the total distance covered of Martín Ojeda during La Liga play this past season. I think he is going to slot in quite nicely in Orlando.

Just because a player runs fast, sprints a lot, or covers a lot of ground does not make them a good, or even useful, player. Speed and endurance are coveted in most sports, but those two alone rarely lead to wins and success. They are helpful traits, and Angulo’s speed and endurance help to partially explain why he has always been indispensable for the former and current Orlando City coaching staffs.

The second half of the race season is about to start, and we will take a look at all of these metrics at the end of the year to see if anything changed after the World Cup break. Hopefully the Lions come out of the blocks fast and run circles around their competition.

Vamos Orlando!