Hello, Mane Landers! I hope all is well with you down in Florida. I’ve been busy working at Under Armour and Wrigley Field this past week, but I got a chance to watch some soccer over the weekend. There is plenty to cover today, so let’s get to the links.

Orlando City Transfer Bid for Alejandro Zendejas Rejected

Liga MX side Club America has reportedly rejected a bid from Orlando City for American winger Alejandro “Alex” Zendejas. Talks have stalled as Club America sorts out manager Andre Jardine’s future with the club, as he has been linked to Brazilian side Botafogo. Zendejas has four goals and five assists in 19 matches so far this season for Club America. Orlando City has an open Designated Player spot after the club sold Facundo Torres to Palmeiras last month. The Lions will reportedly prioritize other targets during the winter transfer window.

Antonee Robinson Named U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year

On Sunday, Fulham and United States Men’s National Team defender Antonee Robinson was voted the 2024 U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year. Robinson won 55% of the vote and was also a finalist for the award in 2022. He started 11 matches for the USMNT and had an assist in its 1-0 win against Jamaica in the Concacaf Nations League quarterfinals. Robinson had a solid year at Fulham, recording 10 assists in 37 matches, and won the club’s 2023-2024 Player of the Year award. Robinson beat out AS Monaco forward Folarin Balogun, PSV Eindhoven forward Ricardo Pepi, AC Milan winger Christian Pulisic, and Charlotte FC defender Tim Ream. He’s the first defender to win the award since Oguchi Onyewu won it in 2006.

Keeping Up With the Americans Abroad

We had another busy weekend featuring several Americans in action in Europe. Cristian Pulisic returned to AC Milan for Friday’s Italian Super Cup semifinal matchup against Juventus that also included Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, and Yunus Musah. Pulisic scored the equalizer from the penalty spot to tie the match in the second half, helping AC Milan overcome a 1-0 deficit to defeat Juventus 2-1 and book a spot in the Italian Super Cup final against Inter Milan later today. Gianluca Busio played a full 90 minutes for Venezia as his side fought to secure a 1-1 draw against Empoli in Serie A action. Auston Trusty scored his first goal for Celtic as his side defeated St. Mirren 3-0.

Premier League Weekend Roundup

There are plenty of results in the Premier League to catch you up on from the weekend. Former Lion goalkeeper Brandon Austin made his debut for Tottenham Hotspur. Unfortunately, his side fell to Newcastle United 2-1. Manchester City defeated West Ham United 4-1 to get back-to-back Premier League victories, Bournemouth defeated Everton 1-0, Aston Villa edged past Leicester City 2-1, and Brentford dominated Southampton with a 5-0 win. Crystal Palace and Chelsea battled to a 1-1 draw, while Brighton and Arsenal also played to a 1-1 draw. On Sunday, Raul Jimenez scored twice as Fulham fought back for a 2-2 draw against Ipswich Town. The Liverpool and Manchester United match also ended in a 2-2 draw. We have one Premier League matchup later today, as Wolverhampton faces Nottingham Forest.

Free Kicks

• The Houston Dash have hired former North Carolina Courage assistant coach Fabrice Gautrat as its next head coach. Fabrice is married to Orlando Pride midfielder Morgan Gautrat.
• The San Diego Wave and former Orlando Pride midfielder Emily van Egmond have reached a mutual agreement to part ways. She spent three seasons with the Wave, scoring two goals and adding two assists in 70 matches across all competitions.
• Charlotte FC is reportedly finalizing a deal to re-sign Pep Biel on a loan deal from Olympiakos.
• Toronto FC is reportedly trying to move forward Lorenzo Insigne before the 2025 MLS season begins.

• PSV Eindhoven has reportedly rejected an offer from Club America for American right back Richy Ledezma.
• Major League Soccer’s official match ball for the upcoming 2025 season features the league’s original colors.

That will do it for me today, Mane Landers. Enjoy your Monday, and I’ll see you next time.

Happy first Friday of 2025! I don’t have too many plans for the weekend beyond brunch with friends, so it should be a relaxing couple of days. Before we dive into today’s links, we here at The Mane Land want to give a special shout out to Michael Garvey for signing up for a Homegrown Player-level membership on our Buy Me a Coffee page. By signing up at one of our three levels of support, our readers and podcast listeners can enjoy added benefits in addition to keeping our bills paid so we can continue doing what we do. Let’s get to today’s soccer news!

Philadelphia Union Hire Bradley Carnell

The Philadelphia Union have hired Bradley Carnell as their fourth head coach in franchise history. He has tough shoes to fill in Philadelphia, as Jim Curtin led the Union to plenty of success since joining in 2014 and was named MLS Coach of the Year twice in that span. Carnell coached St. Louis City through a stellar inaugural season in 2023 that included finishing atop the Western Conference standings, but he was fired by the club last summer. We’ll see if Carnell can get the Union back to the postseason after they missed out on the playoffs for the first time since 2017 last season.

Americans in Action This Weekend

While we endure the off-season here in the U.S., there are thankfully plenty of Americans playing abroad for us to root for this weekend. Ligue 1 soccer is back, and defender Mark McKenzie could continue building his case to make the Concacaf Nations League roster when Toulouse plays Lens on Sunday. Johnny Cardoso, who has been excelling amid transfer interest from clubs across Europe, will have a chance to impress when Real Betis takes on Huesca on Saturday in the Copa del Rey. Christian Pulisic may return from injury today when AC Milan faces off against Juventus in an Italian Super Cup semifinal that could also feature Yunus Musah, Weston McKennie, and Tim Weah.

Injuries have dampened what was set to be a fun EFL Championship season for American fans, but Leeds United’s Brenden Aaronson and Burnley’s Luca Koleosho are helping their teams lead the promotion race. We may get to see Antonee Robinson, Tyler Adams, and Chris Richards in the English Premier League as well.

Esmir Bajraktarevic Transferred to Europe

The New England Revolution transferred 19-year-old Esmir Bajraktarević to PSV Eindhoven for a reported fee of up to $6 million. It’s a hefty sum for the Homegrown Player and the Revolution retain a sell-on fee as part of the deal as well. Bajraktarevic has spent the past three seasons with New England’s first team and was 10th on the 2024 MLS 22 Under 22 rankings. He joins a PSV side that sits atop the Eredivisie and has experience developing players coming from America. As for the Revolution, they helped fill the void left by Bajraktarevic’s exit by signing winger Luis Diaz, who previously played for Caleb Porter in Columbus for a few years.

Denver Reportedly Lands NWSL Team

For a reported expansion fee of $110 million, the NWSL has reportedly chosen Denver as the home of its 16th franchise. That fee is more than double the $53 million expansion fee both BOS Nation FC and Bay FC paid to join the league, and it would also be the highest expansion fee in U.S. women’s sports history. The group behind Denver’s bid, which is led by IMA Financial Group CEO Robert Cohen, reportedly submitted its first payment to the league earlier this week. It’s all tough news for Ohio, as both Cleveland and Cincinnati were finalists to become the 16th team in the league.

Free Kicks

• McCall Zerboni is departing NJ/NY Gotham FC after five years with the club to pursue other opportunities.
• The Chicago Fire transferred defender Tobias Salquist to FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark. Salquist only spent one year in Chicago, but the move makes sense considering center back Jack Elliott’s arrival this off-season.
• Inter Milan claimed a spot in the Italian Super Cup final following a 2-0 win over Atalanta, with Denzel Dumfries scoring a brace in the second half.
• Russia won’t take part in the 2026 FIFA World Cup due to the ongoing sanctions from FIFA and UEFA.

That’s all I have for you this time around. Thanks again to Michael for the support! I hope you all have a fantastic Friday.

The 2025 calendar year is upon us, and after an exhaustive recounting of the 2024 season through our Top 10 Moments and our Season in Review articles on every Orlando City and Orlando Pride player, it is time to expand our thoughts to look back not just on the 2024 season, but on the full decade of the 2020s, which is somehow now halfway over. American soccer teams do not operate in the same manner as clubs do in Europe, where a club like Arsenal has both a men’s and women’s soccer team under the same moniker and ownership, but we do have cities, like Orlando, that have men’s and/or women’s teams. What if we looked at American cities to see which cities have produced the best professional soccer results thus far this decade, and looked to see how Orlando compares? What if, indeed. Let’s go.

When I started pulling together all the data for this, I thought it was going to be pretty simple, and I would just use the MLS and NWSL standings and playoff results and then start writing. Easy, like Sunday morning. But then I thought about the U.S. Open Cup, which, in case you forgot (let’s be honest, there is no way you forgot), Orlando City won in 2022. And then I thought that if I was including the U.S. Open Cup, I should also include the Leagues Cup, since every MLS team participated in that competition. And that reminded me of the NWSL x Liga MX Feminil Summer Cup, which then reminded me of other international competitions like the Concacaf Champions Cup, the FIFA Club World Cup, and last but not least, the Concacaf W Champions Cup.

Funny story about that Concacaf W Champions Cup though, it is a brand new competition and it is actually a 2024-2025 tournament, so it will not conclude until later this year. Teams qualified in 2023 to play in a tournament in 2024 that finishes in 2025. Ah FIFA, how I enjoy thee. The Pride will play in the second edition of this cup later this year, by virtue of WINNING ALL THE 2024 NWSL THINGS, but for now I was not able to include the results of the first edition since it still ongoing. My apologies to the two NWSL clubs (Gotham and Portland) still alive in this cup.

Back to all the competitions, here is the official list of competitions that I included (M = men’s competitions and W = women’s competitions)

• M: MLS regular season (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
• M: MLS playoffs (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
• M: Concacaf Champions Cup (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
• M: U.S. Open Cup (2022, 2023, 2024) [2020 and 2021 were not played due to COVID-19]
• M: Leagues Cup (2023, 2024)
• M: FIFA Club World Cup (played every year, Seattle qualified in 2022)
• W: NWSL regular season (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) [2020 was not played due to COVID-19]
• W: NWSL playoffs (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)
• W: NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup (2024)
• W: NWSL Challenge Cup (2020)
• W: NWSL Fall Series (2020)

I used a pretty simple scoring rubric to allocate points to those teams who did well in each competition — six points to the winner, four for second place, three for third place, two for fourth place, and one for fifth place. Teams could share points, and often did, since in many knockout competitions there would not be a third-place game, so I would assign both teams that lost in a semifinal as the third-place winners and recipients of three points.

For the regular seasons in MLS and in the NWSL I used the league table, and so while for playoff seeding the leagues would use tiebreakers to differentiate among teams, I did not, meaning that the 2023 Pride, for example, tied for fifth place in the NWSL regular season and earned one point for the city of Orlando, even though they ended up seventh overall and out of the playoffs once the league tiebreakers were evaluated. MLS and NWSL use different setups, so I thought that was a fair way to do it. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments. Or, and I like this idea a little better, laud me and write thousands dozens of words of praise for my innovative and creative (read: not really that innovative or creative) method of assigning points.

Enough preamble, it is time to see which cities racked up the points in the 2020s based on the performances by the men’s and women’s teams who play there. Without any further ado:

Now, I can already hear the grumbling, “…but Los Angeles and New York City each have three teams, so of course they have the most points.” I mean, yes, but also no. While New York City has had three teams (New York Red Bulls, New York City FC, and Gotham FC/Sky Blue) for all five years of this decade, Los Angeles only added Angel City during the 2022 season. Additionally, of the 27 cities that had at least one team in MLS or NWSL, eight scored five or fewer points during the first five years of this decade, so while it certainly does help to have three teams, having more teams is not guaranteed to generate success.

The city of Chicago is a great example, the Chicago Fire and Chicago Red Stars both played all five seasons in the 2020s but their combined points (13) rank 14th overall, and behind four cities that only had one club each (Philadelphia, Columbus, Miami and Cincinnati).

I would also like to spend a moment to point out that in recent years there has been great debate about who the current “soccer city of the south” is. MLS and FIFA would love you to believe it is Miami, with how far back they bend to help out that club, but the results on the field do not make that case (Miami ranked 11th by my scoring), though certainly Miami has done much better in the last two years. Atlanta won an MLS Cup in 2018, but during this decade they have done very little, earning only four points. Nashville scored seven points, and Charlotte, which entered MLS in 2022, has only earned one point in three seasons. Houston is probably the city that has the best argument, as the Dash and Dynamo have both had some success, but not to the degree of, you were waiting for it, the City Beautiful.

While Orlando City has now had several years of sustained success under Head Coach Óscar Pareja, including the U.S. Open Cup title in 2022, top-five finishes in the league table in 2020 and 2023, and making the Eastern Conference final in 2024, the Pride’s successes were only really in this past season, but they were massive, as the team claimed both of The Mane Land’s No. 2 and No. 1 moments of 2024 by winning the NWSL Shield and NWSL Cup, respectively. Those two titles account for 12 points by my scoring rubric, two-thirds of the total number of points that Orlando City scored over five seasons. A monster season will do that for you, and in this case it is not a competition between the two teams but a symbiotic relationship, with those points going towards Orlando’s overall totals. That total placed them seventh overall and fifth among cities that have both a men’s and women’s team.

In future years, I expect that there will be more competitions for the women’s teams in the United States to enter, as the entertainment world and FIFA are slowly waking up to the idea that there is an audience for elite soccer played by both men and women, and I hope that it is sooner rather than later that we see a similar number of domestic and international club competitions for both Orlando City and the Orlando Pride to qualify for and compete in.

In 2025, we should see Orlando City in MLS, hopefully the MLS playoffs, Leagues Cup, and possibly the U.S. Open Cup. The Lions did not qualify for the 2025 Concacaf Champions Cup or the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup (I would like to point out that Inter Miami did not really qualify for this tournament either, but is in because it has Lionel Messi on the roster). We should see the Pride in the NWSL, hopefully the NWSL playoffs, Concacaf W Champions Cup, and possibly another tournament still to be determined.

There will be ample opportunities for both clubs to add points to my theoretical city rankings for the decade of the 2020s, and possibly even vault up to top-five-city status. I look forward to watching and writing about it whether they do or not, but it will be whole lot more fun if they add some more banners and hardware to the trophy collection.

Vamos Orlando!