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U.S. Open Cup: Orlando City vs. Charleston Battery – Final Score 4-4 as Lions Advance on Penalties (8-7)

The Battery gave the Lions everything they could handle but a Carlos Rivas PK hat trick in regulation and heroic goalkeeping from Earl Edwards Jr. lifts Orlando City into Round 5 of the U.S. Open Cup.

Published

9 years ago

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Nick Leyva, The Mane Land

Danny Mwanga’s penalty kick rolled softly down the middle and into the net, lifting Orlando City past the Charleston Battery and into the fifth round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, after one of the craziest soccer games ever.

I mean, how do I even begin to explain this game? Eight goals were scored after a scoreless first half. A player got a hat trick on penalties alone — and then missed one when the game went to PKs. Orlando City had a two-goal lead in extra time and still had to go to spot kicks. The Lions and Charleston Battery went 10 men deep in the penalty shootout.

This game was an idiot, and you’d never believe anything that follows below if you didn’t see it. And you shouldn’t. No one should ever believe the story of this match.

Still, it was the Lions coming from behind twice, blowing a two-goal lead, and then outlasting the Battery in sudden-death penalties in the sweltering heat at Charleston’s Blackbaud Stadium after regular time ended knotted at four.

Earl Edwards Jr. was the star of the spot kicks, denying three Battery strikes, the last a diving two-handed stop of defender Taylor Mueller to set up Mwanga’s winning strike. Edwards also stopped midfielders Dante Marini and Zach Prince just to keep the Lions in it, after Odisnel Cooper stopped Carlos Rivas and Lewis Neal early.

Charleston fought hard, and for long stretches of the game was the better side, against a team of mostly reserves sent out by Adrian Heath for this fixture. Their collective rust showed in a lack of chemistry and ideas in the final third, along with some cheap turnovers.

The only regulars Heath selected in his starting lineup were left back Luke Boden, center back Seb Hines (who hasn’t been starting the last few games), right wing Eric Avila and midfielder Neal, who played in the No. 10 role normally held down by Kaká. Speedy sub Rivas started and played more like a striker than a midfielder, and forward Mwanga served in more of a supporting midfield role.

Tyler Turner got the nod at right back next to rookie Conor Donovan, whose only previous playing time for the Lions was in a friendly. Likewise for goalkeeper Edwards. Harrison Heath played alongside Amobi Okugo at defensive midfield.

The first half was a slow-paced, ugly affair with few chances for either team. Orlando City played like a collection of guys not used to playing together, because that’s what the starting lineup was, basically. The Lions moved slowly, passed the ball slowly, and the only speed on the pitch consisted of Rivas’ occasional forays forward on long balls.

Charleston fashioned the best scoring chances of the first half. Donovan blocked a Maikel Chang shot inside the box eight minutes in. Edwards was forced into a big save on a Dane Kelly smash at the 36-minute mark, and Avila cleared a Ricky Garbanzo header off the line in stoppage time on a scramble off a late corner kick.

Rivas provided the only consistent threat in the opening 45 minutes for Orlando, taking a couple shots from distance and getting to the end line and looking for Mwanga, only to see his pass deflected by keeper Cooper.

Hines had the best Orlando City chance, off a corner kick, but Cooper was able to get to the defender’s header.

Things picked up after the break, with Charleston moving quickly and aggressively, taking the game to Orlando and creating chances and getting lots of corner kicks (10 in all). At the 58-minute mark, the Battery drew first blood on the team’s fourth corner of the half, as Jarad van Shaik got free of Boden and headed the cross past Edwards.

Five minutes later, the Lions drew level, with Neal splitting two defenders and slamming a header past Cooper, off a beautiful long cross by Turner. The defender took an apparent knock to the leg on the play and was replaced by Rafael Ramos, who would factor into the scoring later.

Following Orlando’s goal, Charleston again became the more dangerous side and regained the lead with Kelly getting onto a long ball, sprinting past Donovan and slotting home past Edwards into the far side in the 67th minute. The goal spurred on the Battery’s confidence, and they were by far the better side for about the next 10 minutes.

That’s when a moment of individual brilliance by Ramos led to a tying PK. Ramos sliced down the right, outside of one defender and inside another and into the box, where he was bundled over by Mueller. Rivas stepped up and drilled the spot kick to tie the game in the 76th minute, beating Cooper with a hard shot into the lower left corner. It was only the beginning for Rivas, who finally opened his Orlando City account.

Orlando had a couple of half chances down the stretch, but the game remained even after 90 minutes, plus four more minutes of stoppage time.

Just three minutes into the extra session, Rivas was sent in alone on Cooper, took a touch to blow by the Charleston keeper and was taken down. The Colombian took his second penalty and calmly blasted it into the upper 90 on the right side, exactly the opposite of where his first one went.

Late in the first 15-minute half of extra time, second-half sub Pedro Ribeiro got a nearly identical clean break and his deft touch forced yet another takedown by Cooper, who somehow managed to not get sent off as the last defender on two separate occasions. In fact, Cooper wasn’t even booked for either one. Rivas again went low to the left, completed his PK hat trick, and pushed Orlando’s lead to 4-2.

But the Battery weren’t done. As the first half of extra time was in its dying moments, Harrison Heath gave Justin Portillo about eight yards of space above the penalty area and the Battery midfielder blasted an unstoppable rocket from 25 yards out into the upper 90 to Edwards’ right in the 117th minute. It was a huge goal that boosted Charleston headed into the final 15 minutes.

The Lions couldn’t get off their back foot down the stretch. They defended a number of Charleston forays into the box and Ribeiro was too slow in releasing Rivas for a potential kill shot twice, when disaster struck off what seemed like the billionth Battery corner of the night. Okugo went to ground in a header attempt of a low, sinking ball and handled it in the box. Portillo stepped up and scored from the spot to tie it at 4-4 with just four minutes to play.

Orlando tried a desperate final attack but the whistle blew with absolutely no stoppage time for some reason. The teams went to PKs that seemed would go on forever.

Edwards was easily the man of the match with his shootout heroics, but he also had several key saves throughout the game to keep Orlando in it, including a one-handed stab to deny Kelly just three minutes before Okugo’s blunder in the box.

The Lions will now have to regroup and head to Montreal, where they’ll face the Impact on Saturday night. Most of the regulars should be nice and fresh, but Boden and Neal went the full 120 minutes, Ramos and St. Ledger were called into action as subs, and Avila played an hour before coming off for Ribeiro in the second half. Ribeiro himself played an hour.

The Lions will learn their Round 5 opponents tomorrow with the U.S. Open Cup fifth round draw. The match will take place June 30 or July 1.

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Orlando City

How Orlando City’s Offense Stacks Up Against What Atlanta Does Defensively

How Orlando City has performed against teams playing with three or four defenders, and how that may influence the playoff game against Atlanta United.

Published

13 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

The most famous quote about real estate is that “there are three things that matter in property: location, location, location.” Soccer coaches also like to think in threes, especially when it comes to points, but for a soccer coach, the three things that matter might be the rhyming triplet “formation, formation, formation,” as that is where they will have the biggest influence on every game that their team plays.

Throughout his tenure as head coach, Óscar Pareja has preferred to use a 4-2-3-1 as his formation (fbref.com’s lineup data shows that the Lions primarily played a 4-2-3-1 in 65% of their MLS matches this season, and 79% of their MLS matches during the last three seasons). The Lions have lined up in a 4-2-3-1 during each of their last 14 games, and my confidence level is strong to quite strong (can you believe Meet the Parents came out 24 years ago?) that they will do so once again on Sunday when they host Atlanta United.

Atlanta United also prefers to deploy a 4-2-3-1, but was less consistent than Orlando City this season during MLS play, as evidenced by the chart below that shows how Atlanta lined up this season:

The purpose of this image is a table to show how Atlanta United lined up in 2024 (mostly in a 4-2-3-1 but also in one of six other formations).

I am relying on the coders at Opta for their evaluation of the formation, as I do not watch a lot of Atlanta United matches (sounds terrible), but though Atlanta primarily played with four defenders in more than two-thirds of its matches, during the last two matches it played a 3-5-2, the only two matches all season in which interim coach Rob Valentino rolled out that formation. I suspect that the formation change was related partially to playing Inter Miami and trying to defend the Herons’ dynamic offense and partially due to an injury suffered by defender Brooks Lennon in the first game of that series. So, while Atlanta primarily played four in the back for most of the season, there is a good chance it will roll with what worked against Florida’s second-best MLS team when it plays Florida’s best MLS team this weekend.

Now, if you want to read more about Atlanta, then you can read our match preview, which will drop Sunday morning, but I want to look at how Orlando did against teams that play similar styles. Looking only at MLS games, the table below shows how Orlando City performed against different back line structures this season (the left side is how the Lions’ opponents lined up, the right side is how Orlando City performed against opponents in those formations):

Table embedded as an image showing Orlando City doing best in goal differential in 12 games against three-man back lines, second best against four-man back lines, and having played once against a five-man back line (a 1-1 draw).

Orlando City earned slightly more points per game — the stat that matters most — against teams that played four in the back, but the Lions had a better average goal differential when teams played three in the back. Atlanta will likely deploy one of those two formations. In both games against Orlando City this season, Sunday’s visitors went with a 4-2-3-1, but as mentioned earlier, they used three in the back in each of their last two matches, so it really could be either.

Soccer is not like baseball, where players primarily stay in the same spot throughout the game, so some of these stats have to be taken with a grain of salt, as players are not always rigidly in the same position throughout a match. A team may also primarily play with four in the back but switch to three when chasing a game, or five when trying to protect against a late goal.

That said, using the data around Orlando City’s opponents’ general formations, here are the attacking groups who played the most frequently against four defenders during the 24 MLS games where Opta coded the opponents as using a defensive group of four:

Table embedded as an image showing the most frequently used lineups against teams who deploy four defenders. The most frequently used attacking group has a plus eight goal differential for the season.

It is a little ominous that the main starting group, shown in row one, has played 666 MLS minutes against back lines of four this season, but do I like that green goal differential of +8 in those minutes, which is a strong +1.08 per 90 minutes. I like that goal differential more than I like all the things that Cardi B, Bad Bunny, and J Balvin like on their song that is creatively named “I Like It.” Coincidentally, when people ask me what I think about that song, I say, “I like it.” I am very creative.

If we look at the lineups that Orlando City has used against back lines of three defenders then there are some pretty major differences in personnel groupings, but it must be noted that more than half of the games against teams playing three in the back came early in the season, when Ramiro Enrique was unavailable to play. Enrique, my presumed starter at striker, has played fewer than three games’ worth of minutes (265 total) against back lines of three this season, and only 28 minutes with the main starting group, which ranks 13th among all the attacking lineups for minutes played against three defenders. That group scored one goal in their 28 minutes together though, for a robust 3.21 goals-scored-per-90-minutes average.

While the team as a whole has been successful against three-man back lines, I do not expect any of the lineups shown in the table below to play more than a few minutes together this weekend, though the first row and the last row are strong groups and had a lot of success.

Table embedded as an image showing the most frequently used lineups against teams who deploy three defenders. The most frequently used attacking group has a plus three goal differential for the season.

I am sure that all week long the Orlando City coaching staff has been going back and forth on whether it is more likely that Atlanta reverts to its most commonly used four in the back, or if the Five Stripes try for three wins in a row with three in the back. I would prefer that Atlanta plays with zero defenders and goalkeeper Brad Guzan wears a blindfold, but I think that is unlikely to be the case.

Even though Atlanta defeated Orlando City both times while in a 4-2-3-1, based on available personnel and recent results, I believe that the team will come out in a 3-5-2 in Inter&Co Stadium in the conference semifinal. Good things come in threes, and Orlando City’s best offensive production this season has been against three defenders, so I am going to be hoping that this continues, and in the third game against Atlanta the Lions grab the three points. Three’s company!

Well, it is a playoff game, so there are no actual points at stake, but you know what I meant.

Vamos Orlando!

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Orlando City vs. Atlanta United: Three Keys to Victory

What do the Lions need to do to get a victory to advance to the Eastern Conference final?

Published

15 hours ago

on

November 21, 2024

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Orlando City continues its playoff journey against Atlanta United Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium. The Lions are coming off an emotional penalty shootout win over Charlotte FC in their best-of-three, first-round series. Likewise, Atlanta United stunned everyone by taking out Inter Miami to advance in its own best-of-three matchup. Now, the rivals meet in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

What does Orlando City need to do to get past Atlanta United to advance to the Easter Conference final?

Beat Guzan

Brad Guzan made 16 saves over Atlanta’s three matches against Inter Miami, including seven in the 3-2 win on the road in Game 3. The 40-year-old former USMNT keeper is in excellent form and is a big reason why the Five Stripes are facing Orlando City. Converting chances against Guzan will be crucial to earning a result. There have been times this season when the Lions have struggled to convert their chances. Despite that, the team has done enough offensively to get to this point. Facundo Torres, Martin Ojeda, Duncan McGuire, Ramiro Enrique, and others have contributed and will need to do so this weekend.

Cartagena is Essential

Orlando City lost twice to Atlanta United during the regular season. What is interesting, and perhaps relevant, is that Wilder Cartagena was out for both of those matches. Cartagena was shown a straight red in the match against Minnesota United prior to the first match against Atlanta way back in March. He was shown a yellow card in the match against FC Cincinnati and then served a yellow card accumulation suspension for the final match of the season against Atlanta. Fortunately for Orlando City, Cartagena will be available for the match this weekend. I’ve mentioned before the importance of Cartagena to Orlando City’s success. When he and Cesar Araujo are on the field together, the defense is simply better. Cartagena is frankly one of the better defensive midfielders in MLS. Atlanta scored five goals in the series against Miami, and Orlando will need to keep the visitors from having that kind of offensive success.

Overcome the Past

That darn international break in the middle of the playoffs is something I don’t love. More precisely, I don’t like it because Orlando City often struggles after a break. It would have been nice if Orlando City could have ridden the momentum from the penalty kick victory into the Atlanta match, but that’s not to be. Now is the time for Orlando City to break some bad habits, including turning around its historical lack of success against Atlanta, and tendency to struggle in the first match after a break. Oscar Pareja needs to have the players in the right frame of mind, and the players need to execute the plan. A full house of supporters can also make a difference. Given it’s a Sunday afternoon match, there’s no reason not to pack the house.

That is what I will be looking for Sunday afternoon. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Vamos Orlando!

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Lion Links: 11/21/24

Marta’s chance to shine in NWSL Championship, NWSL and MLS award winners announced, 2025 SheBelieves Cup details, and more.

Published

19 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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Image courtesy of Orlando Pride

How’s it going, Mane Landers? I’ve been spending most of this week plotting out some holiday shopping to make things a little less stressful for myself over the next few weeks. A big weekend filled with Orlando soccer awaits us, so make sure to get any errands or obligations out of the way sooner rather than later. Let’s dive into today’s links!

Spotlight Falls On Marta in NWSL Championship

There are plenty of storylines heading into Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit, including Marta’s opportunity to put an exclamation point on what has been an excellent season for the Pride. Orlando has been enjoying the fruits of its labor this season after a rebuild over the past few years that’s included plenty of change in the City Beautiful. Marta has been a constant, however, enduring some difficult seasons since joining the Pride and adapting her game She’s scored in both of the Pride’s playoff games so far and has a chance to author a storybook ending on Saturday.

Ann-Katrin Berger Named NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year

NJ/NY Gotham FC goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger was named 2024 NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year, beating out the Pride’s Anna Moorhouse and Utah Royals FC’s Mandy Haught for the honor. It was Berger’s first year in the NWSL and she’s the first European player to win the award. She only conceded 16 goals across her 22 matches for Gotham this season and was a key reason behind her team’s success. I’m not too surprised that Moorhouse did not win, considering how solid the Pride’s defense was as a whole, but this won’t take anything away from a record-breaking season for her.

Wilfried Nancy Named MLS Coach of the Year

Columbus Crew Head Coach Wilfried Nancy was voted 2024 MLS Coach of the Year after a historic season in which the Crew set club records in both points and goals. The Crew also won the Leagues Cup this summer and their 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup campaign included advancing past Tigres and Monterrey en route to the final. This is Nancy’s first time being named Coach of the Year and he has been a finalist for the award every year since 2021. The Frenchman received 40.02% of the vote, winning the award over Inter Miami’s Gerardo Martino and Colorado Rapids Head Coach Chris Armas.

2025 SheBelieves Cup Details Unveiled

The 10th annual SheBelieves Cup will take place next year and the tournament will return to its usual format where each of the four teams plays each other once. The United States Women’s National Team will host Japan, Colombia, and Australia in February in what should be an exciting tournament. The U.S. will take on Colombia on Feb. 20 in Houston before facing Australia in Arizona on Feb. 23 and finishing the tournament on Feb. 26 against Japan at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego. These games will also be the first domestic games of 2025 for the USWNT as it prepares to qualify for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.

Eric Quill Named FC Dallas Head Coach

FC Dallas announced that Eric Quill will become the team’s next head coach. Quill joins Dallas after a great year with New Mexico United that included trips to the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinals and USL Championship Western Conference semifinals. It’s also a reunion of sorts for Quill, as he previously coached North Texas SC and was named USL League One Coach of the Year with the club in 2019. Dallas missed out on the playoffs this season, with Peter Luccin coaching the team on an interim basis after the firing of Nico Estevez in June.

Free Kicks

  • District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser challenged Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to a bet involving this weekend’s NWSL Championship, with embarrassing lightshows on the line.

That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and rest of your week!

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