Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, MLS's Solid B Students

My man, bringing all the good not great.

Thumbnail History
Orlando City SC’s history follows the redemption variety of the expansion team narrative: eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they signed to avoid that fate on Day 1, if with a fatal flaw – e.g., bringing in (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, trying an updated version of the same thing luring (aging) Portuguese great Nani to Orlando in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because, again, old) before Orlando finally built a roster equal to the work of pushing the team higher. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either: Orlando’s all-time roster (these things vary widely, but that's one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the “real” playoffs for the first time (quarterfinals, baby!), but also reached their first final in the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). The near term could have been written off as Orlando enjoying homefield advantage throughout that tournament, but that argument never went far - it's not like they had fans cheering them on where other teams didn’t (no one did) – and they’ve (broadly) proved themselves a better organization season on season. Even if the Joy Points Scale doesn’t pick it up*, the Lions have qualified for the playoffs, if only as a wild-card team (and on a regrettably bloated invitation list), from 2020 forward. More significantly, Orlando has found 1) a reliable, if limited, consistency and 2) have clawed a little higher in each of the past two post-seasons. I speak to the 2024 season below, and finally start naming names, but they also pushed eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2023. That’s something the, say, 2017 and 2018 teams could hardly imagine. The “Sign Famous Old Guy” model died a righteous and deserved death.

Total Joy Points: 2

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Is Back Runner-Up: 2020
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2024
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2020, 2023
U.S. Open Cup: 2021

Getting Reacquainted with Orlando City SC, an Erratic Rising Power(?)

Plan A, Part II.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

Orlando City SC’s history follows the traditional expansion team narrative of eating shit for several seasons before finding their feet and running with the rest of the league. Ever the ambitious organization, they strived mightily to avoid that fate – e.g., they signed (aging) Brazilian great Kaka on joining MLS in 2015 and, after he moved on, they tried again by signing (aging) Portuguese great Nani in 2019. MLS broadcasters dutifully hyped both players, but Kaka never carried them to the playoffs and Nani would burn one season he could barely afford to (because old) before Orlando provided the supporting cast to get them there. On that last piece, it wasn’t for lack of trying: Orlando’s all-time roster (one of the good ones, btw) amounts to a casting call of the good, the great and the reliable from teams all over MLS, maybe even yours. Unfortunately, few of them lasted long and even fewer of them delivered the goods. Orlando’s turning point came in the Weird Year, aka, 2020, aka, the COVID season, when they not only made the playoffs for the first time, but also reached their first final, the MLS Is Back tournament (won by my Portland Timbers!). Tempting as it is to argue that Orlando enjoyed homefield advantage throughout the tournament, it's not like they had fans cheering them on, because no one did. What’s more, they argued against 20202 as a fluke where it counts, i.e., on the field: Orlando have qualified for the playoffs every season since. They didn’t always hit them in the best form – e.g., see 10th and 13th place finishes in 2021 and 2022, respectively – but they have 1) found (a form of) consistency, and 2) just wrapped up their best-ever regular season in 2023, finishing second overall and pushing eventual champs (and damn good team) Columbus Crew SC to extra-time in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Best Season(s)

Didn’t mention that they won the 2022 U.S. Open Cup in the above, but I’m still calling 2023 Orlando’s best.

Long-Term Tendencies

Nothing that counts as a pattern, really, at least not beyond having good seasons every time they’ve posted good numbers at both ends of the field – i.e., 2020 and 2023 (also, duh). That said, their defense either killed them or fucking killed them over the first four seasons (2015-2018). It has improved since, but stout defenses are hardly their calling card. The attack yo-yos just as much, all of which is a long way of stating that Orlando puts it all together only now and then, but still more recently than they used to.

Orlando City SC 1-2 FC Cincinnati: With a Nod to a Hero of the Salem Witch Trials

Translated to the modern idiom, "eat shit, prudes."

Had you asked me to pick the game FC Cincinnati would win from its first three, I would have picked away to Orlando City SC last. Had you told me they won it courtesy of a Brandon Vazquez brace, I would have asked for a taste of whatever you were on at the time of asking.

Chase the doubts and disbelief away because, I’ll be damned if FC Cincy didn’t roll into central Florida and win its first game of 2022. The game ended 2-1 and, numbers be damned, I thought they looked all right doing it. That’s to say, forget stats like possession and passing accuracy, look beyond Cincy’s thin passing network with its faintness of some far-off constellation, and scroll all the way to the bottom of The Mothership’s stats page to drink in the one number that gives a fair read of the game as it played out, the xG data.

In terms of timeline, Cincy stunned Orlando a mere 13 minutes into the game when Vazquez, a man not renowned for finishing his chances, buried a tidy li’l chip into the right corner of Pedro Gallese’s net. With the wake-up call duly delivered, Orlando proceeded to pile pressure on every available side of Cincinnati’s 18 yard box. The chiseling finally broke through the walls 30 minutes later when Orlando’s Junior Urso charged buck-naked onto a Facundo Torres cross to Cincy’s back-post at which point, I, like everyone who wishes Cincinnati health and happiness, commenced to listening desperately for the first-half whistle. The game, in short, had threatened to get away from Cincinnati.

After watching the way Orlando had a rich tapestry of ways to threaten the side fringes of Cincinnati’s 18-yard box, Cincy’s newbie head coach, Pat Noonan, made some adjustments to the defensive shape. On came Isaac Atanga to take up the right (left?) side of the three in a 4-2-3-1 and back went…I’d say fullback Ian Murphy (who several faulted to Orlando’s goal) more than Alvas Powell, into the four-man defense to better defend said side fringes. And then, somewhere between out of the pale blue sky and before all that had time to settle, Yuya Kubo sent newly-minted winger Dominique Badji into a foot-race against Orlando’s left back Ruan; Badji shouldered him off the ball (and to the ground), turned the ball inside behind Orlando’s defense and, effectively, ricocheted his cross off Vazquez’s head.