Offseason Outlook: Orlando City
/Orlando City haven’t really ever been “good”, per se. They were “entertaining” and “competitive” in their first two years with Kaka. And then, from 2017 to 2019, they were varying shades of bad.
But they’ve never been in existential crisis until now.
For this is an MLS team that, in five years of existence, has yet to qualify for the MLS playoffs - watching as fellow expansion teams NYCFC, LAFC, Atlanta United and Minnesota United have all made the postseason. Orlando City have become the MLS expansion team of least renown. And in 2020, there is a danger that things will become worse.
There is a real danger of this club becoming defined in MLS as irrelevant; even pathetic; among clubs in this league. If they fail to get it together soon, they’ll still continue to exist, but as an afterthought, not only in MLS, but possibly in Florida as well. Because after a half-decade in Major League Soccer as the only place to catch top division footy in the state of Florida, brand-new Inter Miami CF join the league, ready to cast OCSC as Sideshow Bob to Inter Miami’s Krusty the Klown. Miami’s New Boys, AKA Posh Spice United FC, will be grabbing all the headlines with every move they make in the offseason and will likely have the lion’s share of attention through the first months of the regular season. This puts Orlando in the now-familiar role in MLS as the ‘old and forgotten local team’ in Florida, calling to mind the predicament of New York Red Bulls in 2015 and LA Galaxy in 2018.
ROSTER
GOALKEEPERS (2): Brian Rowe, Mason Stajduhar
DEFENDERS (7): Alex De John, Robin Jansson, Kamal Miller, Joao Moutinho, Ruan, Rodrigo Schlegel, Kyle Smith
MIDFIELDERS (10): Jordan Bender, Josue Colman, David Loera, Sebastian Mendez, Chris Mueller, Andres Perea, Nani*, Mauricio Pereyra, Oriol Rosell, Robinho
FORWARDS (4): Tesho Akindele, Dom Dwyer*, Benji Michel, Santiago Patiño
* - Designated Player
Not on 2020 Roster:
Lamine Sane, Will Johnson, Sacha Kljestan, Carlos Ascues, Shane O’Neill, Dillon Powers, Danilo Acosta, Christian Higuita, Greg Ranjitsingh
Areas of depth: Fullback, Winger, Attacking Midfield, Starting Center back
Areas of Need: Striker, Defensive Midfield, Backup Center back, Goalkeeper
For a franchise that’s whipsawed from Jason Kreis to James O’Connor to Oscar Pareja and exchanged Kaka for Nani, it seems over the past few years that the only constant in Orlando is change. The offseason preceding 2020 is no exception, for although OCSC retained a healthy roster of players, some of their departures are pretty significant.
Will Johnson and Sacha Kljestan and Christian Higuita and Lamine Sane are gone. Those seem like really significant departures until you realize that all of those players had effectively lost their starting jobs around midseason in 2019; of the four, only Sane had more than 2000 minutes on the year. In their places are some big question marks - the questions that will determine whether Orlando can become a relevant team in MLS in 2020.
Johnson, Kljestan, and Higuita’s replacements come with expectations of doing better than their predecessors, who all looked like they were a year or more past their primes in 2019. The club is clearly high on 23-year-old Sebastian Mendez, since they apparently preferred keeping him over collecting a $7 million transfer fee for him. Despite recording zero goals and zero assists, Mendez shows some promise: in 20 starts, he notched an 11.64 xB, good enough for 18th amongst MLS center midfielders. That would rank him a little higher than Anibal Godoy and a little lower than Jonathan Osorio - not bad for a first year in the league. Maybe you aren’t impressed. I’m not either, but OCSC believes this guy can be the guy. Mendez is a big question for Orlando, and how he will be used is a big question too - if he will be asked by Pareja to lead the attack, to serve as a pure defensive midfielder, or a bit of both.
Alongside Mendez will be Uruguayan Mauricio Pereyra, a mid-summer addition and Designated Player (a TAM player for 2020) who came on a free from FC Krasnodar. In only six games he generated 3 assists. The really encouraging number, though, is his Key Pass Pct. of 9.6% - 6th amongst all MLS midfielders, and better than players like Pity Martinez and Carles Gil. That said, the sample size is awfully small, so we can remain skeptical that he can do that over 34 games at the ripe age of 30. And if Pereyra turns out to be a bust, Orlando might be in trouble.
That third midfield spot - if there is, in fact, a three-man midfield - is a question mark. The team likely needs a pure defensive midfielder, but the only guy on the roster that suits that role is Uri Rosell, and he’s been underwhelming. There are indications that Orlando’s new boss Oscar Pareja believes in him, as OCSC went against expectations and re-signed him to a new two-year deal at the end of 2019. Nobody else fits the bill, as youngsters Jordan Bender and David Loera are attacking mids and likely to be rotational attacking pieces, and Josue Colman is on loan to Cerro Porteno. Orlando need a pure holding mid that can shield the backline and/or distribute from deep.
The defense was ok for Orlando in 2019: they were 14th out of 24th teams in MLS in Goals Against. Their attack, however, was bad, as they scored just 44 goals, good enough for a near-the-bottom of MLS 20th. Nani had 12 goals to pace the group, and striker and right winger Tesho Akindele had 10, but center striker Dom Dwyer fell way off his usual pace and contributed just 7 goals, significantly underperforming his Expected Goals mark of 9.56. That was down from his xG in 2018 of 10.19, which was slightly down from his 2017 mark of 10.37. In other words, I’m not saying Dom Dwyer is in decline; I’m saying that math is saying that Dom Dwyer is in decline. Dwyer is in the final year of a 3-year deal that paid him $1.5 million in 2019, so if Orlando are going to get an attacking upgrade for Dwyer, who turns 30 this season, they won’t be able to utilize a DP slot to do it, since Dwyer plus Nani and Pereyra fill out all three spots. That’s a problem.
Another problem for Orlando is what formation and system to play. Pareja has been known for a balanced attack that mixes pace, counter-attacking, tight-passing combinations, and inside-outside passing movement. He has some nice attacking pieces like Pereyra, Nani, and the big, pacey Akindele. Nani works best as a left-wing forward. Dwyer was pressed into being a center forward, which clearly didn’t really work for him last year. If OCSC shifted to a 4-2-3-1 Orlando could use one of their good young players at right midfield like Benji Michel, but then they’d likely have to sit Akindele. A 4-4-2 makes good use of Akindele and Dwyer but pushes Nani into a lesser role as a supporting Left Midfielder. Meanwhile, one of the best players on this roster is the pacey right back Ruan, who gets upfield in a blink and can create havoc when he’s got the ball at his feet. He’s best in a 4-2-3-1 or 5-3-2, where he’s got teammates to cover defensively for him if he goes on the warpath. But how do you fashion a system around your right back when the marquee name on the roster is your left-wing? Pareja’s got his work cut out for him.
I feel good about Orlando’s center backs. Swedish center back Robin Janssen joined the team to start 2019 and looked decent. The other spot belonged to the solid-yet-unspectacular Lamine Sane - but he’s gone now. For 2020 the team picked up 22-year-old Argentinian Rodrigo Schlegel on loan from Racing, and hopefully, he pans out well. For depth, there’s Kamal Miller and Alex De John. Miller was a SuperDraft pick out of Syracuse, had a great rookie year in 2019, and looks like he could potentially grow into a regular MLS starter. De John is your standard ‘break glass in case of emergency’ MLS replacement-level defender.
I didn’t have that much faith in starting keeper Brian Rowe until I gave him a second look and noticed that the dude was 7th among MLS goalkeepers with 1500 minutes or more in GA-xGA, a measure of how often a keeper turned away a shot ticketed for goal, with a -0.98. I guess Orlando’s solid at GK. They ditched backup Greg Ranjitsingh; probably because he was costing them an international spot at a place where they really didn’t need to be using one, so they’ll either turn that job over to Mason Stajduhar or grabbing a cheap backup.
In the end, it all comes back to what Oscar Pareja can do with this motley assortment. He’s a fantastic manager with a reputation for developing young players; and he’s won trophies, having delivered FC Dallas both the Supporters Shield and the US Open Cup in 2016. If he can get a little bit of growth out of 22-year-olds Mendez, Michel and Schlegel, develop Orlando homegrowns Bender and Loera and get them their first 800 minutes, add a few key players before the season starts, increase scoring output and develop a clear tactical identity, Orlando will be damn decent in 2020.
The words ‘bad’ and ‘Orlando City’ have long gone together. The words ‘good’ and ‘Oscar Pareja’ have also always been a matched set. So it’s anyone’s guess when you put Oscar Pareja and Orlando together for the first time on the pitch. Whatever the final result, I can assure you that Pareja will not allow his team to be overshadowed by the young upstarts from Miami. Orlando will not become MLS’ forgotten team; at least not this year.