2020 Season Preview: Orlando City SC
/Point-above-replacement values are explained here. Non-penalty expected goals + expected assists are explained here, and you can see all players’ xG+xA in our interactive expected goals tables. Touch percent is the percentage of total team touches by that player while he is on the field, which can be found in our interactive expected passing tables.
By Mark Asher Goodman (@soccer_rabbi)
So I wrote the preview for Colorado, and I’m like ‘they’re solid, and they made upgrades - mid-table or better’. I wrote the preview for LAFC, and I’m like ‘they were the best team in MLS in 2019 - they’ll stay at or near the top of the league for sure.’
Orlando City? I don’t even begin to know, man. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of cow manure.
Orlando City were pretty bad in 2019; second-to-last in the East only because FC Cincinnati were horrendously terrible. Cincinnati was minus 44 goals in goal differential terrible. I think the kindest thing Jeff Bull wrote in his season preview was that they ‘dialed back the defensive incompetence’ down the stretch. “Orlando City: there was a team worse than us!” is a pretty awful slogan, but that’s where the Lions are to start the new year.
It’d be easy to pencil them in for 2020 as likely below the playoff line - engaged in rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship and nothing more, but for two things. One, they made a lot of personnel changes which might work out. And two, they brought in Oscar Pareja to be their manager. Pareja worked wonders at FC Dallas, and did great things with the Colorado Rapids before that. I firmly believe that he could have built his previous team, Xolos de Tijuana, into a contender if not for the fact that the notoriously fickle Club Tijuana ownership fired him after just one year.
This year is likely to be a bumpy transitional rebuilding year for Orlando, following five years of bumpy transitional years: jumping from USL to MLS; building around Kaka; supporting an aging Kaka; and finally moving on after Kaka. They probably won’t get it right this season, but if they show some improvement this year, build a tactical identity and some unit cohesion, there might be a future for Orlando City that includes, at long last, a first-ever trip to the MLS playoffs.
2019 Year in Review
Not the worst in the East, but only because FC Cincinnati exists, is really not something you want on your resume. 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.
Orlando’s Team Expected Goals For (xGF) of 40.8 was pretty mediocre at 17th in the league. They were pretty average for the league in all other goal-scoring metrics: 15th in goals from open play and 10th in set piece goals. One area that will require attention is getting up shots altogether, as the Lions were 22nd in the league in shots per game with 11.4. They were 3rd in the league in percentage of shots inside the six yard box, which means the team in 2019 was coached (or decided on their own) to shoot predominantly from close in. Pareja will need to coax this team to do two things this year that they didn’t do in 2019 - get into the final third and into shooting position more frequently, and shoot the rock more often.
James O’Connor, previously a very successful coach with Louisville City in USL, took the helm from Jason Kreis in 2018 and dragged a limp and terrible OCSC to a 2-12-3 record that year. The 2019 record of 9-15-10 was better, but not good enough for owner Flávio Augusto da Silva. Da Silva has yet to demonstrate patience with his coaches, which might be a challenge for Oscar Pareja, who has a history of developing and bringing up young players, regardless of whether they produce immediate results. Will that be a point of contention in Orlando in the coming years?
Offseason Changes
The old, clunky, and underperforming pieces for OCSC are gone. But, unlike a lot of MLS teams that want to bring in a few proven in-league players to shore up the lineup, Orlando went abroad for almost all of their replacements for 2020.
Orlando’s midfield of Sacha Kljestan, Will Johnson, and Cristian Higuita are all gone. Midseason addition Mauricio Pereyra, from FC Krasnodar, will be the fulcrum of the team in 2020, backed by young midfielder Sebastian Mendez and new-but-not-young mid Junior Urso. Mendez, Johnson, Higuita, Kljestan and Uri Rosell all awkwardly shared time in central midfield for O’Connor in 2019, but with three of those five gone, the job is the 22-year-old Mendez’ to own.
Homegrown signings Jordan Bender and David Loera are attacking mids and likely to be rotational attacking pieces that will spell Pereyra and the wide midfielders from time to time.
Alongside Mendez in the double pivot 4-2-3-1 will be Junior Urso, a 30-year-old Brazilian mid that comes over from Corinthians in Brazilian Série A. Uri Rosell and SuperDraft signee Joey DeZart will rotate in at both spots.
Lamine Sane’s spot at center back will be fought over by a Brazilian (shock!) and an Argentinian, as the club went out and got Antonio Carlos from Palmieras and Rodrigo Schlegel from Racing Club. This move is another one of those “Could be great! Could be disaster!” moves that makes pegging the Purple Lions’ ending point for this season so uncertain. The Brazilian league’s reputation over the past decade has fallen: the good players are generally already been picked over by the big European clubs by the time those kids are 18 years old, and anyone Carlos’ age (26 years old) is generally thought of as having been ‘not good enough’. You can roughly say the same thing about Schlegel in Argentina, who in three seasons with Racing made just 6 total appearances.
But maybe Orlando’s defensive liabilities were due to a lack of midfield pressure and shape; maybe, with two defensive midfielders in front of them, the whole backline plays like a symphonic quartet. Maybe.
OCSC also added Pedro Gallese as a likely starting GK, supplanting the maybe-above-average Brian Rowe. Gallese was the property of Liga MX’ worst club, Veracruz, who loaned him for 2019 to a team in Peru. He’s also been sharing time at the international level as Peru’s starting netminder. He’s been touted by somebody as having ‘the potential to be the best goalkeeper in MLS’. To me, he’s a big open question mark hanging over this team - just like the guys playing at d-mid, center back, and striker. Could be massive upgrades. Could be huge disappointments. Or anywhere in between.
IN
SuperDraft: Joey DeZart (MF)
Transfer: David Loera (MF), Jordan Bender (MF), Junior Urso (MF), Pedro Gallese (GK)
Loan: Andres Perea (MF), Rodrigo Schlegel (CB), Antonio Carlos (CB)
OUT
Carlos Ascues (CB), Adam Grinwis (GK), Cristian Higuita (MF), Will Johnson (MF) Sacha Kljestan (MF) Cam Lindley (MF), Shane O’Neill (CB), Dillon Powers (MF), Greg Ranjitsingh (GK), Lamine Sane’ (CB)
Tactical Outlook
Pareja will likely play a 4-2-3-1. In his best years with FC Dallas, his team was maybe one of the best teams I’ve ever seen in playing in the middle and moving the ball around and above the 18-yard box in order to create open chances. Mauro Rosales, Mauro Diaz, Miguel Barrios and Maxi Urruti were absolutely ruthless at executing Pareja’s famous dictum of ‘Busca La Forma’ - find the way. They passed and moved and misdirected in the middle third and above the box as well as any team. And in 2015 and 2016 they had Fabian Castillo tearing through teams on the wing, too.
Pareja has a very different team with Orlando - he’s got an aging wide midfielder who can shoot the lights out, some young wingers that can do some things, big questions at striker, and a totally unproven central midfield. He probably cannot overlay the FC Dallas roadmap on top of Orlando City. He will need to ‘busca una forma nueva’ - find a new way.
Goalkeeper
Gallese, the 29 year-old, is clearly talented and highly regarded. But also his last pro team, Veracruz, chose to lend him out to Alianza Lima in Peru. Lima was a good team, but in a low quality league. Veracruz was a low quality team in a good league. Is Gallese really an excellent player stuck who’s been below the radar? Again - big unknown.
Pushing him to be the #1 GK will be Brian Rowe, who, despite looking like a high school freshman, is actually an MLS journeyman with 98 starts with three different teams. I didn’t have that much faith in 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 think it’s interesting that Orlando went out and upgraded their keeper - in my humble opinion, Rowe’s been a bright spot for Orlando.
Defense
Across the back, it’ll be Joao Moutinho, Robin Jansson, Schlegel or Antonio, and Ruan. Moutinho and Jansson are pretty ok, and Ruan can absolutely fly - he’s one of my favorite fullbacks in the entire league to watch with the ball at his foot. More on that in a second.
One side question is whether 2019 SuperDraft pick Kamal Miller, who played 1350 minutes last year, can nose into the conversation. Did he see a lot of time because Orlando was so dire in 2019 and they needed him? Or is he a legit MLS-level centerback?
The 4-2-3-1 will give this defense the cover they need to hold down their goals-against numbers in 2020. Just going from 52 goals against to 45 goals against for this year would likely result in a significant improvement in finishing position.
An early challenge that Oscar Pareja is whether to rein in Ruan - to get him to do a little more defending and a little less swashbuckling high up the field - or whether to let him do his thing and use the defensive midfield to rotate over and cover the areas he’s not in. It might be fun to watch, but it’s also something of a problem for OCSC. Defensively, both full back spots are ‘areas of concern’ for the club. While Ruan is in the 97th percentile amongst MLS fullbacks for Expected Assists, he’s also below the 10th percentile in defensive actions.
On the other side of the field, Joao Moutinho was decidedly average in almost every way for a fullback, hovering around the 50th percentile for xG, xA, Progressive Passes, Dribbles, Ball Security, and Defensive Actions. To become more than a mid-table-or-below MLS team, Orlando needs Moutinho to become more than a middlin’-to-mediocre fullback. Pareja is the kind of manager that can ‘coach up’ a young player, but Orlando might need to consider upgrades if that doesn’t happen.
Midfield
We’ve briefly discussed Mendez, Urso, and Rosell at defensive midfield, and how it’s a question mark. Pereyra, the creative midfielder, is also a bit of a question mark, seeing as he only played 422 minutes last year after joining the club in August, and comes from Krasnodar in the Russian Premier League, a league with variable levels of talent.
On the wings, this team looks fantastic.
You’ve got Nani on the left and Chris Mueller or Benji Michel on the right. Nani led the team in goals with 12 and Key Passes with 2.3 per game. If Pareja does go with a 4-2-3-1 instead of a 4-3-3, I expect it to not affect Nani too much - you don’t tell the best attacking player on your team, a guy who is used to combining with Cristiano Ronaldo on the Portuguese National team, to ‘hang back’ and ‘be a team player’. Nani will play well up the field, and every one else will adjust.
On the right side you’ve got exciting 22-year-old Homegrown Benji Michel and exciting 23-year-old Chris Mueller, who together produced 10 goals and 5 assists in 2019. Columbian loanee Andres Perea is also going to get some games, probably as a sub - he’s just 19 years old. Mueller does a little of everything, while Michel is kinda one dimensional - receive it deep, dribble 15 yards, shoot and score.
Yeesh, those passing graphs are bad. Somebody teach this kid how to pass.
Forwards
Tesho Akindele hit a career high in minutes and goals in 2019 under James O’Connor, partially because he was playing well, and partially because Dom Dwyer was hurt and/or a little disappointing. The Colorado School of Mines grad is in his ascendance, while Dwyer is on the decline. Akindele will be reunited with his former coach at FC Dallas, Pareja, which could be good because they’ll have familiarity, but could be bad because Pareja used Akindele almost exclusively as a sub in 2018, putting both Maxi Urruti and Dominique Badji ahead of him on the depth chart. Will Oscar bench his old friend, or give him the keys to the offense?
| Year | Goals | xG | xA | | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2 | 1.7 | 0.3 | 1.3 | 3.0 | 50 | |
| 2019 | 10 | 7.4 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 9.4 | 26 | |
| 2018 | 13 | 10.2 | 2.8 | 0.8 | 11.0 | 18 | |
| 2019 | 7 | 9.6 | -2.6 | 2.2 | 11.8 | 15 |
Meanwhile, Dom Dwyer fell way off his usual goal scoring pace in 2019 and contributed just seven 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. He does pass better than Akindele though.
Looking at the ranks on the chart above, both are modestly productive, but neither is lighting the world on fire, and Orlando probably needs a bit more at this position - more expected goals, better finishing, more distribution and more combination. However, Orlando has used all of their DP slots on Nani, Pereyra, and Dwyer. If Orlando wants to shore up the Center Forward position, they’ll have to do it with GAM.
There’s an outside chance that Orlando has the solution in house. Santiago Patino was the club’s 2019 SuperDraft pick, and produced two goals and 2.9 xG in just 382 minutes. The club picked a striker in the first round of the 2020 draft as well, getting prized University of Virginia big man Daryl Dike, who reminds me of young Emil Heskey - a strong, physical striker that can do it in the air but has deceptive movement and speed. Heskey scored 130 goals over his 22-year footballing career and played more than 600 games.
Orlando’s strikers underperformed in 2019 and took too few shots. This area needs to improve in 2020 - and making the playoffs probably depends on it.
2020 Season Outlook
With all the pace on the wings and with Nani doing Nani things -
- that’s him winning the skills challenge at the buzzer by doinking the crossbar at the All-Star game -
Orlando are definitely fun to watch. But there are so many questions, and so many positions at which they’re relying on players that we know nothing about, and there will be adjustments for everyone in Pareja’s first year.
Finishing 9th or above in the Eastern Conference, re-establishing their identity under Pareja, making a solid Open Cup run, and beating Inter Miami in the first MLS Florida Derby since the Fusion and Mutiny were folded in 2001 would all expected goals. A shock first-ever playoff appearance would tickle the purple team pink, but it’s more likely they get there in 2021 than this year.