{"id":180623,"date":"2026-03-06T11:27:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/180623\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:27:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:27:33","slug":"5-things-about-orlando-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/180623\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things about Orlando City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this edition of Oppo Research,\u00a0Hudson River Blue\u00a0spoke with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/El_Real_Bean?ref=hudsonriverblue.com\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow\">Ben Miller<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/themaneland.bsky.social?ref=hudsonriverblue.com\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Mane Land<\/a>\u00a0to learn more about Orlando City,\u00a0New York City FC&#8217;s\u00a0opponent in its home opener tomorrow at 2:30 pm ET. Here is your NYCFC vs Orlando City preview.<\/p>\n<p>Orlando City at a Glance<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 League Form: L-L<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Record: 0W, 0D, 2L | 0 points, 11th place<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Scoring Leaders: Tiago Carvalho, Mart\u00edn Ojeda, and Marco Pa\u0161ali\u0107, 1 goal<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Assist Leaders: Iv\u00e1n Angulo, Griffin Dorsey, and Zakaria Taifi, 1 assist<\/p>\n<p>1. Orlando are winless after two games<\/p>\n<p>Hudson River Blue: After losing in the Wild Card match of the MLS playoffs last season, Orlando started 2026 on a rocky note, losing both games so far. What are your biggest takeaways from the defeats? <\/p>\n<p>Ben Miller: For one thing, defensive depth wasn&#8217;t adequately addressed during the offseason. Some of this is due to bad luck, as a move for\u00a0Jagiellonia Bia\u0142ystok center back Dusan Stojinovic fell through due to him suffering an injury in training right as the transfer was reportedly over the line. With Robin Jansson out after having foot surgery, the club has used David Brekalo, 20-year-old Iago, and MLS SuperDraft pick Nolan Miller at center back. <\/p>\n<p>The results have been mixed, and while Iago and, particularly, Miller have both looked promising at times, the back line as a whole has looked vulnerable. Trading for Griffin Dorsey helped, but on the opposite side, an injury suffered to Adrian Mar\u00edn meant Homegrown Player Tahir Reid-Brown made his first team debut in the loss to Inter Miami. He played well enough, but that&#8217;s just not an ideal scenario at all. Turnovers in bad areas have been a problem, too, and the team just generally looks like one that&#8217;s been using a lot of new pieces.<\/p>\n<p>2. Orlando&#8217;s defense is currently makeshift<\/p>\n<p>HRB: Orlando\u2019s defense has taken a hit, losing star right back Alex Freeman to Villareal and center back Rodrigo Schlegel to Atlas. To make matters worse, center back Robin Jansson is out with a broken foot. The club did bring in defensive reinforcements \u2014 Griffin Dorsey and Iago Teodoro \u2014 but conceding six goals in two games is never a positive. Do you have faith in the backline to improve as the season progresses?<\/p>\n<p>BM: I do think things will improve as the season goes on. Dorsey looked much more comfortable on defense in the Miami game after having more training sessions under his belt, while Miller, Iago, and Reid-Brown all looked reasonably good, too, despite the ugly scoreline. Whenever Jansson gets back, it should certainly help things, and I do think those three young players have a lot of talent and potential. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, that doesn&#8217;t always translate into sustained good performances, but you also can&#8217;t discount the value of getting live minutes against quality opposition. The team just can&#8217;t give itself too big of a hole to dig out of later on in the year.<\/p>\n<p>                This post is for paying subscribers only<br \/>\n            <a class=\"gh-btn\" data-portal=\"signup\" href=\"#\/portal\/signup\" style=\"color:#2c2c59\">Subscribe now<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Already have an account? <a data-portal=\"signin\" href=\"#\/portal\/signin\">Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this edition of Oppo Research,\u00a0Hudson River Blue\u00a0spoke with\u00a0Ben Miller\u00a0of\u00a0The Mane Land\u00a0to learn more about Orlando City,\u00a0New York&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":{"0":"post-180623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-orlando","9":"tag-orlando-headlines","10":"tag-orlando-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}