Orlando City (2-6-1, 7 points) finally found the offensive breakout the team has been searching for all season.\u00a0 The Lions routed Charlotte FC (4-3-2, 14 points) 4-1 in front of an announced crowd of 16,089 at Inter&Co Stadium on Wednesday night, a massive relief for a struggling squad.<\/p>\n
Ignacio Gomez finished the job late in the second half, highlighting the importance of youth for this Orlando City squad. The short-term call-up from Orlando City B needed just two MLS appearances to find the back of the net, taking a feed from Ivan Angulo in the 87th minute and burying his first career goal to seal the victory, just the second of the season for Orlando City.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce they join the first team for us, they\u2019re professional players, and this is what they are,\u201d interim head coach Mart\u00edn Perelman said. \u201cThey understand that, and they perform, and if they have a chance, they take it. When we win it\u2019s easier to see it better, but they have been helping the team a lot through the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Gomez\u2019s late strike, Justin Ellis grabbed a milestone of his own in the 49th minute. Ellis laid a ball off to Mart\u00edn Ojeda, who hammered it into the top right corner to break a 1-1 tie and earn Ellis his first career MLS assist.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a special moment for me. I think that play kind of\u00a0sums my play style up,\u201d\u00a0Ellis said. \u201cI\u2019m a striker by trade, but I like to get my teammates involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ojeda gave the Lions some actual breathing room in the 61st minute. He curled a free kick past the Charlotte wall for his fourth goal of the season to push the lead to 3-1.<\/p>\n
Those second-half goals blew open a game that went back and forth early on. Orlando struck first in the 21st minute off a messy sequence in the box. Zakaria Taifi whiffed on a deflected cross from Tiago, but Luis Otavio trailed the play and smashed the loose ball into the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was improvisation. It was the way the ball came,\u201d Otavio said. \u201cInstincts took over, and I hope to do that a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlotte answered in the 33rd minute. Pep Biel sent a free kick to the back post, and Morrison Agyemang climbed over Braian Ojeda to head in the equalizer.<\/p>\n
Putting four goals on the board\u00a0proves this Orlando attack still has teeth. The win pushes the Lions to within two points of the playoff line.<\/p>\n
Orlando looks to keep the momentum going Saturday on the road against D.C. United.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orlando City (2-6-1, 7 points) finally found the offensive breakout the team has been searching for all season.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,1335,139,4788,141,140,2062,76046,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-243210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-orange-county","10":"tag-orlando","11":"tag-orlando-city-sc","12":"tag-orlando-headlines","13":"tag-orlando-news","14":"tag-soccer","15":"tag-social-sports","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243210","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=243210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}