Star forward Antoine Griezmann has scored in five consecutive matches, and Orlando City has won four of its past five. Now the club travels to Columbus for its third U.S. Open Cup semifinal in eight years, with a spot in the final at stake.<\/p>\n
Orlando (10-11-4, 34 points) takes on the Columbus Crew (6-14-5, 23 points) at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The winner hosts the final in October against the Colorado Rapids or St. Louis City SC.
\u201cSemifinals and finals, you have to go all out because there\u2019s no tomorrow,\u201d Orlando goalkeeper Maxime Cr\u00e9peau said. \u201cWe went there earlier in the season. We\u00a0did\u00a0a 1-1\u00a0draw,\u00a0and it was a tough\u00a0game to go through.\u00a0And it\u2019s a good stadium as well with the fans, so we expect a very hard game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Griezmann scored in the 3-0 win over Toronto FC on Saturday, his fifth consecutive match with a goal and his eighth in 10 MLS appearances since joining from Atl\u00e9tico Madrid in July. Mart\u00edn Ojeda leads the team with 11 league goals, and Justin Ellis has nine assists in his breakout campaign. The trio has helped to give Orlando\u2019s attack a different look since the World Cup break,\u00a0helping them go 6-2-2\u00a0since July.<\/p>\n
The Open Cup path has been just as productive. Orlando beat FC Naples 1-0 on the road in the Round of 32, won 4-3 at the New England Revolution in the Round of 16, and routed Atlanta United 4-1 at Inter.co Stadium in the quarterfinals. David Brekalo, Griffin Dorsey and Tiago all scored in the first 25 minutes against Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Columbus is a different club than the one Orlando drew 1-1 on April 12 in the only meeting this season between the two sides. Henrik Rydstr\u00f6m was fired in May and replaced by interim head coach Laurent Courtois. The Crew signed Brais M\u00e9ndez from Real Sociedad and Santiago Rodr\u00edguez from Botafogo as Designated Players during the summer.<\/p>\n
The Crew have won just two of their past 10 league matches and sit 13th in the East with a minus-seven goal differential. Columbus beat Richmond Kickers 3-0, One Knoxville SC 4-1, and New York City FC 1-0 to reach the semifinals for the first time since 2010. The Crew also won the cup in 2002.<\/p>\n
The Lions won the 2022 Open Cup, the first trophy in the club\u2019s MLS era. A win Wednesday puts the club back in the final for the first time since that 3-0 victory over Sacramento Republic FC.<\/p>\n
Orlando returns to MLS play Saturday on the road against the New England Revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star forward Antoine Griezmann has scored in five consecutive matches, and Orlando City has won four of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400590,"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":["post-400589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-florida","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-city-sc","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-soccer","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400589","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=400589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}