Amid all the usual questions about tactics, personnel and matchups in the leadup to the start of Orlando City’s Round One Best-of-3 Series with Charlotte FC in the Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, one of the simplest was also one of the biggest.
Which version of the Lions would show up?
The potent squad that won 10 of their last 14 regular-season games, becoming arguably the hottest team in MLS, or the flawed outfit that stumbled to a home loss to Atlanta United on Decision Day, reminiscent of the group that lost five of their first nine league matches at Inter&Co Stadium earlier this year?
The OCSC home faithful got the good Lions in Sunday night’s Game 1 — a composed side that managed the high stakes, held their nerve and gave CLTFC precious little to work with in a 2-0 victory delivered by goals from Facu Torres and Martin Ojeda.
“We're very happy with the result, but much more for the way we did it, against a tough rival in a very difficult postseason game,” head coach Oscar Pareja told reporters in his postgame press conference.
“I'm very happy with the group and this momentum. I'm very happy with the way we're playing, but this one game, we have to analyze it and just prepare the next one. This is, first, a good step.”
In his five years in charge, Pareja has elevated the Lions from chronic underachievers into playoff regulars. Remarkably, however, this marked the first time in the club’s MLS history they’ve scored more than one goal in a postseason match.
Terrific Torres
Torres’ clinical 32nd-minute opener proved massively influential, as it provided both key leverage against Charlotte’s defensive-oriented outlook and timely proof OCSC’s leading protagonists are ready to step up in these clutch scenarios. It puts Orlando in the driver’s seat moving into Friday’s Game 2 at Bank of America Stadium (7:40 pm ET | MLS Season Pass).
“The playoffs started today and we wanted to get off to a good start and continue showing what we have been doing during the season. The team is very confident and today, luckily, things worked out,” said Torres in Spanish.
“We have worked all season to be ready for this instance in the playoffs and, well, now are the moments where we have to show up where the team needs us all the most. That's what the playoffs are about … With today's victory, we are a little more calm and confident in what we are doing with the team.”
The Uruguayan winger led Orlando with 14 league goals this season, and 11 of his 20 goal contributions came from July onwards. While the central Floridians have crafted fluid chemistry across their front five down the stretch and can call on ample bench options like Duncan McGuire and Luis Muriel, it’s clear Torres is the attacking linchpin.
“We want him to be the main guy, to have the ball,” noted right back Dagur Dan Thórhallsson, whose flank partnership with Torres was impressive on Sunday, “and me to just kind of go around him and try to support him as well as I can. I felt like it worked really well tonight.”
Seizing the series
With the visitors looking passive and perhaps nervous, particularly in the first half, Orlando seized the initiative and largely kept it. But a tangible measure of frustration could be detected as they failed to make it show on the scoreboard – “We have to be more precise,” Pareja lamented in a halftime interview with MLS Season Pass – before their composure and game management saw them through after the break.
In the end, a quick transition led by Iván Angulo and capped by Ojeda’s emphatic finish provided the necessary breathing room.
“First half, we control it, we have a lot of volume, we create many chances. We could put the game away in that half, or put in a more difficult side for Charlotte, but we missed a lot of opportunities,” said Pareja. “Second half we became more tense, and the first 15, 20 minutes in the second half, we sensed that we are winning, but this is a dangerous situation, and we start dropping in the zone that we don't feel comfortable. But we start just getting some spaces, too.
“So it was like a trade: We give you the ball, just bring some proposal to the game — I mean Charlotte — and we're going to use those spaces, and that's the way we created the chances in the second half, on the counterattack.”
The Crown can take some solace in knowing a big, rowdy crowd is expected at BofA for the club’s first-ever home playoff game, where they’ll need to win to extend this series to a third game. That task will be complicated by a potentially costly red card to Spanish playmaker Pep Biel for kicking out at OCSC defender Robin Jansson as he tumbled to the turf in injury time of Sunday’s loss.
“He’ll be a miss,” said head coach Dean Smith of Biel, expressing his desire for the club to appeal the ejection. “I fully believe that an independent panel would overturn that."
“We’ll have a big crowd behind us [on Friday] and that’ll certainly give us a spring in our step, because we looked — there was a little bit of lethargy in that first half today, and we can’t afford that on Friday.”
