Cyle Larin broke Major League Soccer’s rookie single-season scoring record on Friday, finishing with a hat trick against the Red Bulls and 14 goals for the season. New York pressed high and had more of the ball, but Orlando City kept its shape defensively and weathered the early storm. That being said, the Red Bulls are much improved from when the two teams last met in July, which is a truly scary thought. “Sure, it’s going to be tough because they’re playing very good right now”. Lade’s poor positioning would in turn force others, including central defender Matt Miazga to try and step up to fill the gap, leaving the Red Bulls defense stretched on multiple occasions for Orlando City to take advantage.
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Orlando City now sits in seventh place in the East, one point out of the final playoff spot with a 9-13-8 record. “The game is still out there for us”.
On the significance of clinching a playoff spot, Marsch said, “It’s significant in the sense that we’re being rewarded for continuing to believe in ourselves and push really hard but it’s not really the end goal. So, for us to be able to go out there on someone else’s home field and press the way we did, create the turnovers we did, win the amount of second balls that we did, continues to speak into the belief that we have for Jesse [Marsch’s] system”.
Meanwhile, the Red Bulls have won three of their last four in the league, with wins over DC United, Chicago and most recently the Portland Timbers. Out of the 20 games he has played in, the team has given up 2+ goals in 11 of them.
With Conor Lade and captain Dax McCarty back from their one-game suspension, Marsch will likely employ the team’s usual starting-eleven (found below). They haven’t dropped points in consecutive matches since a four-game losing streak in June, and Marsch made it clear he expects his team to respond positively to Friday’s embarrassing defeat.
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At the moment, the Red Bulls are atop their respective division with 48 points after 28 games – holding a one-point lead over Columbus Crew who have already played 30 games this season. “Our goal should be to obviously win MLS Cup and now we can make a push for the Supporters’ Shield”. I think we showed that tonight. That’s okay. We’re going to learn from it. We’re going to become stronger for it, so the guys will have the weekend off. They’ll have some time to get away.
