Lions see spark in draw
Kreis lauds effort against Chicago
Before last week, Orlando City was struggling amid a sixgame winless streak. Some of that had to do with not finishing chances, some of it with defensive lags and some of it seemed to be coming from a team that had lost its spark.
A win against D.C. United last week helped, but if one game can be a catalyst for change, it will be the Chicago match Sunday night.
Orlando City went down a man in the 26th minute and down two in minute 66. The communication, effort and defensive performance seen in the last 30 minutes was enough to steal away a point in a 0-0 draw.
“I think you can look at a game and a performance like this and say this could be a real momentum, this could be a real game changer for us and
Continued from Page C1 we want it to be that,” Lions coach Jason Kreis said.
“We’ve had our struggles over the last month defensively and the fact that we can defend with only eight field players for as long as we did against a full squad shows that we’re capable of defending, if we’re all committed to doing it. So, I hope that’s the biggest takeaway tonight, that we have a real, renewed resolve about what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to do it.”
Orlando City started taking attacking players off the field and subbing on more defensive-minded players after each ejection. The club started in a 4-2-3-1 formation, went to a 4-4-1 and then a 4-4.
Midfielder Will Johnson said the parallel lines of four called for the team to stay compact, taking away Chicago’s space and time to create. The Lions forced the Fire to go
around the outside and hit a lot of crosses into the box.
“And when the ball came in the box, we had to defend for our lives,” Johnson said. “We’re getting there. We’re getting back to who we were. We lost our identity, if you will, for a little bit there and we started trying to get a little clever, and now we’re back to who we are and so the shutouts feel good and on a night like tonight…when you have nine guys against 11 at this level, it’s pretty difficult to do any better.”
Johnson GPS fail
Will Johnson ran all over for the Lions to help them get a draw despite playing down two men.
Typically, the players wear a GPS tracking device during games that can tell them how far they ran in any given match. Johnson’s must have been through the roof that night, but we’ll never know.
“I didn’t wear it,” Johnson said shaking his head
after the game. “It’s the first time I didn’t wear it. I’ve worn it all season. Doesn’t that suck? I just didn’t put it on for some reason.”
He continued to explain that he’d run nearly the exact same distance in the four games leading up to the Chicago match, about 11,000 meters or just shy of seven miles.
“So, I was like, ‘If it’s the same every time, I guess it’s going to be the same tonight,’” he said.
It probably wasn’t, but he’ll never know.
Time off
Orlando City is now in the midst of a 10-day break before returning for the club’s first U.S. Open Cup match against Miami FC on June 14.
Miami plays in the second-tier North American Soccer League and defeated the United Soccer League’s Tampa Bay Rowdies to advance to the fourth round of the tournament, when MLS teams
join.
The Lions are taking it easy this week with no training until Thursday.
“I don’t really like time off, to be honest, but I’m going to spend some time with family and get back to it,” goalkeeper Joe Bendik said.
He won’t have to wait long. Three days after the U.S. Open Cup match, the Lions return to league play with a home game against the Montreal Impact at 7:30 p.m. Then it’s back to a difficult grind with a string of road games in Seattle, Chicago and Salt Lake City within a 10-day stretch to close out the month.
That’s why Kreis said, “it’s critically important that we appreciate the rest … because, for me, rest is critically important to performance, and so we need to get our bodies and our minds back calm. It’s been a lot of games in a short period of time and there’s a lot of season left.”