Alicia DelGallo:
Lions travel early to alleviate stress.
The way Major League Soccer teams travel to road games is a hot topic within the sport due to the various delays, layovers and other issues associated with commercial flights.
While chartered planes are the long-term solution, Orlando City coach Jason
Kreis sought an immediate fix to alleviate some stress for players the day before a road match.
“I think maybe a possible solution to some of the travel worries is to go a day earlier to kind of remove some of that — you have weather difficulties, you have a plane that’s late, ya know, all of that pressure the day before a game I think could be alleviated if we start to travel a day earlier,” Kreis said Wednesday.
So Orlando City hopped on an afternoon flight Thursday and will train in the Boston area today before taking on the New England Revolution at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Flying out two days before a match previously was reserved for crosscountry trips to cities such as Seattle, Vancouver or Los Angeles. Kreis said he’s been toying with the idea of traveling early to other games as well for quite some time, and Orlando City’s ownership supported the plan.
“In fact, they think another idea to get out of this heat would be to go to cooler climates where we’re playing the game and train there,” Kreis said. “So it’s a little bit of a mesh of our ideas together, to go one day earlier and see if we can train up there the day before the game and see if that might help things a little bit.”
Higuita suspended
Orlando City midfielder
Cristian Higuita will be suspended for Saturday’s match in New England due to yellow card accumulation.
Higuita received a yellow card during Orlando City’s match against the Vancouver Whitecaps, but due to a miscommunication Major League Soccer’s official statistics showed Tommy Redding getting the yellow instead.
The referee pulled the card out in the 71st minute right after Redding committed a foul, but it was not for the young centerback as most assumed. The official’s match report turned in after the game showed the card went to Higuita for dissent, according to an Orlando City spokesman who said the league’s stats will be corrected shortly.
Higuita leads the team with nine yellow cards. This will be his second suspension of the season for the same reason, meaning he also will be fined $500, per league rules. He served his first suspension during a 3-1 loss to Toronto at the beginning of July.
The Lions now enter the New England match missing up to five players who regularly start.
Cyle Larin and Yoshimar Yotún are away for international duty with Canada and Peru, respectively. When asked if Larin's absence makes the decision of starting strikers Dom Dwyer and Carlos Rivas easier, Kreis replied, “Yes and no.”
“We still have a player like Giles [Barnes], who can step into the striker position, which is much more his natural position than to play in the midfield for us,” Kreis said. “So it does still leave us with choices, and as we get to this point in the season . ... All the pressure is on us to make the right ones.”
Another forward option is Hadji Barry, especially since Richie Laryea is out two to three weeks due to an injured hamstring. Both players excelled with OCB this year, but Laryea has received more time with the MLS squad, serving as a substitute in recent weeks.
“Hadji has been playing very well with OCB and, obviously, with Cyle gone this weekend he will definitely be in consideration for the 18.” Centerback Jonathan
Spector will miss the match as he continues recovering from a knee injury. He should be out another week or two. The club is hoping to have him back for the D.C. United road game on Sept. 9.
There is some good news. Kreis said midfielder Will Johnson, out with an ankle injury, trained in full Wednesday and looked ready to go. However, Johnson still is in a lot of pain. How he recovers from training sessions Wednesday and Friday will determine his availability for the match.
“I think it’s going to come down to whether he can withstand that pain,” Kreis said. “Obviously, when a player has an injury like that, you tend to think, ‘Oh, well maybe we should be careful because we don’t want him to be out for multiple weeks,’ but you get to this point of the season and you say, ‘We’ve got to go for it, I think.’ ”