Kreis seeks extensive changes to improve
At the end of last year, Orlando City’s offseason objective was clear — strengthen defense. The team had allowed a league-high 60 goals.
This year, after closing out the worst performance in the club’s short MLS history on Sunday with a 6-1 loss in Philadelphia, the team needs wholesale improvement. There isn’t one targeted area of need, and Lions coach Jason Kreis said the hyperfocus on defense last year may have ended up hurting the team.
“I think we put a ton of focus on that but in doing so we also lost the effectiveness of some of our attack,” Kreis said.
He went on to say the team never really replaced one of its best attacking players from 2016, referring to former midfielder Kevin
Molino, who was traded to Minnesota. Kreis also said another player he “expected to have a huge year but got injured for the first quarter of the season,” likely referring to Kaká, who pulled a hamstring in the 2017 season opener and missed five consecutive games.
“And so we lacked a little offensive rhythm and flow, which I think put way too much pressure on us defensively,” Kreis said. “And then it seemed like if there was one mistake, the game was pretty much over because we could never sort of rebound offensively from that.”
So Kreis said he will look at everything that went wrong, from the preseason plan to the character of players on the team to the formation and tactics deployed by the coaching staff.
“It’s so many things, so many things,” Kreis said.
“First and foremost, we need to look at what we did before the season and why we started so well and then took a major downturn.
“From my point of view it’s now more about finding the right type of people that really want to be here and give everything it takes and [who] want to be professionals and represent this club the right way.”
Pride moves
The Orlando Pride released end-of-season contract details for all players on Monday, and true to coach
Tom Sermanni’s previous comments about his offseason strategy, the majority of the roster remains intact.
The Pride exercised contract options for 10 players, offered new contracts to four and placed three players on the re-entry wire, according to a statement released by the club.
McKenzie Berryhill,
Jocelyn Blankenship and Jordan O’Brien were placed on the re-entry wire. The Pride offered new contracts to Chioma Ubogagu, Dani Weatherholt
and Australians Steph Catley and Alanna Kennedy. Options were exercised for the following players: Aubrey Bledsoe, Camila, Nickolette Driesse, Kristen Edmonds, Danica Evans,
Jamia Fields, Rachel Hill, Monica, Toni Pressley and Jasmyne Spencer.
Marta is still under contract, and U.S. women’s national-team players Alex Morgan, Ashlyn Harris
and Ali Krieger remain on the roster as 2017 federation players. Their U.S. women’s national-team federation status for 2018 will be announced during the offseason. If any of them are not designated as federation players next season, the club will then have to negotiate contracts and pay their salaries.
After the Pride’s season ended with a loss to Portland in the National Women’s Soccer League semifinals, Sermanni told the Orlando Sentinel he will focus on stability for 2018 and make only small tweaks to the roster.
He’s looking to add only a couple versatile players to strengthen the midfield and defense.
“We’ve got the foundation of a very good team, so this offseason is really just about adding, hopefully, finishing pieces and keeping stability, the stability that we’ve got now,” Sermanni said. “I think that’s the next key step.”