Reeves' Army

“Field 17, ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, Kissimmee. That day, the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ralph’s Mob were annihilated.”

Nothing went right for the Rowdies tonight as Orlando City beat them 2-0 in the final consolation game of the 2013 Walt Disney World Pro Soccer Classic.

The errors started early, when Rowdies goalkeeper Andrew Fontein whiffed on a grab at the ball and instead tripped Jamie Watson in the penalty box, giving up a penalty kick. Watson buried it before 1′ was over.

From that point, the Lions dominated possession for vast swaths of the match, and got some good attempts in at goal. The Rowdies, who have been having offensive difficulties all tournament long, got a few shots on goal, but Miguel Gallardo had three saves, all in the second half.

A 1-0 lead is always tense, but that was relieved at 76′ when Dennis Chin broke away and struck the second goal for the Lions.

The two teams will actually kick off the I-4 Derby at Fifth Third Bank Field at the Citrus Bowl on Saturday, March 9. But first, Orlando City resumes preseason next Saturday, hosting FIU at the Seminole Soccer Complex. Admission to our preseason games at our training facility is free. Game time is 4pm.

The end of the Walt Disney World Pro Soccer Classic comes with a predictable result.

Do not be presumptuous: the Rowdies are the NASL champions, and have a potent scoring attack in Mike Ambersley, Luke Mulholland and Takuya Yamada. But they are definitely missing their departed goalkeeper Jeff Attinella, who has gone on to bigger and better things in MLS.

That offense hasn’t produced much in the group stage, but you just never know.

Team page has a preview and crunches the numbers.

Who would’ve thought that the third-tier team would give Columbus Crew the most fight? Orlando City drew level twice–including a short-handed goal–before conceding 3-2 to the Crew.

It could’ve been a long night, with Agustin Viana putting in a feed by Federico Higuain (for those curious, that’s the big brother of the Gonzalo Higuain of Real Madrid) at 3′ to draw first blood. But the Lions were able to confound the crew for the remainder of the first half to leave it 1-0.

At 57′, Jamie Watson showed the Crew we weren’t going to lay down, slotting a roller by Crew keeper Andy Gruenebaum to take it level.

It was soon after that when things got ugly. James O’Connor got a dubious second yellow at 67′ to put us down a man. It didn’t take long for the Crew to take advantage, firing a lucky strike from Josh Williams at 74′ to re-take the lead.

But the Lions refused to go quietly. Brian Fekete opened his account for City with a rebound strike at 79′ to draw level again. The Lions got their chances, but a late penalty allowed Federico Higuain to take the lead back for the Crew for good at 88′.

Orlando City will play the 7th place game on Saturday night, February 23, at 6pm, against the Tampa Bay Rowdies in an early opener of the War on I-4.

********

Orlando City’s supporters are going to the Orlando Solar Bears game today at 3pm against the South Carolina Stingrays. You might be able to get tickets at the box office if you ask for the Orlando City supporters section. But PLEASE leave your dirty mouths at home: it turns out this is Faith and Family Weekend, something we were unaware of when he planned this out.

A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES…

Tonight we finish up group play in the Walt Disney World Pro Soccer Classic with a new opponent: the Columbus Crew.

Columbus has been an innovator from the beginning of Major League Soccer. When the other first teams went flashy with their kits and logos, the Crew went far more traditional. They were the first to move into a soccer-specific stadium in 1999.

Their yellow and black is now iconic in American soccer. The way of MLS has been bent toward their style.

And in this tournament, they have dominated thus far. They’re the only team that has not given up a goal. Can Dennis Chin, Long Tan and Jamie Watson finally break the code?

The Scoring Third has a match preview.

Orlando City dominated possession but was frustrated at the other end, and lost composure in their 3-0 loss to Toronto FC last night.

In the first half, the Lions outright dominated the Reds, taking a large majority of the possession. The Reds seemed to have great difficulty keeping the ball for themselves. Also at issue for them was their goalkeeper’s punts: Josh Bendik put one of them off Dennis Chin’s face, though it rebounded wide for a goal kick.

One of the big issues of the match was late in the first half, when a dubious offside call waved off a header goal by Long Tan. At another point, the same linesman called a goal kick when the ball didn’t seem to go fully over the line. The first half ended scoreless.

The second half started with the same domination on our end, until Taylor Morgan snuck behind Miguel Gallardo and scored the first goal for Toronto at 54′. About 20 minutes later, Kieron Bernard was called for a handball and a penalty, which was converted by Terry Dunfield.

In the immediate aftermath of the PK, an altercation occured between Adama Mbengue and one of the Toronto players. Though observers said the Toronto player started it, Adama was the only one shown red, leaving the Lions down a man and likely ending his training spell with Sporting Kansas City.

Though Toronto would add a third goal at 87′ by Jonathan Osorio, they continued to have difficulty maintaining possession against the Lions for the remainder of the match. Our team simply wasn’t able to convert any of its chances.

********

In the other matches of the day…

In Group A, Columbus Crew man-handled Philadelphia Union, 4-0, to take a commanding lead in Group A. Orlando City is actually in third place in the group by goal differential. If Orlando City draws their third match on Saturday against the Crew, and the Union can’t win, then we will escape the bottom of the group. Second place is possible for the Lions if both they and the Union win their third matches.

In Group B, Montreal Impact beat Tampa Bay Rowdies, 4-1; while Sporting Kansas City beat DC United, 2-0. Mechack Jerome found it very easy to work with Graham Zusi for Sporting. Montreal leads Group B, while the Rowdies have all but clinched last place with a -7 goal differential.

The saga continues…

Orlando City continues to build its 2013 team by cutting its teeth on the most difficult of prey. This time, it’s Toronto FC, another MLS team that has yet to beat us in multiple meetings. They lost 1-0 to Columbus Crew on Saturday.

The OC website has a preview for tonight and Saturday night, and crunches the numbers for tonight’s match. There is also a preview at Rip Roaring 11.

Last night, Orlando City made their official season debut, battling Philadelphia Union to a 1-1 draw.

The first half saw Union take more initiative, but ultimately proved fruitless for either team. As the second half started, the Lions got more on the front foot. Dennis Chin took advantage of a very poorly-taken goal kick, and buried a highly-oblique shot at 54′ to put the Lions on the board first.

Our defense held well most of the time, but we did allow Leo Fernandes to sneak in for a goal off a deflection at 75′.

You’d think after that many meetings, a top-flight team would be able to beat a third-tier team.

The Lions will play Toronto FC on Wednesday night at 8pm.

BTW: The match replay has been officially posted on YouTube in glorious 720p.

It’s about time we got back in the swing of things!

We got an interesting mashup of news this past Wednesday. When the team announced they re-signed Erik Ustruck, they threw in a nice, juicy extra: we signed former Rowdies forward Long Tan.

He came to the U.S. from his native Mainland China (he’s from Dalian) in 2008, and found his way onto the Rowdies’ opening roster in 2010. The past two years, he’s spent under the control of MLS teams, and was most recently with DC United at the end of last season.

He has 15 goals in 20 caps at the PDL level over the past four seasons. The 24-year-old forward could match up with Dennis Chin up front, allowing Jamie Watson to play his native midfield position more often.

As for the Union, they are still trying to find traction in MLS. They were 10-6-18 (W-D-L) last season, only good for 8th out of 10 in the Eastern Conference. I guess there’s a reason we’re 1-1-0 against them. We’ll see what happens.

Orlando City crunches the numbers. The Scoring Third has their preview, as well as Rip Roaring 11.

We knew this was going to be tough, and it was. AS Roma got an easy 5-0 win over an undermanned Orlando City squad yesterday at Rollins College.

The first goal was very lucky, as Argentine midfielder Erik Lamela cut through the defenses and slotted in a goal at 2′. The Argentine junior national would tack the second goal on at 13′.

It was very difficult for the Lions to get any sort of traction in the first half. They got 18 minutes of good defense before a third goal was added by Miralem Pjanic at 31′.

In a situation that appears to have been erased from the official record, Erik Lamela mowed down one of Orlando’s players with an elbow to the head by the benches (I think it was Adama Mbengue) at 34′. The referee reached for the back pocket, but neither Roma manager Zdenek Zeman nor Lions manager Adrian Heath wanted the friendly marred by a red card. The referee permitted Lamela to be subbed off instead.

Mattia Destro added a fourth goal at 45′. The Lions got much better results on defense in the second half, but still gave up a fifth goal at 66′ to Alessandro Florenzi.

All of Roma’s stars got action in the match, including American national Michael Bradley, who played the first half. The players who played the entire game from Roma were midfielder and Bosnian national Miralem Pjanic; defender and Brazilian national Leandro Castan; and defender and Paraguayan national Ivan Piris.

Hopefully if this is repeated next year, it will be played at a larger venue (even UCF’s soccer stadium would work; the Citrus Bowl is impossible due to the bowl games), and Orlando will have a more full team instead of nine senior-squad players, with the rest of the roster filled with U-23 players (including their striker Johnny Mendoza), trialists, and our semi-retired assistant head coach.

Work is now beginning to prepare for the Walt Disney World Pro Soccer Classic, which begins on February 9.

The format and schedule for the 2013 Walt Disney World Pro Soccer Classic has been released.

The tournament will now be strung out over 15 days, with four total match days, from February 9 through February 23. All eight teams will play at each match day.

Group A, Orlando City’s group, will include Columbus Crew, Toronto FC and Philadelphia Union. Group B, Tampa Bay Rowdies’ group, will include Sporting Kansas City, Montreal Impact and DC United.