Orlando City March Madness Bracketology: Final Four

A total of 60 players of our original 64 are gone and we’re down to the Final Four as we near the end of our search for the most popular Orlando City player among readers and followers of The Mane Land. We started with 64 players from across both the USL and MLS eras of Orlando City SC and now we’re down to the king of each of the four regional brackets. We’ll trim two more out of the running in this round and find our championship match-up, which begins on Friday.

The No. 1 seed advanced in three of the four regions, with Kaká and Nani cruising against Chris Mueller and Yoshimar Yotún, respectively. Each won decisively over a No. 3 seed to advance to the Final Four. The bottom half of the field had a much tougher time.

For the third time in this tournament, we had a split winner. This time it was Ruan upsetting Dom Dwyer on The Mane Land by four votes (48-44), but the striker fought back with a nine-vote victory (134-125) on Twitter to take it by an aggregate of 278-275. That’s a margin of just five votes and it’s the closest match of the tournament so far. So, Dwyer squeaks into the Final Four.

The same cannot be said of No. 1 seed Kevin Molino. The legendary USL Lion, who made the jump to MLS with the club and factored in 19 goals (11 goals, eight assists) in 2016, was bounced in comfortable fashion by Cristian Higuita. The midfielder was inconsistent through his first four of five seasons in Orlando, finally providing steady quality in 2019, only to have his season derailed by injury. Higuita handled Molino in both polls in the most shocking upset of the tournament to date. Even the mighty Adrian Winter couldn’t manage that.

The stage is set and the last four men standing will now do battle.

This is what the bracket looks like entering the Final Four:

We’ll update the bracket again after the semifinals, with the final tipping off Friday morning. The polls are available below. Please note that if you do not see the polls and are reading this site on your mobile device, that some services automatically strip out the polls, but — not to worry — you can still vote on our Twitter feed or here on your desktop or laptop computer.

Tournament Semifinals: