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Orlando City vs. San Jose Earthquakes: Final Score 5-0 as Lions Run Rampant Over Quakes

Daryl Dike and Benji Michel bagged braces to lead Orlando to its largest shutout victory in the MLS era.

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5 years ago

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC

Daryl Dike and Benji Michel both bagged braces and Brandon Austin got his first MLS shutout as Orlando City destroyed the San Jose Earthquakes 5-0 on a rainy night at Exploria Stadium in front of 15,476 fans. Nani also scored for the Lions (5-1-3, 18 points), who conceded possession and picked apart the Quakes (3-6-1, 10 points) in transition throughout the match.

Orlando won its second straight, scoring multiple goals in consecutive matches for the first time in 2021. With the win, the Lions improved to 2-1-3 in the all-time series and 2-0-1 at home against San Jose.

“We’re feeling very proud of many things that we saw tonight,” Orlando City Head Coach Oscar Pareja said after the match. “We were very sharp in the box today. Having that efficiency in our forwards just makes us feel very optimistic. For me, the highlight is just to be able to recover our solidness defensively. Sometimes you get relaxed when the game gets to 2-0 early, as happened against Toronto. And they kept that solidness. Just keeping our goal clean is is very important for us, if we want to win things this year.”

Pareja deployed the same back five as Saturday night, with Brandon Austin in goal behind a back line of Joao Moutinho, Robin Jansson, Antonio Carlos, and Kyle Smith. Junior Urso and Andres Perea slotted into the central midfield behind attackers Chris Mueller and Michel (replacing Mauricio Pereyra and Silvester van der Water), with Nani and Dike (in place of Tesho Akindele) up top.

After a half hour delay due to inclement weather, the teams took to the rain-soaked pitch. The Lions wasted no time in jumping on the visitors. Urso fired a shot in the first minute that was partially deflected, allowing JT Marcinkowski to collect it.

Six minutes later, the Lions took the lead from the penalty spot. Michel took the ball into the area down the left and Florian Jungwirth made contact, sending Michel sprawling. Chris Penso wasted no time pointing to the spot. Nani did his usual stutter-step approach and sent an unstoppable shot past Marcinkowski, who guessed right but still couldn’t make the save. Nani’s fifth goal of the season put Orlando City up 1-0 in the seventh minute.

The Lions kept coming. Just a minute after Nani’s goal, Michel fired wide after getting down the left. He had an opportunity to play Dike in but took an extra touch and the San Jose defense cut off his passing lane, forcing him to shoot. Perea got into the box alone in the 11th minute but fired his shot dead straight at Marcinkowski. Seconds later, Urso fired just a foot or so wide.

Michel doubled the lead in the 16th minute. Mueller played a through ball in behind the defense and Paul Marie tried to shield the ball for Marcinkowski to come collect. But Michel pressed hard, stuck his foot around Marie and poked the ball into the net to make it 2-0.

After Michel’s goal he celebrated with a cowboy hat from out of the stands.

“One of the fans gave me a hat, and I was like ‘oh I’m going to celebrate with it,’” Michel said. “I was actually thinking about grabbing the corner flag and start trying to ride it like a horse, but I didn’t want to do too much.”

Orlando eased its high press a bit after the second goal, which allowed the Earthquakes to get a bit more possession, but San Jose wasn’t able to create much with it. In fact, it was Orlando that struck again in the 31st minute.

Nani played a through ball up the middle to Dike into the penalty area. Dike got to the ball first, played it around Marcinkowski with his first touch, then cut back a left-footed shot to score his first goal since returning to the team. The Lions led 3-0.

“Anytime you see people like Nani driving with the ball, you know he’s going to make a nice pass,” Dike said. “So you know all you have to do is make the run. And so I made the run and JT was coming out and I just touched around him and tried to redirect it back towards the goal and it went in.”

“It means a lot to have Daryl back, for sure,” Pareja said.

San Jose managed to earn a couple of corners after the third Orlando goal but the Lions didn’t yield much.

And then the weather moved back into the area. In the 40th minute, heavy rain and some lightning caused Penso to blow the whistle and send the teams to the locker room.

At the time of the stoppage, San Jose was holding a deceptive 61.5%-38.5% advantage in possession, but it hardly seemed that way. Orlando held a 7-4 edge in shots and a 4-0 advantage in shots on goal, with the Quakes getting all four of their shots blocked to that point. San Jose had the game’s only two corner kicks and an 89.4%-85.3% edge in passing accuracy.

After a weather delay of 55 minutes, the game resumed. San Jose coach Matias Almeyda made a bold lineup change, subbing on Cade Cowell and Shea Salinas for Jungwirth and Marie.

Orlando had two excellent chances to add to the lead in the final few minutes of the first half. Urso played Dike down the right side of the box in the 44th minute and the big striker got all of his shot but sent his screamer just wide.

After Eduardo Lopez smashed San Jose’s first shot on target — fought off by Austin for a corner — the Lions closed the half with a golden opportunity at a fourth in stoppage time when Mueller slipped Dike in behind the defense. Dike tried to chip Marcinkowski but didn’t get the shot up high enough and the keeper was able to make a huge save. That was it for the half.

San Jose’s halftime advantage in possession grew to 62.5%-37.5%. The Quakes had more corners (3-0) and were more accurate in passing (89.3%-83.7%). Orlando led in shots (10-6) and shots on target (5-1).

The Lions added to their lead just four minutes after the restart. Nani sent in a good free kick service from the right side and Dike got his head to it, sending it in to make it 4-0 in the 49th minute.

“A good delivery and luckily the ball ended up in the back of the net,” Dike said. “I just made sure I was there, trying to put myself in the best possible position to score.”

Orlando came close a couple of more times following the goal, with Michel taking a crack from distance, but hitting his shot right at Marcinkowski, and Dike getting a shot blocked in front that the San Jose goalkeeper would not have been able to stop had it gone through.

Pareja subbed liberally in the second half, giving Michael Halliday 45 minutes at right back and giving Uri Rosell his first minutes of the season.

Substitute Tesho Akindele fired a shot just over the bar in the 79th minute as Orlando continued to look like the more likely team to score the next goal. That goal came in the 90th minute as Akindele played Michel down the right side of the box and he fired past Marcinkowski just inside the near post for the final margin.

After Mauricio Pereyra hit the post on what could have been a sixth goal deep in stoppage time, the match came to an end.

Orlando out-shot the Quakes 17-11 (8-1 on target). The visitors held an edge in corners (5-2), possession (56.9%-43.1%), and passing accuracy (88.8%-84.3%).

“The vibe in the locker room, you know, everyone’s positive, everyone’s happy we got the ‘dub,’ and you know we’re going up,” Michel said. “We’re going up from here. We’re not stopping until we get to the top, until we’re in first place.” 

The Lions will play their third match in a week when they travel south to play Inter Miami on Friday night.

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Flashback Friday: June 10, 2023 vs. Colorado Rapids

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to a booking-laden match at home that took place a little less than three years ago.

Published

22 hours ago

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June 12, 2026

By

Dan MacDonald, The Mane Land

The World Cup is now officially underway, and while that means Orlando City is on break, we can’t have you forgetting about the Lions while all the international action is taking place. That means its time for another edition of Flashback Friday, where we hop in the trusty time machine and reminisce on OCSC matches of yesteryear.

Last week we relived a rousing road win over the New York Red Bulls from June, 3 2023, and this week, we actually pick up right where we left off, on June 10, 2023 as the Lions returned home to take on the Colorado Rapids.

Coming off a 3-0 win over the Red Bulls in the previous match, Oscar Pareja decided to not mess with a good thing, and kept Orlando City’s same starting XI from that victory. Pedro Gallese was in net behind a back line of Rafael Santos, Robin Jansson, Antonio Carlos, and Kyle Smith. Wilder Cartagena and Cesar Araujo played the double pivot; Ivan Angulo, Mauricio Pereyra, and Facundo Torres were the attacking midfielders, and Ercan Kara was deployed as the striker.

In typical June fashion for the City Beautiful, kickoff was delayed by just under an hour as the stadium was pounded by storms, and the delay did not look to have done any favors for Orlando’s sharpness. That said, OCSC did win a corner kick less than a minute into the game, and Torres had a tame shot saved in the eighth minute, but the Lions weren’t consistently sharp with their passing in the early moments of the contest.

The teams traded chances just before the 15-minute mark, with Kara sending a header too high before Cole Bassett sent a shot straight to Gallese. Carlos then picked up a yellow card in the 24th minute, which evened things out between the two teams after Lalas Abubakar was cautioned for the Rapids after just six minutes. Those two bookings proved to be a harbinger of things to come, because Colorado went down to 10 men in the 39th minute after midfielder Braian Galvan caught Angulo with a high boot while his studs were showing.

Pereyra had Orlando’s best chance of the opening 45 minutes in stoppage time but could only send his effort right at goalkeeper Marko Ilic, and that was the last significant action of the half. The Lions ended the half with an edge in possession (59.7%-40.3%), shots (7-2), shots on target (2-1), and passing accuracy (85.3%-79.4%), while both teams won two corners.

Pareja made two moves at halftime, bringing on Rodrigo Schlegel for the once-booked Carlos, and Martin Ojeda for Cartagena in an effort to go more offensive against a shorthanded Rapids side. The Lions certainly looked brighter going forward as the second half got underway and had a few dangerous moments before finally breaking the deadlock in the 55th minute.

Pereyra played a ball across the top of the box for Torres, who took a couple of touches before sending a ball to the net that took a wicked deflection off Andreas Maxsø that carried it past Ilic.

It wasn’t the prettiest goal the Lions have ever scored, but for a team that was guilty at times of passing up good shots in favor of the perfect look at goal, it was proof that sometimes you just need to take shots in dangerous areas.

Fortunately, Orlando seemed to take that lesson to heart. Kara went close in the 65th minute despite shooting through traffic, Angulo had a shot deflected by Abubakar three minutes later, and Torres had another deflected effort go just wide of the post four minutes after that.

The game changed again in the 75th minute, when the Rapids had another player sent off. Abubakar lasted for 69 minutes on a yellow card but got burned by Angulo in midfield and hauled him down in order to prevent the Lions from potentially working a transition opportunity. He had some teammates behind him, but the referee showed him a second yellow card. Pareja smelled blood in the water and just three minutes later he brought on Ramiro Enrique for Smith, who had been given a yellow card in the 52nd minute.

Ilic made a great save on Pereyra in the 81st minute to keep the score at 1-0 and keep the Rapids in the game, but Orlando got its second goal just two minutes later. Torres had the ball on the right side of the box with a Colorado player backing off him, and that gave him ample time to get his head up and pick out a man. He played a ball to Enrique at the top of the box, who had plenty of time to take a couple of touches and send a low shot into the bottom corner past a diving Ilic for his first goal as an Orlando City player.

Somewhat surprisingly, the game started to get a little stretched after the Lions doubled their advantage. Colorado had a shot blocked in the 81st minute, Kara sent a shot very close to the post six minutes after that, and Gallese saved a Darren Yapi attempt in the 88th minute to keep his clean sheet alive. Aside from Pareja handing Alejandro Granados his MLS debut, that was the last significant action of the match, which finished 2-0 to the good guys.

Unsurprisingly, considering Colorado’s deficit in players, the Lions dominated all of the game’s most important statistics. OCSC finished with the advantage in possession (65%-35%), shots (15-4), shots on goal (6-2), corners (5-3), and passing accuracy (89.4%-81.5%).

The victory made it back-to-back wins for the first time in 2023, stretched Orlando’s unbeaten run to six, and gave El Pulpo his 100th clean sheet for the team in all competitions.

Marcus Mitchell had the helm for Player Grades in this one, and Torres got his nod for Man of the Match with a goal, an assist, and a grade of 7.5 out of 10. Several other Lions graded out at 7 out of 10, with only one player grading below a 6.

While it was a weird win, it unfortunately was the final game of the unbeaten streak, as the Lions fell to a familiar defeat at Gillette Stadium the following week, although things got back on track soon afterward. I’ll see you back here in a week for another trip down memory lane. Vamos Orlando!

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Lion Links: 6/12/26

USMNT plays Paraguay tonight, red cards rain down in World Cup opener, Sporting Kansas City linked with Yann Gboho, and more.

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1 day ago

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June 12, 2026

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Image of Alex Freeman sliding in celebration of a goal.
Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Mark Thor

Happy Friday, Mane Landers! The World Cup is in full swing and the U.S. will play today, so it’s a pretty exciting Friday to say the least. I’m a bit of a bundle of nerves about how the team will do, but I’m still looking forward to catching the game. If you have any gameday rituals, be sure to share, so that we can conjure up enough luck and support for the team tonight. Let’s get to the links!

USMNT’s World Cup Campaign Begins Today

The United States Men’s National Team will take on Paraguay at 9 p.m. tonight in its first match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. There’s plenty of pressure on the U.S. to perform well as one of the host nations, and this will also be Head Coach Mauricio Pochettino’s first time coaching at a World Cup. Pochettino stated that all 26 players are available for selection, including center back Chris Richards, although he may not necessarily start. Former Orlando City defender Alex Freeman, who is the youngest player on the U.S. roster, could make his World Cup debut tonight, so be sure to root for our hometown hero should he take the field. Hopefully, the Yanks can start this tournament off on the right foot with a big win in California.

World Cup Opener Features Three Red Cards

This year’s World Cup began in Mexico City, with Mexico beating South Africa 2-0 in a match that included three red cards. All three were straight red cards given in the second half in separate incidents, as Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were sent off for South Africa before Mexico’s Cesar Montes was shown red in stoppage time. There hasn’t been a World Cup match with that many red cards since the record of four was set in 2006 in a match between Portugal and the Netherlands. As for the game’s goals, Julian Quinones pounced on a mistake by South Africa to give Mexico an early lead and Raul Jimenez doubled that lead while South Africa was reduced to 10 men.

Sporting Kansas City Linked With Yann Gboho

While the World Cup roars on, the rumor mill is in full force as clubs make plans for summer reinforcements. Sporting Kansas City is reportedly pushing to sign Toulouse winger Yann Gboho, who recorded 10 goals and three assists across all competitions this past season. The surprising aspect of this pursuit would be that Toulouse values Gboho at an eye-watering $20 million transfer fee, which would be a club record by a country mile. Kansas City needs all the help it can get on offense, as it has scored just 14 goals in 14 games so far this season.

Jose Mourinho Officially Returns to Real Madrid

It’s been a bit of an open secret over the past few weeks that Jose Mourinho would become Real Madrid’s next manager and it’s now official, with the 63-year-old signing a three-year contract with the Spanish club. Mourinho helped Real Madrid win a La Liga title and the Copa del Rey over a decade ago before his departure in 2013 after three seasons with the club. Now, he joins a Real Madrid side that has finished second in the league standings and been eliminated in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League the past two seasons. I, for one, can’t wait to see how one of the biggest personalities in soccer works alongside a locker room of star players that seemed in disarray this past season.

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That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a fantastic Friday and rest of your weekend!

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Lion Links: 6/11/26

Wilder Cartagena linked with move to Sporting Cristal, Orlando Pride hire Dr. Nicole Surdyka, Barbra Banda injury update, and more.

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2 days ago

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June 11, 2026

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Image courtesy of Orlando City SC / Jermey Reper

The World Cup is finally here! Today starts what should be an exciting month of international soccer featuring more teams than ever before. While I wasn’t able to part with the arm and leg necessary to afford a ticket to one of the games, I’m still looking forward to watching along when I can with the rest of the world. Let’s get to the links!

Wilder Cartagena Linked With Move to Peruvian Club

You’ll need a translation tool to check out the full details unless you are fluent in Spanish, but Sporting Cristal of Peru’s top flight is reportedly interested in signing Orlando City midfielder Wilder Cartagena. The 31-year-old is currently under contract with Orlando through 2026, with the contact also including a club option for 2027. He was a crucial part to Orlando’s success in 2024, but he missed all of last year and has only started one game so far this season due to injuries. It’s not much more than a rumor as of now, but it’ll be something to keep an eye on during this break in the league schedule.

Barbra Banda Sustained a Hamstring Injury

Zambia Head Coach Nora Hauptle stated that Orlando Pride forward Barbra Banda is dealing with a hamstring strain. Banda didn’t play in either of Zambia’s matches during this international break, but Hauptle also noted that she should recover in the next week or two and will be fine for the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations at the end of July. Banda was injured late in the Pride’s 3-1 win against Bay FC on May 29 and it was unclear how severe the injury was. Hopefully she’ll be good to go before the Pride’s match against Angel City FC on July 3.

Dr. Nicole Surdyka Named Orlando Pride Director of Medical & Performance

The Orlando Pride have hired Dr. Nicole Surdyka as their new director of medical and performance. She’ll oversee the Pride’s medical operations, nutrition, and more while also working with Orlando Health. Dr. Surdyka has over a decade of experience that included leadership roles with OL Reign and the LA Galaxy and has studied extensively into developing frameworks for health and performance in women’s soccer.

“Nicole is one of the most respected practitioners in our field, and her expertise in women’s football, return‑to‑play, and high‑performance systems will elevate every aspect of our medical and performance environment,” said Caitlin Carducci, Orlando Pride VP of Soccer Operations & General Manager. “Her leadership, her commitment to evidence‑based practice and her passion for supporting athletes make her an exceptional addition to the Pride.”

Analyzing Paraguay Ahead of USMNT World Cup Match

The United States Men’s National Team will play its World Cup opener on Friday when it hosts Paraguay at SoFi Stadium. It will be the 10th match between the two nations, with the USMNT most recently winning 2-1 against Paraguay in November of last year. There’s a familiar face on Paraguay’s roster in Orlando City midfielder Braian Ojeda, with Miguel Almiron and Andres Cubas as other MLS midfielders called up. Paraguay’s defense is anchored by center back Gustavo Gomez, who you may remember as the player who put former Lion Alex Freeman in a headlock during that aforementioned November friendly. As for Paraguay’s attack, the Yanks will need to keep Julio Enciso and Antonio Sanabria from wreaking havoc. Paraguay is a physical team that’s also strong in the air, so we’ll see how the USMNT deals with that on Friday.

England Beats Costa Rica 3-0 at Inter&Co Stadium

Orlando City’s Inter&Co Stadium hosted a friendly between England and Costa Rica on Wednesday, with England winning 3-0. Declan Rice gave England an early lead, but Costa Rica kept the Three Lions off the scoresheet until the substitutes came on for England in the second half, with Anthony Gordon and Ollie Watkins both scoring. England got the full Orlando experience due to a heavy storm that delayed kickoff, but Inter&Co Stadium earned praise for its drainage system that had the pitch ready to roll in no time. Enjoy this satisfying time-lapse video of the transformation provided by the stadium.

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That’s all I have for you this time around. I hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and rest of your week!

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