Orlando City was without much of its key offensive figures as the team headed to Foxboro to take on New England. The offense was already going to be a problem anyway with such a one dimensional attack and no momentum after nearly two months without a victory. The playoffs seemed to continue to be slipping away.
The Lions hoped to escape Foxboro with at least a tie, waiting for the reinforcements to come after international duty was over.
Hope seems to be running on short supply these days as the playoffs slip away with each passing game and each lost opportunity.
New England Revolution scored a 3-0 victory over the undermanned Orlando City SC on Saturday at Gillette Stadium dominating possession and chipping away at the Lions’ depleted offensive attack.
The Revolution had a 54.1 percent advantage of possession and outshot the Lions 21-8, putting eight on frame. As the below graph from MLS shows, it was an all-out assault on the net:
Tally Hall and the defense could only withstand so much with so few opportunities to score and attack.
Late in the first half, New England finally broke through with a goal from Diego Fagundez. New England added two more late in the second half with substitutes Juan Agudelo and Chris Tierney scoring to add insult to injury.
There was very little time for Orlando to be on the ball as their offense clearly suffered without Kaka in the midfield. Then again, this was much the way Orlando City has played the last few months. The offense has been uninspiring and the team has simply rallied to defend their net.
When a team plays like this, it is only a matter of time before the goal gets scored — as Orlando learned painfully again in New England.
The refrain from the players after the game (as told to Paul Tenorio of the Orlando Sentinel) was that they got beat by a better team. At least on this night.
Certainly being down all the talent Orlando City was down hurt — in addition to Kaka, Cyle Larin and Darwin Ceren to international duty, Brek Shea and Kevin Molino to injury and Carlos Rivas to a yellow-card suspension. The Lions were more or less playing with something of a B-squad.
Still, the Lions lack of creativity and ability is still somewhat hard to believe. The team has had the same refrain now for nearly two months as they have seen its playoff positioning slowly fade away.
Some more unfavorable results — particularly Didier Drogba’s hat trick for Montreal in a 3-2 win over Chicago — makes the playoffs seem more like a pipe dream than ever before.
The Lions need to right the ship soon. Or at least they need to find some type of momentum and rhythm heading into the offseason.
This game might be chalked up to the circumstances. The momentum that this game seems to continue is chalked up to . . . something else.
Orlando City is running out of time to find a solution.
