ORLANDO, Fla.—There was no sugarcoating the result or the scoreline, but Jason Kreis will be telling his Orlando City SC players to put the worst home defeat in the club’s history firmly in the rear-view mirror.
With five games to go, the team’s playoff hopes still rest largely in their own hands, with two clashes against D.C. United and a home visit from Montreal among the remaining matches.
But Kreis knows he has to pick up the injury- and suspension-hit pieces of his team and put them back together in a more urgent way, following a bizarre 4-1 loss on Saturday in which the Lions outshot Columbus Crew SC 20-8 but had major failings at both ends of the field.
“Just very disappointed,” he said. “It was a completely different effort and result tonight. It’s important to see how we react and what we can do for next week. Now I am just looking forward.
“I think the pressure [on us] would have been high, even if we could have got a win, as this is going to be a tight race right to the end, so it doesn’t change things too much. Going to D.C. next week, we might have been thinking a draw would be good enough, whereas now we have to pick up all three points, but that could work for us.”
Kreis pinpointed several key breakdowns in his reshuffled lineup that contributed to the Lions being 3-0 down at halftime, with Tommy Redding and Seb Hines coming into central defense for David Mateos and Jose Aja, who were out with suspension and injury respectively, while young midfielder Tony Rocha replaced the injured Antonio Nocerino.
Despite Orlando creating more chances, they were chasing shadows at times defensively, due to a combination of poor defending and surgical finishing from Crew SC.
Through balls out of the midfield created mismatches that led to Ethan Finlay's opener in the 6th minute and the first of Ola Kamara's two goals in the 44th, and Hines headed a corner kick into his own net in the 22nd minute as well. Still, Kreis refused to put all the responsibility on his makeshift back line.
“I don’t think it was much to do with the back four, but it was how we positioned ourselves and needed to show more urgency to get the ball back,” he said. “We were only pressing 80 percent in the first half and, when you do that, it’s worse than not pressing at all as it creates gaps – and once they got to our back four, there were some issues.
“When you have to make a change that affects both of your center backs and your holding midfielder, and when they haven’t played for a few weeks, you are always looking at some problems there, but I’m not going to judge people on just one game.”
Cyle Larin served up a small measure of consolation in the 79th minute with his 14th goal of the season – just three short of his rookie record tally from 2015 – and insisted he was still improving and looking for more.
“I am getting my head up quicker and controlling the ball quicker, so there were some good things,” Larin said. “I hadn’t scored in three games, so it was good to get one and hopefully I can [beat last year’s tally]. But it will take a full team effort to get those goals and, ultimately, the more important thing is reaching the playoffs.
“Everyone was on a different page tonight for those three goals [in the first half], but in the second half things worked better and we created chances. We just needed one to go in a bit sooner.”
