NYC FC coach Patrick Vieira congratulates Orlando City SC’s Jason Kreis after his team’s 2-1 loss. (Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports)
By Michael Lewis
FrontRowSoccer.com Editor
BRONX — Just about every soccer club in the world has one — a bogey team — a team that keeps getting under a rivals skin and over the score line. A team that confounds its foes and keeps the opposing coach up at night.
New York City FC’s bogey team just happens to be Orlando City SC.
City has beaten the Florida side but once in eight tries. That came back in it the teams’ maiden season when NYCFC secured a 5-3 home victory.
Before and after, it has been an uphill battle. Orlando owns an impressive 5-1-2 mark against City and some observers might say the Lions own City.
After Sunday’s 2-1 win at Yankee Stadium, Orlando City improved its record against NYC FC to 5-1-2. What makes OC’s domination all that more impressive is that both sides entered Major League Soccer as expansion teams in 2015.
While Orlando had Brazilian great Kaka to be proud of and to run the attack, City had three Designated Players of international renown. That included a pair of World Cup champions — Spanish international striker David Villa (2010) and Italian midfielder Andrea Pirlo (2006). And that doesn’t include former England international Frank Lampard, who retired after last season.
Yet, despite the high-priced payroll, Orlando City has dominated the young series.
Hmmm. Perhaps it has to do something with its coach. Jason Kreis directed City during its 2015 maiden season and knows something about Yankee Stadium and even NYCFC head coach Patrick Vieira.
“You won’t find a coach who would be more familiar with this field than me,” he said. “So it’s something that the dimensions and size of it that we will be playing to our strengths.”
Yankee Stadium has the smallest pitch of all MLS stadiums at 110 x 70 yards.
“Obviously, we are very familiar with how Patrick wants to play after watching him in Manchester for four or five months coaching his team there,” Kreis said about his time spent with Manchester City in 2014 preparing for the team’s first MLS season. Manchester City owns NYCFC.
“We did go into the game with a very clear game plan,” he added. I’m not so certain the game plan necessarily was dictating the result. Certainly the players determined the result.”
When asked what NYCFC must do to get over the hump against Orlando City, head coach Patrick Vieira knew what to do.
“We just have to take our chances as well,” he said. “They are a tough team to play against. They are not a nice team to watch play but they are quite efficient. They create not so many chances, but they can finish and they can score goals. They are patient. They have time because they know they have players up front who can make a difference at the right time.
“We lost a little a little bit of our momentum. We created enough chances to win that game or least to take a point. I think we are the only ones to blame. I think we lost today not because they were better. It is because we didn’t take our chances and we didn’t defend well. And that’s why it’s frustrating because I don’t think they are better than us today or when we played them in the first game. In the end we didn’t manage to win and that means we are missing something and that is something that as responsibility as a coach to find out what is missing to improve the team.”
If you thought Kreis was gloating about the win at the stadium, guess again.
“As I’ve been saying for a while, each game that we play against New York City the emotion gets less and less,” said Kreis, whose team is atop the Eastern Conference with a sparkling 5-1-0 record. “The attachment gets less and less to really this week. I didn’t have any extra motivation. It was just about the team have a solid road performance. It was only our second road game.”
