The Mane Land PawedCast

Orlando City returns to MLS action Saturday night, but before we get to that, there was a flurry of new signings since our last show. The club only picked up one new player and signed two players already with the club to new deals. We discuss the signings of Yutaro Tsukada, Heine Gikling Bruseth, and Duncan McGuire. The latter feels like the biggest signing of the three, considering he was one inc...

regular season at Sporting Kansas City. The Lions have nothing to hang their heads about after largely outplaying a good Cruz Azul side in a 0-0 home draw Friday. A little bit more lethality in front of goal and Orlando City would have moved on, but instead, the game went to penalties to decide who advanced and for the first time in club history, it was not the Lions after spot kicks. We break dow...

Big thanks to WJ Dog Treats (wjdogtreats.com) for sponsoring the mailbagbox segment of The Mane Land PawedCast. WJ Dog Treats is a small, family-run company of Orlando City fans who are committed to producing healthy, high-quality dog treats with just five ingredients, including their own home-made peanut butter. Give them a try. If you use the code TML at checkout, you'll get a dollar off a bag o...

Big thanks to WJ Dog Treats (wjdogtreats.com) for sponsoring the mailbagbox segment of The Mane Land PawedCast. WJ Dog Treats is a small, family-run company of Orlando City fans who are committed to producing healthy, high-quality dog treats with just five ingredients, including their own home-made peanut butter. Give them a try. If you use the code TML at checkout, you'll get a dollar off a bag o...

Since we already gave our key matchups and score predictions for Orlando City's Leagues Cup match Sunday vs. Atletico San Luis, we took a look at how the Liga MX side lost at CF Montreal on Tuesday, which opens up a lot of options for the Lions to win their group or at least advance, barring an absolutely hellish result. Oh, and we also reiterated our key matchups and score predictions, just for f...

[We want to give a big shout-out to WJ Dog Treats (wjdogtreats.com) for sponsoring the mailbagbox segment of The Mane Land PawedCast. WJ Dog Treats is a small, family-run company of Orlando City fans who are committed to producing healthy, high-quality dog treats with just five ingredients, including their own home-made peanut butter. Give them a try. If you use the code TML at checkout, you'll ge...

fought 1-1 draw at home against New York City FC. Ramiro Enrique kept his goal-scoring streak alive, which is vital with Duncan McGuire in France being an Olympian and all. We break down a defensive battle that took the Lions a while to figure out, look back at our score predictions, and make our selections for Man of the Match. This week's mailbagbox asks about the rules of the game, squad rotati...

Orlando City kept several streaks going Wednesday night as the Lions beat Nashville SC 3-0 on the road. It was the team's fourth consecutive win, the third straight road victory, the seventh game in a row in which the team scored multiple goals (a club record), and the fourth consecutive shutout victory against Nashville. That's a lot of streaking! Ramiro Enrique even kept up his goal-scoring stre...

Orlando City pulled it off! The Lions went to Massachusetts and came home with all three points at the expense of the New England Revolution. We don't much care that Carles Gil didn't play or that the Revs had a lot of injuries. What we mainly care about is getting a damn win finally at Gillette Stadium. Facundo Torres is red hot and we're here for it. It is also helpful that Duncan McGuire's repl...

Orlando City has a tall task ahead if the Lions are going to turn back-to-back wins into a three-game winning streak. As you've probably heard by now (many times), Orlando has never won away at Gillette Stadium, and in fact has only drawn a couple of times, so the big Kraft Single in Foxborough has been a house of horrors for the Lions. That run of poor results has to end some time, even if the La...

The Lions finally won back-to-back games in 2024 and they did it in a big way. Half a season's worth of frustration was taken out on poor D.C. United as Orlando City ran rampant to a 5-0 win that — not even a little bit hyperbolic — could have been worse for the visitors. United went down a player in first-half stoppage time, but by then the damage had been done, as Orlando leapt out to a 3-0 lead...

The Lions went north of the border without backup goalkeeper Javier Otero and fell behind early, but Orlando City came back before halftime and held on for a crucial road victory against a struggling Toronto FC side. We discussed why Otero wasn't with the team and the necessity of signing Carlos Mercado to a short-term contract. It was good to get back in the win column, and to see good contributi...

The Lions headed north to the baseball diamond at Yankee Stadium and things...did not go well. An early goal conceded, a horrific injury to players from both teams that should never have happened, a complete collapse in first-half stoppage time, and a comeback attempt that fell a bit short all combined to not be a very good time for Orlando City fans. The Lions at least kept fighting, even though...

The Lions took on a fresh Chicago Fire team riding a rare hot streak just a couple of days after playing to a disappointing road draw on turf away from home despite having a man advantage for more than half the game. The situation didn't appear poised to produce a season high in goals for the Lions, but that's what happened. Facundo Torres' brace led the way as Orlando City blasted Chicago 4-2. De...

The Lions went to North Carolina, went up a man, scored twice, and all they got was one lousy point. It wasn't an ideal trip to Charlotte but given recent fortunes, Orlando City will no doubt take the point on the road as Oscar Pareja continues searching for a way to get the best out of a team that has underachieved throughout 2024. The performances have been better in some respects, but there are...

We start this episode with a quick announcement that you can hang with your PawedCast hosts on Saturday before the Lions take on the Chicago Fire. That's right. Dave's down from Tallahassee and we'd love to thank you in person for listening to the show and reading our website. Give the episode a listen to find out where we'll be in downtown Orlando from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. Orlando City's...

Orlando City's MLS side was off for the international break over the weekend, so we begin this week's show (the only one this week due to the schedule) with an extended breakdown of Orlando City B's comeback draw against Carolina Core FC. The Young Lions started poorly, fought back to tie the match, appeared to take the lead late, had multiple red cards shown to the bench at the end of normal time...

Orlando City played a solid defensive game on the road against the New York Red Bulls. That's the good news. The bad news is that the anemic offense may have just had its worst performance in the Oscar Pareja era, mustering only four shot attempts and just one weak dribbler on frame. The Red Bulls converted a free kick that shouldn't have been given and that was enough to give the hosts a 1-0 win....

Odd officiating decisions that have gone against Orlando City through the years would make for a fascinating book with a lot of pages in it. The Lions had them in back-to-back weeks after a strange decision not to penalize Federico Navarro for catching Ivan Angulo's leg in front of goal with the goalkeeper out of the way. While that wasn't the only reason Orlando City dropped two points at Soldier...

Orlando City faced the Columbus Crew with a solid plan and it seemed to be working when a penalty was awarded to the Lions late in the first half. However, whenever the Professional Referee Organization gets involved, bad things tend to happen to Orlando, such as a soft foul given at the other end while a foul in the buildup to that foul was not given. The Crew managed to tack one on in the second...

We start this show a little bit differently. One of our founding members, who helped this podcast and the blog that hosts it become independent in 2023 hasn't been around much lately. We touched on why and saluted his contributions and his passion for Orlando City. After that, we dove into a chat about Orlando City's injuries. As of Thursday, Duncan McGuire wasn't fully participating in training,...

Orlando City went out west and did something that the Lions have never done before — beat the Earthquakes in San Jose. Orlando brought home all three points courtesy of a 1-0 win supplied by Jack Lynn's late strike. It was a hard-fought match between a pair of leggy teams that each played counterattacking soccer and yet there were scoring chances for both, rather than the game devolving largely in...

The injured Lionel Messi was a no-show, as the Lions and Herons played to a scoreless draw on Wednesday night, and we aren't sure what we were expecting, but it was not that. Most of the chances seemed to come early in the match, although there were some attacks in the second half for both teams that fizzled just prior to the teams taking a potentially decisive shot. We break down the match for pr...

Orlando City finally got back in the win column after three matches without a victory and it was the new guys who helped the most with that. Luis Muriel scored his first two MLS goals and picked up his first (secondary) MLS assist, while Nico Lodeiro had the primary assist on all three goals in City's 3-2 road win over the Philadelphia Union. Along the way, the Lions had to overcome several close...

Orlando City had a tough enough task waiting on Saturday with a trip to Philadephia to face the Union. That job got even more difficult given the news that fullbacks Dagur Dan Thorhallsson is in concussion protocol and Rafael Santos didn't train Thursday. We break down Oscar Pareja's options and talk more in depth about the likelier ones. Without the Rodrigo Schlegel red card, a three-man back lin...