Sports

Orlando City Draws 3-3 in Must Win Against New England

(Photo by Alex Menendez/Getty Images)

Orlando City (7-14-2, 23 points) was literally fighting for their 2018 playoff lives as they faced the New England Revolution (7-7-8, 29 points) at Orlando City Stadium Saturday night. Orlando City managed a 3-3 draw against New England in front of a crowd of 23.979 fans.

“When you look at how the game played out, you have to come away and think, ‘Okay, 2-nil down, you get back into it.’ 3-2 down, you manage to get an equalizer late. You need to certainly look at it as very encouraging, both from a character standpoint with the fact that we’re able to get something out of it,” Lions head coach James O’Connor said. ”But when you look at the supporters, when you look at the atmosphere the second half, the way the supporters kept chanting, kept pushing, kept driving us on, massive, massive thank-you to the supporters tonight because I think they’ve really helped us to come back into the game and get that point.”
New England opened the match scoring with a goal off of a throw in ball by Brandon Bye that was headed by Juan Agudelo that rolled past Edwards for a goal in the 7th min. The Revolution scored again in the 18th min when Christian Penila took a bad pass from Orlando’s Shane O’Neill for a shot into the goal.”

Orlando City managed to make it a game with a score in the 45th minute when Dom Dwyer redirected a cross by Tony Rocha. It was Dwyer’s 10th goal of the season.

In the 37th minute, Sahsa Kljistian was injured after a collision with New England’ Brandon Bye. Kljestian was helped off of the field and tried to finish the half but had to be substituted out for Josue Coleman.

Orlando equalled the score to 2-2 in the 71st minute when Yoshimar Yotún curled  a free kick in for Amro Tarek, whose header hit the post, deflected off New England goalkeeper Matt Turner and into the net. It was Tarek’s first goal as a Lion.

New England regained the lead five minutes later when Teal Bunbury scored two minutes after coming on, taking the core to 3-2.

The Lions equalized in stoppage time on another indirect free kick. This time, Yotún curled the ball in for Scott Sutter, who headed in his first goal of the season.

“It’s good that we got a point so late.” Said Sutter “Obviously we’re all disappointed because we wanted more from the game. I think the will is there, I think the movement is there, I think the chances that we create are there.”

City was reduced to 10 men in second-half stoppage time when Yotún was shown a straight red card after Video Review.

The Lions visit D.C. United on Sunday, Aug. 12, at 8 p.m. ET at Audi Field, before returning to Orlando City Stadium to host Atlanta United FC on Friday, Aug. 24.

 

 

 

 

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