Injuries and suspensions are a part of life in soccer and Orlando City has been no stranger to that over the last few weeks. As the team headed on the road last weekend, Jason Kreis had to piece together a starting lineup, but it worked out as the team emerged with three points from a 2-1 victory.
“The whole week, we were just trying to make a decision,” said Kreis following the match in D.C. “That’s the way we’re going to be, that’s the way we’re going to operate now when we make decisions on lineups until we feel like we have to. We can train and we competed and laid it out there for the guys and we went through the guys that we thought earned it throughout the game.”
One of the players who got the nod to start with Giles Barnes — and he made an impact almost immediately finding Dom Dwyer with a key pass in the box who promptly feed a low cross to Cyle Larin for the opening goal.
“It was fantastic,” Dom Dwyer said of the altered lineup. “We started very lively, we got ahead of them in the game and obviously we held on to the lead.”
While City came out of the match with the win, they also find themselves with more lineup drama heading into this weekend’s match in Atlanta. Seb Hines and Servando Carrasco will both be unavailable after receiving red cards in D.C. and José Aja and Kaká will sit due to yellow card accumulation.
“In thinking about the lineup we put out next week, I think we’ll be okay,” said Jason Kreis. “I think we’ve got plenty of guys that can step in and do jobs and we’ll rely on those players to do it and I think we’ll be okay.”
The ‘next man up’ policy will be in full effect this weekend and City looks prepared to handle that challenge.
“Luckily, we’ve got a deep squad,” said Dwyer. “We’ll fill those gaps and look forward to the next game.”
