Last season, Head Coach Jason Kreis was able to do a lot in his time with the team. The team narrowly missed the playoffs, just one point behind the 6th place team in the Eastern Conference, and the team started to develop with sharper tactics and better defending. Now, Kreis has had the entire offseason to develop his team. And as they walk into their first days of preseason, Kreis says that the team isn’t just developing their game-- they’re developing their identity.
Kreis said that the team cannot simply pick up where they left off last season. “We’ll start over,” Kreis said. “I don’t think you can be off for the amount of time we’ve been off, which is several months, and pick off where you left off.”
For Kreis, it isn’t just about bringing in talented players like Jonathan Spector and Will Johnson (although that doesn’t hurt). It’s about developing a mentality, an identity for Orlando City. Preseason is the time to do that.
Orlando City's Preseason Schedule
“First and foremost, I believe that we’re gonna be a fitter, stronger, and more tactically astute team,” Kreis said. “And it’s establishing an identity of who Orlando City wants to be. And those are the sort of things you can get when you ask your players to work extremely hard in an offseason, and those are the things you will get when we all work extremely hard together, collectively, in preseason.”
It isn’t going to be easy. As Kreis said, players and staff alike will have to work extremely hard in order to reach the maximum potential of the team. But Kreis said his group is ready to put in the effort.
“We know that we’ve got a lot of work in front us,” Kreis said. “But I believe that we’re all very eager to get to it.”
