Sports Lowdown

The Orlando City Soccer Club got their season off to a 2-0 start, beating the Philadelphia Union Saturday night at Orlando City Stadium. Cyle Larin scored in the 39 th minute and broke a 1-1 tie in the 73 rd minute, giving the Lions a big three points. They now have a game in hand on the rest of the Eastern Conference, with their game in New England on March 12, being postponed. They will play that game in September. Orlando City (2-0) dominated in their third of the field in the first half, backing the Philadelphia defense up for much of the first half hour. Philadelphia came within inches of gifting the Lions a goal in the 20 th minute when José Aja drove a long ball toward the Union goal, that was headed backwards by Oguchi Onyewu and went off the Union crossbar. Larin’s first goal came about 20 minutes later, on a great cross pass from Carlos Rivas , who found Larin and he was able to push it home from point blank range. As you would expect, the 25,527 support...

The Orlando City Lions Soccer Club christened their new stadium with a 1-0 win over NYCFC last Sunday, in the 2017 season opener for both clubs. These two teams met in the opener of the 2015 season, when both were expansion teams. Orlando City coach Jason Kreis was on the opposite sideline that day, which ended in a 1-1 draw. Sunday’s game saw only one goal scored and that was enough to give Orlando City their first win in an opener on their third try. “Extremely happy to give the fans something to be excited about,” said Kreis in his post-game press conference . This crowd was absolutely fantastic, this day was fantastic, the field was great. The level of work and commitment and togetherness by our team was off the charts.” Cyle Larin scored in the 15th-minute, getting a nice feed from off a left-wing feed from Orlando new-comer signed Giles Barnes . That goal stood up, despite the NYCFC dominating possession for much of the game. Barnes had just come in as a rep...