Match report: Orlando City rolls on, beats Philadelphia Union

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After a slow start to the season, the Lions are on a three-game winning streak.

Goals from Dom Dwyer and rookie Chris Mueller ensured Orlando City (3-2-1, 10 points) a 2-0 victory over the Philadelphia Union (1-2-2, 5 points) on Friday night at Talen Energy Stadium.

Dwyer opened the scoring for the Lions in the 39th minute after a ball chipped from Sacha Kljestan connected with the forward to strike the ball past Union goalkeeper Andre Blake. Dwyer’s goal was his fourth in three games for Orlando this season.

Mueller doubled the lead moments before halftime after a solo effort saw the rookie force his way through several Union players to strike the ball past Blake for the 2-0 lead.

RJ Allen, who suffered an undisclosed injury, played 29 minutes before getting substituted for Cristian Higuita. 

The Lions rallied to beat the Portland Timbers last Sunday 3-2 before beating the New York Red Bulls 4-3 on March 31.

Orlando recorded its first shutout victory of the season. The last time the Lions recorded a shutout victory on the road was on June 30, 2017 during a 1-0 win at Real Salt Lake.

Orlando City returns home on April 21 when it hosts the San Jose Earthquakes at Orlando City Stadium at 7:30 p.m.

(Mike Gramajo contributed to this report)


Here’s how the Lions lined up: 

Starting lineup: Joe Bendik; RJ Allen; Lamine Sane, Amro Tarek, Mohamed El-Munir; Yoshimar Yotun, Will Johnson, Sacha Kljestan (c); Chris Mueller, Stefano Pinho, Dom Dwyer.

Lions bench: Earl Edwards Jr.; Donny Toia, Oriol Rosell, Josue Colman, Justin Meram, Cristian Higuita, Dillon Powers.


Notes

  • Orlando coach Jason Kreis deployed similar lineup that played last 10 minutes during last Sunday’s 3-2 win over the Portland Timbers. Mueller and Stefano Pinho were named to the XI as Justin Meram and Josue Colman, who started last game, were named to the bench.
  • Jonathan Spector, who played last game against the Timbers, did not travel with the team after suffering concussion-like symptoms per Jordan Culver’s report. 
  • Scott Sutter, who has a lower body injury, also did not travel with the team: report. 
  • Oriol Rosell made the final 18-man roster ahead of Friday’s game against the Union.

(Photos Courtesy of Greg Carroccio/Philadelphia Union) 


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