Orlando City searching for better effort vs. Revolution (Sep 27, 2017)
The playoffs are pretty much out of reach for Orlando City, head coach Jason Kreis acknowledged this week.
But the team, which hosts New England on Wednesday at Orlando City Stadium, still has plenty to play for, he said.
After Sunday's short-handed, 3-0 loss at Portland, Kreis said his team's postseason hopes "look really grim."
The Lions (9-13-8) are 10th of 11 Eastern Conference teams and trail the sixth-place New York Red Bulls by seven points with four games remaining.
"That doesn't change the fact that we'll put out our best team and we go for three points every match," Kreis told the Orlando Sentinel. "It's important the players recognize what's at stake now."
Kreis didn't get that effort on Sunday.
"I do feel that the team lacked the energy needed to pull off a result in a difficult place like this," Kreis told the newspaper. "We had a good week of work. We came out here a day early in an effort to have our players adjust to the time zone, and we had a really good training yesterday. I fully expected this to be a really strong performance today, and what I saw was exactly the opposite.
"Our guys didn't show up to compete tonight. Incredible to me, incredible ... that they came into what I think was arguably the most important game of the season tonight and didn't give their best."
On Wednesday, Orlando City will be without center back Jonathan Spector and backup left back Victor Giro, who are suspended after being sent off with red cards in the loss.
The Lions will also be without two midfielders.
Cristian Higuita is nursing a sore calf, and Will Johnson is suspended after being charged with domestic violence earlier this month.
Orlando, in its third season in MLS, is in danger of recording its worst finish. The team was 12-14-8 and finished seventh of 10 teams in 2015, its first year in the league. Last year, the Lions finished in eighth place at 9-11-14.
The outlook for New England isn't quite so cloudy.
The Revolution (11-14-5, eighth place) has work to do, but comes to Orlando on a high after beating Toronto FC, the league's best team, 2-1 over the weekend.
After the teams played a scoreless 80 minutes, Lee Nguyen and Kei Kamara struck for New England to pull out the win.
"They're a good team, and there were difficult moments in that game where we had to defend," Revolution interim coach Tom Soehn told the Boston Globe. "Those are the special moments, and on the road, you're going to see a lot more of those.
"Fighting through those moments is what makes good teams, and that's what we have to do a better job of."
New England trails the Red Bulls by four points and seventh-place Montreal by one.
But before that, the worst road team in MLS (0-12-3) has to figure out how to win away from home.
"We're going to have to roll up our sleeves," New England goalkeeper Cody Cropper told the Boston Globe. "It's an away game. Everybody knows we haven't won on the road, so it's going to be a dogfight."
On Saturday, Orlando hosts FC Dallas, while the Revolution hosts Atlanta United, looking for revenge for an embarrassing 7-0 thrashing in Atlanta on Sept. 13.
