1-0 home win over Nashville Saturday was 2nd in a row after World Cup break
Orlando City’s newest addition Antoine Griezmann did not disappoint, delivering two wins in the last two games. (Photo/Mario Casamalhuapa)
The rain came first. Then the crowd. Then Antoine Griezmann's name, over and over, loud enough to fill a sold-out stadium that had been waiting months to say it out loud.
Kickoff at Inter.Co Stadium didn't come until 8:46 p.m. Saturday, pushed back by weather. Nobody left. What they stayed for was Orlando City 1, Nashville 0 — a scoreline that reads modest and wasn't.
Nashville arrived in first place in the Eastern Conference with 39 points, having conceded just 12 goals all season. Nashville had already beaten Orlando 5-0 back in March. On paper, this was supposed to be the night the Lions got run over again.
Orlando was the aggressor instead.
The Lions outshot the conference leaders 12-7 and put four shots on target to Nashville's two. They created two big chances to Nashville's one. They did not hold more of the ball — Nashville edged possession 52-48 — but they did more with what they had, and when the match finally cracked, they were the team ready for it.
The crack came in the 72nd minute. It belonged to Tyrese Spicer. The setup belonged to Justin Ellis.
"I know Justin likes to dribble, so I thought I'd give him the ball and run into space," Spicer said. "I knew he was going to cut inside, and I was just waiting for it. As soon as I got the ball, I knew I had to score. After that, it was just muscle memory."
Ellis cut inside. The ball came. Spicer's left-footed finish from the left side of the box went low into the bottom corner. He had been on the field 19 minutes, on for Tiago in the 53rd.
Ellis earned that ending. He took six shots, put three on target and led every player on the field in expected goals at 0.37 — a number that says he should have scored himself. Nashville goalkeeper Brian Schwake is the reason he didn't. Schwake stopped Ellis's close-range header off a Griezmann cross in the 15th minute, saved his right-footed shot from the center of the box in the 35th, and pushed away a left-footed strike from outside the area in first-half stoppage time. Three saves, all of them on Ellis.
Spicer, who benefited from Ellis's work more than anyone in the building, didn't hedge afterward.
"He has a lot of confidence in himself and trusts his ability," Spicer said. "I think he can go to Europe easily. He just needs to stay humble and keep working."
Then there was Griezmann.
Saturday was the 2018 World Cup winner's first official match at Inter.Co Stadium, and the building treated it accordingly. He didn't score. He didn't register an assist. He touched the ball 81 times, more than any player in purple, and led the match with 0.45 expected assists. Nashville had to account for him every time Orlando moved forward, and that accounting is what kept opening the lanes Ellis ran into.
"What stands out to me is the effort from the entire group from the first minute to the last," Griezmann said through an interpreter. "We played a very good team today, and they caused us problems at times, especially with their strong defense. But I'm very happy with the goal from Justin and Tyrese."
The noise stayed with him.
"The atmosphere was fantastic," Griezmann said. "We need that energy during the difficult moments in a game, and it was amazing for us today."
Interim head coach Martín Perelman heard the same thing from the sideline.
"Highlight the effort of our players and highlight the support of our people," Perelman said. "Today they brought an amazing energy to the stadium, they filled the stadium."
He was careful about where the credit belonged. "We, coaches, can do many tactics, but at the end of the day, the protagonists are the players," Perelman said.
The effort without the ball is the part of this that has actually changed. Nashville won seven corners to Orlando's two and pushed hardest through Andy Nájar down the right, who set up the two best looks the visitors managed all night. Maxime Crépeau saved both — Alex Muyl's shot from the center of the box in the 42nd minute, Shak Mohammed's from the same area in the 63rd — and walked off with a clean sheet.
That is the number worth sitting with. Orlando conceded 44 goals in its first 15 league matches this season. It has now played two straight without allowing one. The shutouts at San Jose and against Nashville are Orlando's only two in MLS play all year, and they arrived three days apart against teams sitting at or near the top of both conferences.
Crépeau is freshly back from a summer that justified his move here. He signed with Orlando ahead of the 2026 season chasing Canada's No. 1 job, and he got it — Jesse Marsch named him the starter on June 4, ending a years-long competition with Dayne St. Clair and calling it the hardest decision of his coaching career. Crépeau started Canada's World Cup opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina at BMO Field, four years after a broken leg cost him the 2022 tournament. He came home and gave Orlando two shutouts in four days.
The other story of Saturday night wore No. 44 and started at left back. Hours before kickoff, Orlando City signed Bernardo Rhein to a first-team contract as a Homegrown Player through the 2027-28 season, with club options for 2028-29 and 2029-30. The 18-year-old, born in São Paulo and raised in Orlando, became the 19th Orlando City Academy product to advance through the club's full development pathway. Then he went out and played 70 solid minutes against the best team in the Eastern Conference.
"Having started in futsal, Bernardo brings flair and intensity to our backline," general manager and sporting director Ricardo Moreira said. "From the Academy to OCB and now the First Team, he has embraced every challenge."
That combination — a World Cup winner drawing the crowds at one end of the roster, an academy kid signing his first pro deal at the other — is the shape of what Orlando is building. Perelman sees it in his substitutions.
"For us, one of the most important things during this training period was to put every single player for Orlando City on the same level," Perelman said.
He needed all of it Saturday. David Brekalo came off injured in the 70th, replaced by Adrián Marín and Iago Teodoro in a reshuffled back line. Ellis limped off in the 85th, replaced by Harvey Sarajian. Wilder Cartagena came on the same minute. None of it changed the shape of the closing 20 minutes.
The schedule doesn't slow down. Orlando travels Saturday to face the New York Red Bulls at Sports Illustrated Stadium — the same team that handed the Lions their first loss of the season back on Feb. 21, a 2-1 result at Inter.Co Stadium. Then the Leagues Cup opens Aug. 5 back home against Monterrey.
Orlando is still 10th. Nothing about Saturday changed that.
What it changed is who this team becomes when the good ones come to town.
Nashville can confirm.
