Soccer Art and Luca Orellano
A deeper dive into what Orellano's future in Orange and Blue might look like
All data from FBref unless otherwise noted.
Note: there’s no reaction (or other reference) to the Ian Murphy/Chido Awaziem trade to the Rapids in here. At the time of writing, I think I’ll get to it as part of a larger piece on the transfer window before January. There are sure to be plenty of other takes about it elsewhere, though.
Even with the conclusion of the actual soccer portion of the Major League Soccer season, there likely won’t be much respite from news in the offseason. The nature of the league’s rules require near-constant shifting of roster spots as teams look to improve and utilize available mechanisms to improve themselves. Though the question of Luciano Acosta’s future still looms, FCC’s front office is figuring out what they want the 2025 version of the team to play like on the field.
During his end-of-season press conference, General Manager Chris Albright said, “We spent a lot of the last few weeks as a staff you know myself and and [Director of Scouting] Hunter [Freeman] and [Director of Soccer Strategy] Kyle [McCarthy] and Jeff Larentowicz and the scouts trying to have, you know, soccer art conversations really around what we want to look like, informed by the coaches so all in the same room, because the scouts need to have an idea of kind of where we focus our data, where we focus our eye.”
Presumably, a key piece in these conversations about the next iteration of soccer art was the role of Luca Orellano as a permanent member of FCC. Without getting meditative on soccer aesthetics, Orellano’s arrival on a permanent deal following a successful season on loan in Orange and Blue adds one more foundational piece to how FCC will build its roster in 2025 and beyond.
In 2024, Orellano came to the Queen City to fill an Álvaro Barreal-shaped hole on the field and validated Albright’s just-move-an-Argentinian-winger-to-left-wingback theorem almost immediately. Despite playing most of his season as a wingback (nominally, at least), Orellano’s 10 goals/5 assists on 7.2 expected goals/7.2 expected assists. That’s stellar production from a mostly-defender, even with the caveat that the responsibilities of FCC’s left wingbacks differ from many of their peers across the league.
Orellano’s goal scoring is propped up by two long-distance bombs that, unfortunately, shouldn’t be counted on to be repeated but he demonstrated a consistent ability to be dangerous in the attacking third of the field.
Looking forward to 2025, Orellano’s future seems likely to be exclusively in a more advanced role,. Talking about Orellano and what next season could hold, Albright said, “I think Pat's preference would be to have him higher up the field, whether that's playing as a…forward or a second 10. That's, that's the beauty of his qualities, is that he does have that flexibility.”
Can He Be An Elite Attacker?
Advanced numbers back up Pat Noonan’s desire to push Orellano forward. Despite a limited sample size of just 563 non-wingback minutes1, Orellano’s underlying data suggests he was, and can likely continue to be, an elite MLS attacker. In minutes when he played as an attacking midfielder or striker, Orellano’s 0.35 goals added per 96 minutes would rank among the best in the league, trailing on LA Galaxy’s Riqui Puig who led MLS in G+ in 2024 with 0.39/96.
That Orellano’s 0.12 G+/96 as a wingback would also be the second best number in the league is a testament to how dangerous he was operating in from that position, too.
Drilling down into the data, the explanation is pretty simple. Starting Orellano higher up the field puts him in position to do the things he’s good at, dribbling and passing, mainly, closer to the opponents’ goal while putting him in positions to defend less.
Albright touched on this idea in his press conference. He said, “His [Orellano’s] one-v-one quality really is elite in our league, and allows us to unbalance some teams and so I think we want to kind of push him closer to goal, is the idea. And we've been having a lot of conversations about how what our kind of tactically, how we line up to best accentuate what he does well.”
Though left-footed, Orellano’s offensive impact often came centrally because of his desire to drift inside. In doing so, he largely vacated the parts of the field where Álvaro Barreal did so much damage from in 2022 and 2023. FCC’s strikers, specifically Brandon Vazquez, did lots of damage making near-post runs and feasting on Barreal’s whipped crosses and cutbacks.
Finding a different option to provide width on the left, whether it’s Yamil Asad from left wingback working closely with Acosta, or someone else, Orellano’s future in Orange and Blue seems likely to be as a right-sided 10 or inverted winger coming off the right.
Orellano’s directness with the ball at his feet is obvious and setting him up on the left working back towards the middle of the field is clearly something he’s comfortable doing.
Orellano’s left-footedness off the right causes some issues when he’s looking to pass the ball, however. At Cercle Brugge, Kévin Denkey has shown an ability to find space in the most dangerous areas of the penalty area but he’ll need other FCC players will have to get the ball to him there. Orellano will surely play a big role in that, either doing it himself or opening up space on the right for an overlapping DeAndre Yedlin to deliver the ball to Denkey.
Orellano’s directness and aggression on the ball fits a vision of the Orange and Blue that should thrive on playing in transition more often. His near-goal following a driving run from his own half of the field in playoffs this year serves as a prime example. Marrying a front three that thrives in transition with the more possession-heavy approach Noonan favored last season will certainly be a challenge.
Is that the kind of soccer art Albright and the rest of FCC’s braintrust are debating in their meetings? To me, there’s beauty in a counterattacking sequence that consists of three passes and runs sixty yards down the field before winding up in the back of the net. If FCC leans back towards that direction, they certainly won’t look like peak tiki-taka Barcelona but art (and beauty) are in the eye of the beholder, right?
Something cool I read this week soccer related (or not)
Carlon Carpenter’s article about off-ball movement is awesome. Tracking data is the next step in soccer analytics and this article does a really great job of using it with event data to provide insight into on field play. Plus it’s about the Austrian Bundesliga, a league which I have a big soft spot for.
These numbers are about as precise as I can make them. Opta, and then American Soccer Analysis, determine a player’s general position during a game using a variety of information. It isn’t exact but, in this case, it’s better than nothing.