Orlando City B will travel to Red Bull Arena this weekend to face the New York Red Bulls II in their first match of the USL playoffs. The New York Red Bulls II finished first in the USL, but Orlando City B says they don’t feel any added pressure taking on such a difficult opponent.
“I’m going to try to prepare them as best we can this week,” Head Coach Anthony Pulis said. “We know Red Bulls II are a very good team, obviously the stats show that, they’ve won the regular season so we know going there it’s going to be a very difficult game for us. But obviously we’ve been working this week on a game plan and hopefully we can set up well and see if we can go and get a result.”
“The guys have obviously been buzzing to be honest,” Pulis continued. “It was a good weekend for us, positive result, you get in the playoffs and everybody’s in good spirits for sure.”
Despite their good performance in the regular season, Orlando City B knows that the New York Red Bulls II have their weaknesses. In the playoffs, anything can happen--anyone can win.
“Going into this game, New York are favorites, we’re the underdogs going into the game with the season New York have had and rightly so, they’ve been excellent all season but it’s the playoffs,” Lewis Neal said. “Anybody can win on any given day in the playoffs so we’re going in there quietly confident. I’m sure they’re feeling the same way and I just tell the boys that playoffs is playoffs, it’s a one-off game and anything can happen and we’ve got to go out there and stick to our gameplan and like I said, we’re going there to try and win the game.”
But does Orlando City B feel any extra pressure, going into such an important match against the best team in the league?
“No, no pressure,” Jonathan Mendoza said after training this week. “It’s just we’re going there, we’re going to play football and you have to have fun playing football. We’re just going to enjoy.”
