After its second two-week break in the month of May, Orlando City B returns to action on Saturday for its second match of the season against the Charlotte Independence.

May 25, 2017 at Sylvan Lake Park

Availability: HC Anthony Pulis, DF Zach Carroll

HC Anthony Pulis

Orlando City B will play its first game in two weeks on Saturday. This is the second two-week break of the month.

Well, it’s been a strange month, obviously, only having two games in the whole month of May. Not ideal. The positives of that are we do get a lot of good, quality training time with the guys, which has been good, but, having said that, I think everybody’s always itching to get into a rhythm of playing games again. We had a really good performance, really good result last time out at [Cincinnati], and then when you do that, you kinda wanna get into a rhythm and carry that on straight away. Wasn’t to be. Boys have trained really well, and we’re really looking forward to the game on Saturday.

Pulis has had his team working on attacking play because of the way his team has played defensively lately. In the past three matches, the United Soccer League Lions have three clean sheets.

We’ve worked a little bit more on our attacking play, I would say, ‘cus I felt like we—I sound like a broken record a little bit—we have been defending well. And we created some really good opportunities on the counterattack at Cincinnati and just our decision-making in the final third, final pass, final shot, kinda like little bit of cutting edge that you need in the final third. So we’ve spent a little bit of time on that, and we’re gonna go through some more kinda scenarios in that mode today to try and prepare us as best we can for Saturday.

For Pulis, it’s important players are completely understanding what he’s coaching.

Well the tricky thing, as always, with this group is training personnel, training numbers change day to day dependent on what the MLS team needs, of course. But it’s been good because you can kind of almost—we can go back and revisit areas that you go through in detail and preseason, and I know said this two weeks ago, but you’re kind of reinforcing ideas, and I’m a big believer in going through things in detail, time after time after time because I think the mistake that you can make sometimes as a coach is presuming the players understand and know exactly what you want and kinda just papering over cracks, and I’m a big believer in going through detail and making sure that they really do understand because we’re still early in the season. What, we’re a third of the way through. So we still got an awful long way to go, and it’s important that the guys really understand exactly how we want to defend, how we want to attack and those kind of things.

Right-back Rafael Ramos is expected to play 90 minutes with OCB on Saturday.

Yes, definitely. As far as I’m aware, Rafa will be with us, and the plan is to give him 90 minutes. He did really well for us in the 75 minutes at Cincinnati. So I’m confident that he can get through 90 minutes against Charlotte on Saturday, and that puts him back into contention for Jason’s team.

For Pulis, Saturday’s game against Charlotte will be one between two confident teams.

They’re a really dangerous team. They pass the ball really well. They’ve got a good attacking shape. They got dangerous players in forward areas. Their front four rotate and move freely, so it’ll be a test for us defensively. We’ve played against them a number of times, now, over the last couple years, so we kinda know what they’re about. I’m sure they know what we’re about, and they’re coming off the back of a really good victory. They won 5-1 against Red Bull II in their last game, so I’m sure they’ll be full of confidence, but we’re in the same kind of boat as well.

Pulis sees a benefit in having played a team once already this season.

It is a benefit because we go through the video in detail, so you know exactly how they’re gonna play. You know what the individuals are capable of, and we’ve obviously re-visited the last three or four league games they’ve played as well. So, yeah, it is a help, but, I mean, it’ll be exactly the same for them. I’m sure they’ll know how we wanna play. The only different thing for us is they probably won’t know the personnel that we’re gonna play ‘cus, obviously, we’re an MLS-affiliated team, and the team changes so much week to week.

OCB is 2-0-2 in its last four matches. For Pulis, latching onto that momentum after a two-week break is dependent upon the team’s attitude in training.

Well a lot of it comes down to the mentality and the approach that the players bring to training every day. And the mentality and the approach and the intensity of the training sessions have been fantastic, and that’s always your worry a little bit as a coach ‘cus I think sometimes you worry that players are not going through the motions but maybe not approaching training the same way because there’s not a game at the end of the week. So, as a coaching staff, we made sure we made a real conscious effort of making sure training was real-high quality, real-high intensity last week, and it’s been the same this week. So, we’re looking forward to the game for sure.

DF Zach Carroll

For Carroll, the second two-week break in the month of May “sucks.”

To be honest, it sucks. We had the two weeks off and then the game against [Cincinnati] and then another two weeks off, so, you know, we’re kinda sick and tired of kicking each other in practice. So, it’ll be nice to finally play an opposing team finally.

When asked about the problems Charlotte presents, Carroll singled out midfielders Alex Martinez and Enzo Martinez.

They have a good front two in the Martinez brothers. So, you know, we’re gonna have to game plan for them. But, you know, we tied them last time, so it’s definitely gonna be a game where we want a little bit of payback for that.

Carroll sees his team’s success over the past four matches carrying over into training, which then, ideally, transfers into upcoming matches.

You know, it’s tough ‘cus you get in a groove, and you get some good results, and then you have the time off. But we’ve carried over those results into the training, so, you know, the training’s been great the last two weeks. So it’s just taking what we’ve done in practice and putting it into the game.

Carroll said he doesn’t notice a difference in how Pulis manages the team during these two-week breaks.

You know, not really. We’ll have harder training the first week off and then taper it down for the second week leading up to the game, so it’s been pretty consistent with that. So, not many changes.

For Carroll, it’s easier to play against a team he’s already played against in a season.

I think it’s actually easier. You know, the first time, sometimes, especially with the USL, there’s a lot of turnover with teams, so you’re not really sure who’s gonna be playing—their lineups and stuff. And so the second time around, you’re more familiar with them, and you know ways to beat them, so I think it’s easier for us.

Defense is where Carroll sees OCB has improved the most.