Alright, I suppose I better address the elephant in the room.
Last night's pre-season scrimmage was nothing short of a disaster. We are now less than a week away from our home opener, and we've somehow just shipped four goals to a team that couldn't find the back of the net for love nor money last season.
But I wasn't there to watch the game. Instead, I'd just arrived home from celebrating Norwich City's win over West Bromwich Albion in the Emirates FA Cup, a result that sent us through to the tournament's fifth round for only the third time in my lifetime.
All of this is to say that I don't want to pretend to know any better than those who did attend, although I can probably hazard a decent guess as to what went so wrong (hint, we literally have no defenders). Rather, I'm returning to my late interview with Luiz Muzzi to hopefully shine some light on one of the more baffling episodes in Orlando City's recent history.
Don't go breaking my heart
"We’re happy to have found an opportunity for him to play in England, an ask he made of the club to accomplish a personal goal of his," wrote Muzzi when Duncan McGuire's dream move to Blackburn Rovers was seemingly confirmed late on 1st February 2024, transfer deadline day across much of Europe. "We’re looking forward to him making the most of his time with Blackburn and will be cheering for him from afar.”
Just a few hours later, though, that dream was to be crushed. Living in England myself, I was among the first to hear that Blackburn had failed to submit the required documentation before the deadline, which meant that the deal was declared null and void and McGuire was to return to Orlando empty-handed.
“Listen, Duncan is a phenomenal person. Phenomenal, right? And of course he wanted to go to Europe. You can't blame the guy. You can't. He had that dream at the time, you know? Did I want to keep him as a player in Orlando? For sure, that was my job. I wanted to keep him [...] I actually had a meeting with Duncan and with Óscar [Pareja]. I said, 'Duncan, don't go. You'll be the guy here. I will make you the guy here, don't go.' He said, 'I need to go. I want to go.' And he went, but that didn't work out."
A spanner in the works
Blackburn's blunder didn't just mean heartbreak for McGuire. It also threw a major spanner in the works for Orlando, who'd began actively pursuing a replacement once a departure looked likely.
“There was interest in Duncan. We're talking about the beginning of the year, the winter window in England, right? [...] We were like, we need to do something, right? We need to be ready if that happens. So [Luis] Muriel was one of the possibilities. We had three or four possibilities there."
I didn't bother asking the identities of these three or four other targets. Mostly because, in all likelihood, they would've made me detest Muriel's time in Orlando even more.
“[It was] like three weeks out from our first game, we needed to move on to one of the other things we had on the table. And Muriel was one of those. And we’re very aggressive, we called [Atalanta] to say we need to get this done right away. We paid more, we increased our offer. And then we got it done, and then Duncan came back.”
What could've been...
“If he had stayed, would we have signed Muriel? [It’s] very difficult to say, I would say probably no. But again, it's one of the things that you [can’t] control, right? How could someone possibly have guessed that [McGuire] would have come back, that the guy didn't press the button there, you know, at Blackburn?”
It's pretty depressing to wonder what could've been if negotiations between Orlando, Atalanta, and Muriel's representatives weren't basically over the line by this point already. Throughout his spell in Central Florida his mammoth salary basically dictated that, irregardless of his totally underwhelming record in front of goal, he was to be one of the first names on the team sheet, which only served to stunt McGuire's development.
But I've done enough moaning about Muriel of late. Instead, we as supporters should all get fully behind McGuire, who I'm convinced is still more than capable of performing in Major Leaguer Soccer once up to full speed.
“He’s had some problems, right? Shoulder problems. But he's such a committed guy. He's such a hard worker and good character and all of that. I mean, even from outside, you wish for his success, right? I want this guy to be successful. So I really hope that he starts the year well and that he can cement that position, that starting position [...] I hope that Duncan is very successful because he deserves it.”