This afternoon, Nashville SC and Orlando City SC of Major League Soccer will play a friendly, and you won’t be able to see it. No, that’s not a “the stream drops out for 16 minutes so you miss the goals” inability to watch. The teams are playing behind closed doors, with no stream and no fans in the stadium. We might get a final score, we might hear who the goal-scorers are.
Why?
There’s plenty of justification for teams playing out of the public eye, especially with the regular season fast approaching. Orlando City begins competitive play in six days (hosting DC United at Orlando City Stadium), while NSC heads to Louisville City March 17. Both teams are winding down in their tune-up process. This is Orlando’s final preseason friendly, while it’s Nashville’s last of three against MLS competition (losing 3-1 to Atlanta United and drawing Chicago Fire 0-0 in earlier action. While NSC still has several friendlies, they’re against lower-level (NCAA side Lipscomb and the NPSL’s Chattanooga FC) or equal (FC Cincinnati) programs.
The value in a closed-door friendly is that both teams are able to play 100% game-ready lineups and tactics, without fear of giving away gameplan information before the matches count, or in the case of Orlando, forfeiting plausible deniability if the result is closer than it should be against a USL side. Realistic substitution patterns (and NSC has been preparing for that, playing its starters little more than half an hour against Ottawa Fury Friday), tactical adjustments, and more are on the table, without the fear of looking too good or too bad if things go wrong, or letting DC United and Louisville City know what the finished product is going to look like.
It may seem a little on the paranoid side, but it’s important to keep in mind that at least one closed-door friendly per preseason is standard issue in many sports, including the opportunity for teams to play across competitive levels (though in college basketball, for example, closed-door scrimmages are often between geographically close teams at the same level who aren’t planning to face each other in the regular season).
Is it disappointing that one of just a handful of preseason friendlies takes place outside of the public eye? Certainly: Nashville SC fans are hungry for as many glimpses of their team as they can get. But in order to ensure the best shot from the opponent and keep a little mystery as the run-up to the inaugural USL season winds down, the disappointment is worth the preparation.
Club and Country 