"The club is in great hands": Luiz Muzzi on Ricardo Moreira's inaugural off-season at the helm | OneFootball

Your highest-paid player publicly twerking for a move away? Check. Your top goalkeeping target fleeing a deal at the eleventh hour in favour of a move elsewhere? Also check. Your marquee defensive addition getting himself crocked just as a deal was to be agreed? You betcha.

Incredibly, that barely scratches the surface of Ricardo Moreira's chaotic inaugural off-season at the top of the recruitment food chain. It's no wonder, then, that just days before the season opener, Orlando City's roster is looking pretty bare.

I get it, it's frustrating, but nobody I'm sure will be more frustrated at this rollercoaster of an off-season than the new man in charge himself.

Football fans are fickle by nature, but luckily Luiz Muzzi was on hand to talk some sense into me when I had the opportunity to quiz him on the complexities of the sporting director role last week.

Slow and steady wins the race?

“We're still three weeks out, the window is still open until end of March. Even after we start [the season], we still have the window open. So again, I know that nobody wants to lose games, but in this league it's not about how you start. It's how you finish. The three points now against New York Red Bulls in that first game of the season, they're not [worth] the same three points as the last game of the season in this league, right?”

Alright, maybe I object to that last bit. Dreadful starts to league play in both 2023 and 2024 cost us dearly in the race for the Supporters' Shield no matter how well we crossed the line, and when we've been so far incapable of producing in those winner-takes-all, end-of-season showdowns, you can't sniff at any opportunity to challenge for silverware.

But I do really admire Moreira's ambition this winter. He's been more than happy to let some big names leave, and he's replaced them with the profile of player - see the three young Brazilians - that fits his ultimate vision for the team.

“You have to make some difficult decisions, some unpopular decisions, like when Pedro [Gallese] left, like when César Araújo left, when all these guys had to leave. When we had to sell Facundo [Torres]. You're always having those cycles. I think that right now is a moment that, it's not ‘restarting’ because you have a very good thing in place, right? But you also have to make sure that you give space to the young kids.”

What doesn't kill you...

“I’ll say that all of [these] transfers that are happening now, a lot of things we already talked [about] way before. Braian Ojeda, we talked about him last year. Luiz Otávio, we’d been scouting for a long time. You know, Iago [Teodoro], we talked about Iago at length before. So these things don't happen overnight.”

I shouldn't really have needed the reassurance that, as professionals, those employed at the club do their very best to map out every eventuality months, if not seasons, in advance. But, in football, there are some things that you just can't plan for.

“[The deal for Carlos Coronel] was all done. It was all done. And he then decides to go to Brazil. What do you do? But you see how quickly [Moreira] pivoted out of that and got somebody else.”

I must say, of all the trials and tribulations to front our fresh-faced sporting director this winter, the swiftness with which he nailed down the next best thing as his goalkeeper-to-be went radio silent wowed me the most. And who knows? Of the pair, Maxime Crépeau is the only one not to ship five goals at once in Orlando, so he's got every chance of ending up the wiser addition after all.

“I think that Ricardo is trying to put his own imprint on the team. That doesn't happen overnight. He's going to need a few windows to get there [...] I think the club’s in good hands. I think that there may be some growing pains, but there’s some very good pieces of the puzzle already here in Orlando. I’m sure that there’s going to be more, I’m sure that Ricardo is not done yet.”