"Top three in the country": Luiz Muzzi on the meteoric rise of Orlando City's academy | OneFootball

To the naked eye, at least, Orlando City's current roster looks alarmingly light as we fast approach the new season.

Nowhere is this more evident than in defence, where the only players at all proven in Major League Soccer are David Brekalo and Maxime Crépeau, who's barely played over the past two years.

But, for one good reason, things aren't as bleak as they may seem. Yes, we may have let three right-backs depart in quick succession this winter, but I - like a lot of fellow fans - have full faith in the likes of Zakaria Taifi to come good in what looks set to be their first taste of consistent senior minutes.

That confidence is all down to the abundance of talent in our current academy set-up. Less than a year ago our academy lifted the prestigious Generation adidas Cup, with three of these young stars - Justin Ellis, Gustavo Caraballo, and Colin Guske - appearing for Óscar Pareja's senior side since then.

But this wasn't always the case. Essentially left to rot as a separate organisation from the first-team, it's taken massive investment and an even greater culture shift to right the ship. Looking back, the double appointment of Ricardo Moreira and then Luiz Muzzi in 2018 was the major turning point, and last week I had the opportunity to speak to the latter following his recent departure from the organisation after a storied seven-year spell.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

"We had a big turnaround with the academy," said Muzzi. "When we came in, the academy was a hundred percent not ‘Orlando City’. They were at Montverde [Academy], a private academy, and all of the academy teams were completely out of the actual Orlando City structure. For somebody [addressing me] that grew up with the game in the United Kingdom, it's like... 'How? How can that be? How is that possible?’ And it was a big change.”

The move from Montverde Academy to a state-of-the-art complex in Kissimmee in 2020 was the breakthrough the club so dearly needed. Advocated for by then-chief of youth development, Marcelo Neveleff, and his eventual successor, Javier Carrillo, the new facility allowed the senior side and the academy to be housed under the same roof for the very first time.

The results speak for themselves. Numerous academy products participated and starred in our victorious Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup run in 2022, and no less than seven enjoyed senior minutes at some point throughout last season.

The 'Purple Pipeline'

“You see, the academy that we came from - if you mentioned Orlando City’s academy [back then] you would be laughed at in the street - to what I can say today is, I would put [our] academy in the top three in the country," added Muzzi. "I think, for example, I came from [FC] Dallas, but today I think Orlando City has surpassed Dallas already in the academy space. I think, of course, Philadelphia [Union] do a great job with player development, all of that. But if you look at all the players in the academy teams, it's amazing the work done in the academy and how far we came. And when you see guys like Alex Freeman and [Colin] Guske and all these guys coming through the pipeline, and you're going to see more coming up.”

We certainly need them to. Moreira's first off-season at the top of the food chain has been nothing short of a baptism of fire, so much so that less than two weeks from our season opener Pareja is able to call upon just one goalkeeper, one centre-back, four midfielders, three wingers, and one striker who boast anything more than a handful of minutes at this level.

It's a precarious situation to be in. But if just one club in this league has the young talent at hand to turn such adversity into opportunity, then it's Orlando.

“What good is it if you have an academy and those players have no chance to play at all? [...] Having that academy is not only a business, but it’s also something with the community, the local community. That you can look at those guys and say, ‘He’s one of us. He was here. He played with my son in high school and middle school [...] But then some clubs [in Major League Soccer] don’t have that. Everybody’s different, everybody has a different philosophy, a different strategy.”