For Orlando City defender Lamine Sane, the expectation at Orlando City Stadium should always be the same.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a struggling expansion side in the visiting dressing room, or one of the league’s most decorated clubs like the LA Galaxy, who visit Orlando on Friday evening (7 pm ET | UniMas, Twitter, MLS LIVE on DAZN in Canada).
“It’s difficult because LA is a good team,” Sane said. “But we play at home. We play at home and we have to win and confirm our victory last Sunday. That’s the most important. Because we lost some points the last two games against Salt Lake and Atlanta. And we have to win at home.”
Orlando snapped out of a three-game losing streak in emphatic fashion in their last match, a 5-1 romp over expansion club FC Cincinnati on Sunday in which Nani and Tesho Akindele each scored a brace.
And there’s probably no better time to face the Galaxy, who have lost four in a row and will be without star forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic again as he serves the back end of a two-game suspension.
Even so, star attacker Nani is leery of his team believing all its problems were fixed in one flattering result.
“I think it’s great to win, but we must understand that we are nothing, we are still very far from where we want to arrive and there’s a lot of work to do.” he said. “So we must stay with our feet on the floor and know we’re going to have a very hard game on Friday.”
Orlando coach James O’Connor believes his squad can enjoy more games like last Sunday’s with some better efficiency in front of goal.
“Our chance creation has been good,” he said. “So for us, I think it’s just making sure we capitalize on those moments. We were able to in the game against Cincinnati, so hopefully we can continue to get the same level of chance creation and then be clinical in our finishing.”
