Orange County SC fall 1-0 to Hamburg in friendly

A swansong for 2022 and several OCSC players.

Orange County SC played their first international friendly in front of a crowd on Tuesday, with over 4,100 announced in attendance at Championship Soccer Stadium. In the end, OCSC lost 1-0 to their guests, German second division side Hamburger SV.

Ransford-Yeboah Königsdörffer scored the game’s only goal, shortly before halftime, for Hamburg, and while it was very much a friendly, the teams were pretty competitive on the night.

Orange County’s squad featured several players playing their final game for the club: Michael Orozco, Mikko Kuningas, Sean “Ugo” Okoli, Patrick Rakovsky and Erick “Cubo” Torres. This was also the final match on the squad for Tommy McCabe.

Meanwhile, the club used seven academy players in their first-ever action with the OCSC first team, and two trialists saw action in the 2nd half of the match.

Full lineup info, as provided by the club:

Patrick Rakovsky (C) (GK) (Colin Shutler 50’); Mikko Kuningas (Seth Casiple 45’), Brent Richards (Solomon Hwang 83’), Ashton Miles (Trialist #2 70’), Alex Villanueva (Oscar Trujillo 78’); Dillon Powers (Brady Elliott 83’), Kyle Scott (Jonathan Gomez 78’), Brian Iloski (Ali Almaliki 78’), Bryce Jamison (Nico Ruiz 67’); Milan Iloski (Diego Orosco 83’), Korede Osundina (Trialist #1 46’)

All in all, it was a nice occasion to wrap up the year, and while friendlies of this sort don’t normally come at year’s end, it’s a nice way to cap off the year for the club and have an exhibition without worrying about fixture congestion or being “distracted” during the season. Will we see it again in the future? We’ll see, but it’s an interesting idea moving forward.

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