Orlando City did what it needed to against one of the East’s weakest sides on Saturday night, beating DC United 4-1 at Inter.Co Stadium. The Lions scored in the 15th and 22nd minutes, added a third early in the second half and finished with a fourth in the 90th. DC pulled one back just before halftime but never threatened a comeback. Orlando held 60 percent of the ball and put six shots on target to DC’s four, a comfortable result against a team sitting 13th in the conference.

The win matters because of where it leaves the Lions. Orlando is 12-13-5 with 41 points, seventh in the Eastern Conference with four matches left. Nine teams per conference qualify for the playoffs, so Orlando is inside the bracket right now, with the New York Red Bulls eighth on 36 points, five back. A home playoff game, which goes to the top four, is a longer shot. Chicago holds fourth with 48 points, seven clear of the Lions.

The schedule offers a chance to close that gap. Orlando hosts New York City FC this Saturday, then travels to Chicago on Wednesday and Charlotte on October 31, two of the clubs directly ahead of it. The regular season ends at home against New England on November 7. Those road trips could decide both Orlando’s seeding and how comfortable its position is. The Lions’ goal difference of minus-12 is a reminder that the early-season damage hasn’t been fully undone.

None of this looked likely in the spring. Orlando was 12th in the East after 15 matches and had conceded more goals than any team in the league, and it was still without a permanent manager after Oscar Pareja was sacked in March. Then Antoine Griezmann arrived.

The French World Cup winner officially joined from Atlético Madrid in June and made an immediate impact. He scored on his MLS debut in a 4-0 win over San Jose, the 300th club goal of his career. That win lifted Orlando to tenth in the East with 17 points. They now have 41, a gain of 24 points in about 14 matches. By mid-September Griezmann had eight goals and three assists in his first ten games, and the club noted five straight matches with a goal during that run.

His influence goes beyond his own numbers. Before he arrived, Orlando allowed a league-worst 2.87 goals per game through its first 15 matches. In the ten games after, it allowed about one per game, the sixth-best mark in MLS over that stretch. A defensive turnaround that sharp can’t be credited to one forward. But a team with a World Cup winner leading the line tends to defend from a better position, with more of the ball and fewer scrambles.

MLS’s own coverage also credited 19-year-old homegrown forward Justin Ellis, who has racked up assists by taking advantage of the space Griezmann creates. That is the clearest sign of what a star signing can do: he improves the players around him as well as his own totals. Orlando’s attack has more options because defenders now have to account for Griezmann, and the teenagers and wingers around him are getting cleaner looks.

The Lions still have work to do. A seventh-place finish would mean a road playoff game, and a team that conceded as freely as Orlando did in the first half of the year won’t have much margin for error in a short series. But a few months ago a playoff berth looked unlikely, and a four-goal win over DC United now keeps the Lions in the race. With Griezmann under contract through the 2027-28 season, with an option for another year, Orlando’s recovery may be the start of something longer.