A year to the day that the Los Angeles Football Club claimed its first MLS Cup, the defending league champions can produce another postseason milestone.
Playing for an MLS-record 50th time in a calendar year on Sunday, LAFC can close out the Vancouver Whitecaps FC in the best-of-3, opening-round series and advance to the single-elimination portion of the playoffs with a win.
Awaiting a third consecutive meeting with Vancouver, which finished the regular season seeded sixth in the West, LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo would be lying if he said he didn’t prefer to play someone else. But, he noted, “the job’s not done so we’re not tired of them.”
Preventing Vancouver from leveling the series and returning to BMO Stadium four days later for the deciding match is top of mind, said LAFC defender Ryan Hollingshead, fresh off scoring a brace in the Game 1 victory.
“You know what’s crazy?” noted the 2023 MLS All-Star, who boasts the second-most regular-season goals for an MLS defender since 2010. “You want to be tired of it because it’s three games in a row, and it’s like going back up the turf, back up to Vancouver, but in the playoffs things can just change so quickly that you don’t have the ability to take a game lightly or get exhausted talking about it.
“The game is too unpredictable to let up to be like, ‘Oh, it’s Vancouver again, we know what to do.’ No, we’re doubling down. We’re watching all the film. We’re recommitting to everything we want to do. Too much is on the line to be in that mindset.”
Not lost in that has been the reality of the season after taking the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup. Without time to reflect while racing from one competition to the next in 2023, and little space to regroup over the long haul of the year, the past 12 months have felt like a sprint and a marathon, with the theme so far being second best at the tape.
Describing Nov. 5, 2022 to Nov. 5, 2023, “it’s hard to give it one word,” Hollingshead mused, “but the word would be ‘almost.’”
Pointing to many moments of success, Cherundolo described the period as an “overwhelmingly positive” time for the club’s business and sporting endeavors.
“I would love for everybody, here at LAFC – I can speak for those on the coaching staff, we’ll do it – to sit back and kind of review the last two years, because it has gone by too fast,” the coach said. “After this season is finished – hopefully the second week in December.”
A return trip to the MLS Cup final can’t happen, of course, without beating the Whitecaps once more.
After losing four consecutive matches in Vancouver, LAFC won and drew during their two trips to British Columbia this year. The Whitecaps lost only twice in 17 home games since April 5, when they fell to LAFC in a CONCACAF Champions League match.
Needing what Vancouver head coach Vanni Sartini described as a perfect performance to beat LAFC, the hosts will open the upper bowl at BC Place for the first time in their 10-year MLS existence, pushing capacity from fewer than 30,000 to more than 50,000.
“I’m not sure they’re in complete control of what happens if we are on our game,” Cherundolo said. “So if we’re performing to our ability at 100%, then I’m not sure that it matters what Vancouver does.”
LAFC AT VANCOUVER
When: Sunday, 4:30 p.m. PT
Where: BC Place, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
TV/Radio: Apple TV+ (MLS Season Pass), FS1, FS2/710 AM, 980 AM
