2022 History

LAFC IN 2022

Following its disappointing 2021 campaign, some observers expected the energy of LAFC’s historic start as an MLS expansion team to wilt. The club had set league records for points and goals and had won the 2019 Supporters’ Shield in addition to numerous individual accolades, but the 2021 season, which saw the Black & Gold miss the playoffs for the first time, appeared to remove the luster from the league’s shiny new object in LA. 

Instead of fading, however, 2022 would provide not only the greatest season in club history to that point, but one of the finest seasons in league history. 

The brightest example was the MLS Cup Final that would end LAFC’s historic 2022 campaign. It was a microcosm of the season as a whole. The club came ever so close to winning its first league championship, only to have the trophy snatched away— then watch it reappear unexpectedly, with only the slimmest chance of victory. In the end LAFC would seize that chance, but it would have to wade through the fire, through an improbable series of events during that epic final, to get there.

STRONG START

When 2022 began, LAFC had just announced that its first and only head coach to that point, Bob Bradley, would not be returning for the season ahead. After an extensive six-week search for Bradley’s replacement, LAFC revealed that it had hired Steve Cherundolo, a former standout fullback for the U.S. Men’s National Team and in the German Bundesliga.

Cherundolo, 42, had no head coaching experience at the first-division level, and was a relative unknown in coaching circles other than for his decorated playing career. He had no MLS experience as a player or a coach. The previous year, Cherundolo’s Las Vegas Lights team had won just six of 29 games in its 2021 USL Championship season. Despite these apparent deficits, the hiring of Cherundolo would prove to be one of the most intelligent and most fruitful personnel moves LAFC had ever made.

Inheriting an LAFC team that had missed the MLS Playoffs for the first time in its four-year history, Cherundolo was tasked with blending the holdovers from that 2021 roster with an incoming crop of MLS free agents – including midfielders Ilie Sánchez and Kellyn Acosta, defender Ryan Hollingshead, and goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau – and shaping that group into something competitive. 

Cherundolo would do more than that in 2022, first by breaking the record for most wins for a first-year head coach in Major League Soccer history, then by becoming the first coach to win the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup in his first season in charge. 

  
NEW FACES 

LAFC’s newly assembled team shot out of the gate and to the top of the table in February. In the summer, the club added two European legends, defender Giorgio Chiellini and forward Gareth Bale (with Carlos Vela, below), bringing experience and world-class quality to an already impressive lineup.

Adversity struck when Chiellini and Bale were forced to miss several games due to injury. LAFC hit a rough patch but Cherundolo and his staff adjusted. By season’s end the team would deploy 32 different starting lineups. LAFC secured the Supporters’ Shield in its final road contest of the season thanks to a dramatic stoppage-time goal from another new addition, French forward Denis Bouanga (below). The Black & Gold’s first-place finish in the West earned the club a first-round bye in the MLS Cup Playoffs.

PLAYOFF RUN

LAFC’s first postseason opponent was also its fiercest rival. In a single-elimination match in the Western Conference Semifinal, the Galaxy took LAFC to the limit. With the score tied 2-2, the Black & Gold earned a free kick in the third minute of stoppage time. Acosta’s service from the flag was knocked around the six-yard box before Chicho Arango booted home the matchwinner, sending LAFC’s home stadium into raptures with one of the most memorable goals in club history.

LAFC’s convincing 3-0 win over Austin FC in the Western Conference Final sent the team to its first MLS Cup Final, a match that went to extra time, and then to penalties— a match that as soon as it was over, and even as it was playing out, was hailed as the greatest league final in MLS history. 

CIUDAD DE CAMPEONES

The 2022 MLS Cup Final was already an instant classic before Crépeau, LAFC’s standout goalkeeper, left the game with a broken leg after his game-saving tackle kept the game tied 2-2 in the second period of extra time. When the Philadelphia Union poked a rebound past Crépeau’s replacement, John McCarthy, at the 120’+4’ mark, all hope seemed lost as the Union sprinted across LAFC’s home pitch to celebrate their 3-2 lead. 

But Cherundolo had brought on Bale, the Welsh legend and five-time UEFA Champions League winner, and that substitution paid off in the waning moments of the match when LAFC’s Diego Palacios chipped a cross in front of the Philadelphia goal that Bale leapt onto and finished with his head past Union goalkeeper Andre Blake.

LAFC won the deciding penalty shootout thanks to two saves from McCarthy, the little-used backup goalie, who seized his moment in the sun and walked away with the MLS Cup MVP award.

The greater prize, however, was lifted by captain Carlos Vela and his teammates inside the stadium that Vela had first visited when it was merely a construction site a few years earlier—back when Vela became the first player to sign with the new club.

The 2022 season would kickstart one of the most successful four-year runs in MLS history; LAFC would become the only club to finish in the top four in its conference standings in each of the next four seasons (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025), and the only club to reach the conference semifinals in those four seasons as well. In that four-year run the Black & Gold would win more regular-season matches and more playoff matches than any other club in Major League Soccer. It reached six finals and won three major trophies.

And it all began in 2022, a year that started without a coach and with a roster of strangers, but with plenty of belief and, as always, infinite ambition.