A rare, full week of recovery and training came to an end on Friday at the LAFC Performance Center as the defending Western Conference champions put the final touches on preparations for Game 2 of their Round One Best-of-3 playoff series against Vancouver Whitecaps FC.
LAFC will depart on Saturday for British Columbia, where it will take on the ‘Caps this Sunday and try to close out a series that it currently leads one game to none.
“This week in training, we were able to recover, we were able to build the players’ schedule, the players’ loading, to allow them to peak on Sunday,” head coach Steve Cherundolo said. “Tactically we covered what we need to cover. It was a review of last game and obviously to get ready for a very good opponent.”
Cherundolo and his players were clear that the objective is to end the series this weekend. The group that will try and accomplish that, Cherundolo said, is “completely healthy, it’s the second time all year where I've been able to have a full roster.”
Among those at full strength is defender Jesús Murillo, who had been enjoying arguably his finest season as a pro, manning the center of the Black & Gold defense along with Aaron Long until he picked up a leg injury in the Leagues Cup Final on August 25.
Having Murillo and everyone else available, Cherundolo said, finally allows the coaching staff to “think about a complete 90 minutes. You can have all options, meaning you can start very offensive and transition to defensive to finish out games, or vice versa. You can start conservative and finish offensive, or you do a mix. Having all options allows us to create a match plan for an entire 90 minutes and have plan Bs and emergency plans in case things don't go to plan, or things go very well to plan.”
DODGERS ON PARADE
Speaking of plans well executed, while Cherundolo and his players were taking questions from the media on Friday, the Los Angeles Dodgers were parading through downtown, just a few miles away, celebrating Wednesday night’s World Series victory over the Yankees.
“Personally, I don't follow baseball that much,” said midfielder Lewis O’Brien, who was raised near Manchester, England, joined LAFC three months ago, and was named Man of the Match following the Game 1 win over Vancouver. “I probably will in the coming years, but the vibe around the place has been completely different since the [Dodgers’] championship … Hopefully we can bring a bit of that energy from this week and take it into the game this Sunday.”
“The Dodgers [brought] a championship here to LA,” said all-action man Mateusz Bogusz, who earned the penalty that led to LAFC’s opening goal in Game 1, and assisted on LAFC’s second. “So now it’s maybe time for us to bring the championship. I'm not really into baseball, but … congratulations to the Dodgers. Amazing. Well done.”
“It’s an amazing, amazing feat,” said Cherundolo, who until this week had coached LA’s most recent championship team. “Congratulations to the Dodgers and to Peter Guber, who is part of the LAFC family as well.” (Guber is among the owners of both the Dodgers and LAFC.) “It’s wonderful to see Angelinos happy and proud of their team. We would love to give them the same in a couple of weeks’ time, but we try not to think about it too much … We'll focus on the next task at hand, which is playing in a difficult environment in Vancouver.”
ON THE SURFACE
Vancouver is one of just six MLS clubs that plays on artificial turf. O’Brien, 26, said that aside from his brief stint with DC United last summer, he hadn’t played on plastic grass “since I was, like, 14 years old.”
“It takes the body quite a while to adjust to the turf,” the Englishman added, “but that's after the game, so during it's not really that much of a problem … It probably took me an extra few days to recover from the game. But if we can do the job when we get there, we won’t have to see the AstroTurf again.”
It’s an astute point. Should LAFC advance past Vancouver, their remaining playoff matches would all be on natural grass, no matter the opponent.
POLE POSITION
Last Sunday’s Game 1 win over Vancouver was also the first game LAFC had played as the first-place team in the West since mid-July. The Galaxy had held the top spot since July 17, but LAFC leaned forward at the finish line, gaining the final advantage on a dramatic Decision Day that saw the Black & Gold seize the conference’s top seed in the final seconds of the 2024 regular season.
The last time LAFC entered the MLS Cup Playoffs as a No. 1 seed, its opening-round opponent was the Galaxy, which it defeated 3-2 at BMO Stadium on its way to the 2022 MLS Cup title.
ORANGE & BLACK & GOLD
Friday was the day after Halloween. Cherundolo—married father of two daughters—said that three members of his family of four dressed up as Gremlins (from the 1984 movie of the same name). “For our younger generation, that’s maybe not a not a common term, but we did get a lot of compliments along the way.”
O’Brien said with an apologetic smirk, “I don’t really do Halloween.” The holiday is a bit more understated in his native UK. But there was nothing low-key about the costumes LAFC players wore to work on Thursday:
HOMETOWN HEROES
O’Brien, who’s enjoying his first MLS Playoffs experience, said that several folks in his hometown, Rochdale, England, are following along. “Some of my friends and family are definitely waking up at 3-4 o'clock in the morning to watch the games, [which] is a tough thing to do when you've got to work a job the next day. But there's definitely people tuning in.”
The family of defender Omar Campos, in the Tepito section of Mexico City, has also caught playoff fever. But it’s the fans here in LA who have fueled the team all year long, he said. “They have never, ever stopped encouraging, supporting,” Campos said in Spanish. “They are always there and it pushes us to continue improving, to continue growing and to continue winning games, which is what the fans deserve from us, so they can be happy and joyful.”
LAFC visits the Vancouver Whitecaps on Sunday, Nov. 3, for Game 2 of their Round One Best-of-3 Series in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs. The match kicks off at 5:45 p.m. PT on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, FS1, 710 AM ESPN LA, ESPN LA app, and 980 AM La Mera Mera.
