LOS ANGELES — Cheer up, L.A. The Dodgers’ World Series run may have ended, but Los Angeles Football Club is just beginning its first-ever postseason adventure.
LAFC concluded a spectacular inaugural regular season on a flat note in Kansas City on Sunday in what was a disappointing day in L.A. sports. The expansion team could have become the first in MLS history to win its conference with a road victory over Sporting Kansas City, but SKC ended up winning 2-1 to capture the Western Conference title. LAFC finished in third place but earned the right to host a first-round playoff game.
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The Black and Gold (16-9-9) will face Real Salt Lake (14-13-7), the sixth and lowest seed in the postseason, in a one-game knockout round match at Banc of California Stadium on Thursday (7:30 p.m. PT, ESPN2). RSL qualified for the playoffs after the L.A.Galaxy blew a 2-0 lead and lost 3-2 to Houston at the StubHub Center.
Bob Bradley’s LAFC will look to ride its offense, as well as the atmosphere provided by the home supporters, into the conference semifinals against the Seattle Sounders. LAFC won both regular-season meetings against Real Salt Lake: 5-1 at Rio Tinto Stadium in March and 2-0 at home in August.
Here are the three biggest keys for the Black and Gold to get past Real Salt Lake.
Get back into attack mode
LAFC showed a lot of positive signs during the homestretch of the regular season, going 4-2-2 in its final eight matches. No opposing goalkeepers managed clean sheets during the stretch, as LAFC managed at least two goals in five of the games.
After shaking off the post-World Cup lull that limited his production to just two goals and two assists in eight matches, Carlos Vela had five goals and six assists from the beginning of September through the season’s end. Diego Rossi has four goals and three assists in the same time frame while Adama Diomande has three goals in the six matches he’s played in since he returned from injury.
One week after struggling to convert chances into goals against Vancouver in the home finale, that attack power was absent on Sunday in Children’s Mercy Park. Sporting Kansas City shut out LAFC in open play, holding the road team to just three shots on target. LAFC failed to score an open play goal just three times this season. The team played to a scoreless tie at home against Portland and Vela’s second-half strike from the penalty spot was the only goal LAFC managed in both matches against Sporting Kansas City in 2018.
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“When the team is not controlling the ball, it makes it more difficult for the attackers. We don’t have the chances like we normally have. We don’t receive the ball in a position to create a one-on-one opportunity,” Vela said of the team’s struggles in Kansas City. “If you receive the ball and immediately have two or three defenders on you, that’s tough to do. We have to move the ball better and work harder to create those good chances.”
Including Sunday, LAFC was limited to three on-target opportunities just seven times all season. Six of those instances- at Seattle, at Atlanta, vs New York City, at Dallas, at New York Red Bulls and at Sporting Kansas City- were against playoff teams, while the seventh was Vancouver early in the season.
LAFC wasn’t shutout for the first time until July’s home match against the Timbers, but nearly half of the matches lacking in shots on target occurred on the team’s six-game road trip to begin the season. LAFC’s offense hasn’t looked as hapless as it did, in the first half in the finale against Sporting Kansas City very often this season.
“One of the things we did after the Kansas City game was try to see what we could learn from it. The game was rough, choppy, and when it was our chance to play, to find way to connect passes, we were probably a little too anxious to get behind them,” Bradley said at Wednesday’s training session. “We’ll need to find the right balance and improve that against Real Salt Lake. We’ll take that lesson, combine it with what we’ve worked on all year.”
LAFC led the Western Conference with 68 goals, second in the league to only Atlanta United (70). Bradley wants his team in a constant state of attack, whether that means fighting to win the ball, keeping it, finishing off an attack or looking to set up the next scoring sequence.
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If LAFC is playing defensively from its collective heels, as was the case in Kansas City, it isn’t playing the brand of football that the coaching staff is seeking. The Black and Gold are 2-1-4 when held to less than four shots on target. The two wins were both clean sheets.
Bob Bradley and Co. both hope that was the final time it plays such a match this season. If LAFC is going to make legitimate noise in the MLS Cup playoffs, its playing style must be on display.
Defend as a team
At LAFC, Bradley gives every player on the field — from goalkeeper Tyler Miller to center forward Adama Diomande — the responsibility to contribute on defense. There are no exceptions to that ideal.
LAFC play possession-based soccer. When the team has the ball, it’s looking to attack. When it doesn’t, it’s looking to immediately win in it back. When things are going right, it can be a slow day at the office for Miller because there is little to defend with LAFC always on the attack.
Multiple matches in 2018 have followed this script, the vast majority being LAFC wins.
“Our defending has to be as a group. We’ve got to do a good job of recognizing moments we lose the ball so we can press right away, not let their dangerous players come into the game because we’ve won the ball back before they get a chance,” Bradley told The Athletic. “That’s the No. 1 thing we try to do. If we aren’t in a position to press, we have to be organized and defend the next block.”
Real Salt Lake scored 55 goals in 2018. Mike Petke’s men don’t boast an offense as robust as LAFC, but there are players in the attack that the host side will have to work to contain. Midfielder Damir Kreilach had a hand in 20 of those 55, scoring a team-leading 12 and assisting on eight others. Joao Plata, who also had eight assists, scored eight goals, as did forward Corey Baird. Jefferson Savarino paced RSL with 11 assists to go with his seven goals.
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Real Salt Lake spreads around its goal scoring chances, and its top two goal scorers, Kreilach and Albert Rusnak (10 goals), play in the middle of the field. Underestimate the RSL attack at your playoff peril.
“On the back line, we have to be able to get to Savarino and Plata and control them,” Bradley said. “They are both good dribblers. They are both dangerous players that can create things.
“When Savarino or Plata move inside a little bit, sometimes they bring their outside backs forward. In those moments, we’ll have to slide across the backline and our outside backs will have to push out to match theirs. Communication between the inside and outside backs will be important against RSL.”
LAFC lost to Sporting K.C. on Sunday despite playing up a man for the final 30 minutes. SKC midfielder Seth Sinovic’s controversial red card foul in the box for blocking a Diomande header with his arm allowed Carlos Vela to tie the game at 1-1 with a 62nd-minute penalty, but a lapse in defensive intensity allowed Sporting to score the eventual winner in the 72nd minute on Dániel Sallói’s goal.
A better collective defensive effort is mandatory to limit Real Salt Lake’s chances, and that point clearly had been made at Wednesday’s training. Lee Nguyen, Steven Beitashour and Vela, players from all three levels of LAFC’s formation, echoed each other almost verbatim when discussing the necessity for a better performance on defense from the entire team.
“We have to try to help to save the goals [on offense]. We have to help the defenders play more compact, to feel [confident] in us when we are on the backline,” Vela said. “We have really dangerous players up front, but we have to give our focus to the backline before we can enjoy the offense. When we play that way, we play better.”
Veterans must lead the way
LAFC established a trend late in the season of communicating as a team before matches and at halftime. During these discussions, the veterans are the most vocal.
Words of wisdom won’t be in short supply with the likes of Beitashour, Benny Feilhaber and Nguyen.
All three have played in single-elimination knockout matches. And all three have made deep playoff runs to the MLS Cup Final. The knowledge they can impart on the younger players and MLS newcomers is a valuable resource.
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Beitashour won MLS Cup last season with Toronto FC. He thinks the loss to Sporting K.C. taught LAFC an important lesson about second chances.
“In the regular season, guys might not track a runner, get punished and say, ‘I won’t do that again next week,’ but there is no next week,” Beitashour said Wednesday. “This knockout game, you have to track every run, make every run into the box. Defensively, offensively, every single play matters.”
“In the middle of the field, a simple little play, not connecting a pass, can lead to you being scored on. The regular season is a learning process. We learn from the mistakes that we’ve made, but now everything has to be as close to perfect as possible. We need to bring that intensity. It’s the only way you win in the playoffs.”
Nguyen, who lost the 2014 MLS Cup Final to the Galaxy as a member of the New England Revolution, also saw the silver lining in Sunday’s loss. “It was a good test for us, that experience in Kansas City. We had an opportunity to win that game, but one or two mistakes cost us. In the postseason, that’s all it will take to lose,” he said.
“We got a taste of what it’s like to go on the road and play a big game with a lot at stake,” Nguyen added. “Now we get to be back home in front of our fans having just learned that hard lesson, but the stakes are the same. There is no second leg. This is it.”
Vela, who has never played in an MLS playoff match but has World Cup and Champions League experience, knows the challenge will be something new. The regular season finale helped prepare him for Thursday.
“The intensity of how Kansas City played, maybe we didn’t expect it or we weren’t ready to play such an intense game. In a game like that, you have to give everything,” Vela said. “If the other team is running harder, fighting harder, home or away, they have the advantage.
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“I feel really good, I’m excited … These are the kinds of games I came here to play, to help my team win. If we fight as hard as our opponents, I believe we have a quality here that will make the difference.”
Prediction
LAFC’s sweep of RSL “doesn’t fact in much” for Bradley. “The first [game] was so early in the year, then the second came during a period they were playing a lot of games and rotating players, so I don’t focus on that,” he said.
Regular season stats clearly favor LAFC, but even when current form is taken into account, Thursday’s home team seems to have the advantage. LAFC finished the season 4-2-2 in its final eight. Salt Lake finished 3-2-3 in the same time frame, but went 1-2-3 in its last six, being shut out twice in that span.
LAFC should be able to capitalize on its home-field edge. Whatever happens after that, the inaugural season will be remembered as nothing short of a resounding success.
LAFC 4, Real Salt Lake 2
Top photo of Lee Nguyen and Carlos Vela: Matthew Ashton / AMA/Getty Images