No MLS coach has won more regular-season games over the past three years than LAFC’s Steve Cherundolo. But that’s really been just an opening act, an appetizer. Because where Cherundolo and his team shine brightest is in the playoffs, which they opened again Sunday with a methodical 2-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps before a sold-out crowd of 22,298 at BMO Stadium.
With the win, on goals from Denis Bouanga and Cristian Olivera, LAFC goes into the second game of the best-of-three playoff next weekend needing a victory to advance to the Western Conference semifinals. If Vancouver wins, the series will return to BMO Stadium on Nov. 8 for the third and deciding game.
Since taking over at LAFC, Cherundolo has lost just once in nine postseason games, winning one MLS Cup and losing by a goal in another. If he gets his team back to the championship game again this fall, he’ll become just the third man in league history to take his team to the final in three consecutive seasons.
However, the road there is fraught with potential potholes, a couple of which Cherundolo’s team steered around Sunday.
LAFC weathered a shaky start that saw Vancouver blow a golden opportunity to go ahead in the seventh minute when Stuart Armstrong burst in the box alone with only LAFC keeper Hugo Lloris to beat. And he beat him cleanly, but his right-footed shot bounced off the left post and across the front of the goal without crossing the line.
Seven minutes later Pedro Vite threw another scare into the home team, sending a low right-footed shot inches wide of the other post. If either had gone in, it could have spelled trouble for LAFC, which won just once in 11 regular-season games when conceding the first score.
But all that became moot when a video replay convinced referee Jair Marrufo that Vancouver defender Tristan Blackmon had blocked Mateusz Bogusz’s shot with his arm, leading to a penalty kick Bouanga converted for a 1-0 LAFC lead. The goal, in the 30th minute, was Bouanga’s 21st of the season and his league-best eighth from the spot.
Vancouver nearly matched that in stoppage time when Ryan Gauld curled a left-footed free kick from 20 yards off the crossbar, giving the goalposts more saves than Lloris in a first half that ended with LAFC leading. And that brought two more stats into play: LAFC entered Sunday 15-1-0 in MLS play when leading after 45 minutes and 6-1-2 in its last nine games with Vancouver, including a two-game sweep in the first round of last season’s playoffs.
Neither of those trends would be reversed in a second half that LAFC dominated, doubling its lead 12 minutes after the break at the end of a passing sequence that saw Ryan Hollingshead and Bogusz steer the ball around the box before hitting Olivera charging in from the right wing. Olivera then one-timed a hard right-footed shot that deflected off Whitecaps keeper Yohei Takaoka into the roof of the net.
Vancouver made the final seconds a bit dramatic when Gauld finally found the back of the net in the fifth minute of stoppage time to make the final score more respectable. That score came nine minutes after Carlos Vela, the last member of LAFC’s original roster, drew a huge ovation when he came on for Bouanga. Vela’s last appearance came in December’s MLS Cup final.