The top team in Major League Soccer faces a critical test with seven regular-season matches left.
Learning how to win again.
After suffering consecutive defeats for the second time in 2022 with a lopsided 4-1 result in Austin on Friday, the Los Angeles Football Club (18-6-3, 57 points) has nearly given away the comfortable points advantage it held three-quarters of the way through the season, raising questions about how a flurry of player transactions will impact the team heading into the MLS Cup playoffs.
With the addition of 31-year-old Spanish free agent Cristian Tello, who is expected to boost attacking depth following Brian Rodriguez’s departure, one-fourth of the locker room has changed in the two months preceding the MLS roster freeze on Sept. 2.
Head coach Steve Cherundolo downplayed the heavy turnover as an impediment. Instead, following the one-sided defeat in Austin which reduced LAFC’s points lead to three over the red-hot Philadelphia Union, he focused on the players’ inconsistent and unsteady efforts.
“Everyone who puts on an LAFC jersey has a responsibility to go out and to win football games,” Cherundolo said. “As many as possible. To do that you have to run, and I am 100% that everyone on the roster is capable of doing that.”
Outrun, outpressed and unable to force mistakes that lead to goals, Cherundolo fingered blunderous giveaways at the back against Austin and poor performances from otherwise reliable contributors as the starting lineup, featuring Carlos Vela and Gareth Bale for the first time, was quietly ineffective during the hour they played together.
“The way we lost is not good, but I think it’s at the right time because we are seven games from the playoffs,” Vela said. “In the playoffs, you can’t have these types of games so we have to learn from this. And of course if we want to be a really good team we have to show after this game we are ready to be a good team and be ready to get the championship.”
Over the club’s last 270 minutes, a variety of player combinations have not delivered anything resembling the 4-1 or 5-0 victories from two weeks ago, when LAFC was in the midst of hammering out a club record seven-match winning streak.
Until the previous two games, Giorgio Chiellini didn’t need to express how sad and angry he gets over losing, but that was the Italian defender’s sentiment after Austin.
Making it three consecutive away dates without points on Wednesday, this time against the scuffling Houston Dynamo, would ramp up pressure relative to expectations as LAFC works to avoid five Cup-less seasons.
The last-in-the-West Dynamo (7-15-5, 26 points) enter the midweek contest having lost five of six matches, their 27 losses since August of last year the most in the league over that span.
High on the list of reasons why LAFC acquired Chiellini is the center back’s accomplished competitive resume, which the front office and coaching staff expect to elevate the team’s chances of success.
Grabbing points on the road has been Chiellini’s focus since arriving in July because, based on his experience, that is how championship teams separate themselves from the pack.
“Everything is less important than the attitude. The emotion. The right feelings. The fire that we have,” Chiellini said. “But we have a coach who said the same things I’m saying now. We have to work on it.”
LAFC AT HOUSTON
When: Wednesday, 5:38 p.m. PT
Where: PNC Stadium
TV/radio: KCOP (Ch. 13), Estrella TV 62, 980 AM
