“SoCal Soccer Spotlight” is a column by Jack Hallinan about the professional soccer landscape in Los Angeles.
Angel City Rejoice on Decision Day
It’s not an overstatement to say that Angel City just played its best game in club history Sunday.
Yes, the club has only existed for two seasons. And yes, the Portland Thorns didn’t start surefire MVP-winner Sophia Smith.
But ACFC still defeated the league-leaders (before Sunday) 5-1 — the first time Angel City has scored more than three goals in a competitive fixture.
Most importantly, Angel City will play its first-ever playoff game. It feels like a weight has been lifted on the club. For the amount of noise Angel City has made as an NWSL expansion team — with their celebrity-laden ownership group, their atypical business model, the drafting of Alyssa Thompson — the team kind of needed this. It finally feels like the on-field product has caught up to the off-field flash.
On Decision Day, it seemed like all the players who carried ACFC through the season had standout games. M.A. Vignola, who earned her first call-up to the U.S. women’s national team camp this season, had a goal and an assist from left back. Attacking midfielder Savannah McCaskill, who has saved Angel City on multiple occasions previously, scored her fourth NWSL goal of the season. And centerback Sarah Gorden defended astutely in the final match while becoming one of just seven players to play every minute of the regular season (1,980 in total).
But even as the usual stars shined, a couple of the players who had struggled more played their best games of the season as well. Winger Scarlett Camberos scored her first goal of the NWSL season. Sydney Leroux, whose time at ACFC has been plagued with injuries, scored a ridiculous bicycle kick to finish the regular season on an emphatic note.
Vibes will be high going into the playoffs, where Angel City will face the OL Reign. The last time these two sides met, ACFC won 2-1 at home, but this game will take place in Seattle, kicking off at 7:00 p.m. on Friday.
Now that Angel City is in the playoffs, anything can happen. I certainly wouldn’t rule out a Cinderella run.
Charting LAFC’s playoff path
Full disclosure: for the good of the content, I’d like to see LAFC advance as far as possible in the playoffs.
As you know, in this column I cover LA teams. If LA teams aren’t playing, there’s not much to cover. That’s just the way it goes.
And when LAFC doesn’t play, I have to come up with gimmicks like this: let’s make a yet-to-be-finalized MLS playoff bracket!
Seriously, that’s what we’re gonna do here. Let’s project the Western Conference playoff bracket and see how far LAFC should advance.
This season, the MLS has adopted a new playoff format, expanding the bracket to nine teams, with an NBA-esque play-in game between the eighth and ninth seeds.
The West’s seventh, eighth and ninth overall positions are still up for grabs, with the Portland Timbers, San Jose Earthquakes and FC Dallas all tied on 43 points, and Sporting Kansas City and Minnesota United just behind them in 10th and 11th on 41. The Timbers have to play the Houston Dynamo on Decision Day, who could advance from fourth to third with a win, so I expect the Dynamo to play a first-choice eleven.
Meanwhile, Sporting KC and Minnesota play each other while San Jose and Dallas play Austin FC and the Galaxy, respectively — both of whom have already been eliminated.
Here are my picks for those matches, which’ll determine the final seeding:
Portland vs. Houston: Portland defeats Houston 2-1 on home turf, one of the best atmospheres in MLS, securing seventh place.
Dallas vs. LA Galaxy: Dallas draws 2-2 with the Galaxy in Carson, with the Bulls falling to 10th.
San Jose vs. Austin: San Jose beats Austin 1-0 despite its sluggish attack, finishing in eighth.
Sporting KC vs. Minnesota: Emanuel Reynoso powers the Loons to an upset over KC, winning 2-0 and capturing the final playoff spot due to having more wins (11) than Dallas (10).
With those results, San Jose would face Minnesota in the winner-takes-all wild card, in which I have Minnesota advancing despite the Quakes’ home advantage. With Reynoso, Bongokuhle Hlongwane and Norwich City legend Teemu Pukki, Minnesota has playoff-ready firepower.
That begs the question, who would Minnesota play in the first round? Well, St. Louis City has already locked up the No. 1 spot in the West due to their five-point advantage over LAFC. I still need to decide who finishes in second through sixth, though.
Let’s start with the main team in question, LAFC. LAFC plays Vancouver away on the final matchday, with Vancouver able to leapfrog into third place, while LAFC can’t fall lower than fourth. Considering what head coach Steve Cherundolo has said recently about the unreasonable physical demands of the team’s schedule, I’m guessing the black and gold will play a rotated team in Canada and lose 2-1.
As to the other Decision Day games, my picks:
St. Louis City vs. Seattle Sounders: 2-2 draw in St. Louis.
Real Salt Lake vs. Colorado Rapids: Real Salt Lake wins 3-1 away in Colorado.
The combination of those results would leave the following order from top-down in the table: St. Louis, LAFC (they would still have more wins than Seattle), Seattle, Salt Lake, Vancouver, then Houston in sixth, followed by Portland and San Jose. That would leave the following playoff matchups in the first round, best-of-three series:
- St. Louis vs. San Jose
- LAFC vs. Portland
- Seattle vs. Houston
- Salt Lake vs. Vancouver
First, I need to say that the MLS playoff bracket is ridiculous and borderline nonsensical. Why does the first round have to be a three-game series when the format shifts to single elimination afterwards?
The three-game series was clearly designed to give the higher seeds the advantage and prevent them from exiting the playoffs too soon, while the single-elimination conference semifinals and championship arguably swings too far in the other direction. The UEFA Champions League knockout format, where the teams play each other twice home and away with the aggregate winner advancing, makes much more sense to me.
But back to picking games.
In both meetings in the regular season, Portland scored two goals against LAFC, proving that LAFC can be troubled against the Timbers. But nothing about this Timbers team should really scare LAFC. The Portlanders don’t have exceptional attack or a well-above average defense. If Cherundolo’s men can shut down Evander Ferreira (nine goals, three assists as an attacking midfielder), LAFC should advance in two matches.
That would leave LAFC to play the winner of Seattle vs. Houston. Seattle narrowly won both regular-season meetings between the pair 1-0, but Houston grew in my estimation as the season progressed and have tallied major victories over Real Salt Lake, Vancouver and Inter Miami since July. I’m picking Houston in three games.
Casual fans may not realize how hard a Houston series could be for LAFC. In two regular-season games, LAFC failed to score a goal against the Dynamo, letting in five at the other end. Both times, LAFC had higher possession and more shots, but it didn’t matter. A counterattacking style suits Houston, and LAFC have yet to productively rein in the chaos they unleash on the pitch.
As such, it would be journalistically irresponsible of me to pick LAFC in this matchup. Nothing about the team’s recent history against Houston suggests that the black and gold would advance in a one-off, single-elimination game — even if it was in Los Angeles.
So that’s how I predict LAFC’s season to end: With a 2-1 loss to the Houston Dynamo in BMO Stadium.
It’s not that I think LAFC doesn’t have a championship-caliber roster, but winning back-to-back MLS Cups is really hard. Only three clubs have ever won back-to-back, and no team has done it since the 2011 and 2012 LA Galaxy teams that had David Beckham bossing midfield and Robbie Keane banging in goals.
If Carlos Vela were a few years younger, maybe I could see this team as repeat champions, but that’s just not the case. Sorry LAFC fans, this season will end in pain. The other 28 teams not lifting the Philip F. Anschutz trophy can relate.
Galaxy earn solid draw vs. Real Salt Lake
With no playoffs to look forward to, the Galaxy may as well be on the beach — mentally, at least.
But this weekend, their sporting pride still shined through.
In a 2-2 draw with Western Conference contenders Real Salt Lake, the oft-maligned Dejan Joveljić (in this column, at least) arguably had his best game in a Galaxy shirt.
The Serbian forward played off the left wing — not his usual role as a central striker — and contributed a goal and assist that gave LA a 2-0 lead after just 34 minutes.
Naturally, the Galaxy’s subpar defense let down the team’s voracious attack.
Salt Lake’s Ecuadorian striker Anderson Julio scored just before the halftime whistle, a killer blow for team confidence going into the mid-game team talk. The Galaxy then held onto the one-goal until the 76th minute, when Diego Luna (not the “Andor” actor) equalized.
As we approach the end of the regular season, when we’ll have a full referendum on the Galaxy’s season, this game does seem like a perfect microcosm of the Galaxy’s season: look excellent in attack for a while, but completely and utterly collapse at the back. Like I said in the last column, they were fun, but they weren’t good and the defense absolutely held them back over the course of the season.
Expect more goals in the season finale against Dallas.
Next games:
LAFC: Saturday, October 21 vs. Vancouver Whitecaps (away)
Angel City: Friday, October 20 vs. OL Reign (away)
LA Galaxy: Saturday, October 21 vs. FC Dallas (home)
“SoCal Soccer Spotlight” runs every Wednesday.