Two blanks in eight days
Los Angeles FC have lost 1-0 twice in a row, the second of them on the road at Colorado on Wednesday. The number underneath that is the interesting one. Across the rest of this MLS season, LAFC had been held without a goal on only two other occasions, and both of those finished as scoreless draws. Two blanks in eight days, against two in all the months before.
The slide has been gradual rather than sudden. Immediately after the World Cup break, LAFC put ten goals into three matches. August then delivered four consecutive one-goal games across all competitions, and now two with nothing at all. They sit on 34 points from 21 league matches (10-7-4).
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A coach doing arithmetic with old legs
Marc Dos Santos started neither Heung-Min Son nor Denis Bouanga at Colorado, bringing both off the bench. The reasoning was the calendar, not the form. Both are expected back in the side on Saturday.
“We’re the second oldest team in MLS right now and there are some players at a certain age we have to manage a little bit,” Dos Santos said. “For me, Sonny would be on the field all the time. But at the same time, we cannot have a player always playing three games in a week.”
The two of them still carry the attack. Bouanga’s 10 goals lead the club, and Son’s 10 assists lead it on the creative side.
Portland turn up at the wrong moment for LAFC
The Timbers (8-9-3, 27 points) climbed above the playoff line on Wednesday by beating San Diego FC 3-1 at home, with Kristoffer Velde, Ariel Lassiter and David Da Costa scoring. Velde added two assists to take him to a team-best eight. Kevin Kelsey tops the Portland scoring chart on nine, though only one of those has landed in the last five matches across competitions.
That result was Marti Cifuentes’ first win since taking over, his debut having come in a Leagues Cup tie on Aug. 13.
“There have been a few changes in terms of attacking, first and foremost,” Velde said of the new coach. “Cifuentes has tried to keep it simple. We have a lot of experienced guys on the team and I think it will turn out good.”
The teams last met on April 11, when Portland won 2-1 at home through Velde and a Kelsey goal in the sixth minute of second-half stoppage time. That was LAFC’s first defeat of the season after a 5-0-1 start, and the first goal they had conceded all year.
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