Saturday’s Western Conference final will be the 52nd game of the season for LAFC, more than any team has played in a single year in MLS history. In the locker room, however, it feels like a lot more.
“The 500 games we played this year,” is how assistant coach Ante Razov refers to a schedule that included six separate competitions.
Yet no one in that locker room is ready for vacation just yet. In fact, LAFC is hoping to extend its season another week with a win Saturday that would send it to a second MLS Cup final in as many years against the winner of the Eastern Conference semifinal between Cincinnati and Columbus.
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“It was a long season, a lot of games, a lot of ups and downs,” said captain Carlos Vela, whose contract expires when the season does, likely making Saturday’s game the final home match of his LAFC career. “I don’t how many games I played. I will not be that fresh.
“[But] we’re still there. We’re still fighting for championships.”
And for history because if LAFC, the reigning league champion, makes it to the MLS Cup final it will have a chance to become the first team to win back-to-back titles in more than a decade. Standing in its way is the Houston Dynamo, the only Western Conference team LAFC hasn’t beaten this season.
Houston defeated LAFC twice in a five-day stretch in mid-June, winning 4-0 in Houston — LAFC’s most-lopsided loss of the year — and 1-0 in Los Angeles, part of a season-worst stretch that saw LAFC win just two of nine games. Those games were also part of the season’s most-exhausting stretch in which the team played eight times in 25 days.
“This year, you look at it in multiple parts, right?” midfielder Kellyn Acosta asked. “The Champions League, you had the Open Cup, Leagues Cup the first part of the season, now you have playoffs. So you look at everything in little tournaments.
“And we’ve had a lot of adversity this year in terms of injuries to some bad losses. But at the beginning of the year, this is where we wanted to be. Our goal was to give us a chance to compete for MLS Cup and we’re one game away.”
