Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, It Rose from the Corpse of MLS 2.0

The Honey Pot, starring Henry Higgins (1967)

Thumbnail History
As a preliminary, I decided to burden Los Angeles FC with the Chivas USA’s record of failures and accomplishments. The judges (in my head) have allowed this on the grounds that, 1) Chivas USA was created with a potential advantage – e.g., access to the player pool/any rising talent of their parent club, Mexico’s Club Deportivo Guadalajara, S. A. de C. V. – and 2) only three years separate the good and wise demise of Chivas USA and the founding of LAFC. To anyone aggrieved by the choice, bringing in the predecessor’s softer numbers does less damage than you think (only shaved off four Joy Points*), while also imbuing the successor project with the air of a phoenix rising. Anyone paying attention to the chronology of this series may be crying foul on behalf of Atlanta United FC and Minnesota United FC, but I liked the idea of putting Major League Soccer’s two foreign-held subsidiary franchises in back-to-back posts (the New York City FC post went up yesterday).

To quickly touch on Chivas USA, it was conceived as a honey-pot to lure Mexican-American fans to MLS at a time when the league was hard-up for eyeballs. The initial concept boiled down to bringing in, admittedly surplus (i.e., aging), but still famous talent from Mexico’s Chivas, sweetening the pitch by throwing in some potential future stars for the parent club (aka, longshots), and rounding out the roster with whatever non-Mexican players Chivas USA could find between the 2005 Expansion and SuperDrafts. Legendary Mexican midfielder Ramon Ramirez and (I think) Francisco Palencia headlined the effort, but the first-year model went to shit in one short season. It took only one swat from the Wooden Spoon at the end of 2005 for Chivas USA to (largely) abandon all that and become a more or less regular MLS team, effective immediately. The front office gave the team an MLS face-lift for Year 2, calling in midfielder Jesse Marsch as an on-field Svengali, while also bringing in proven experienced pieces for the attack (Ante Razov) and the defense (Carlos Llamosa and Tim Regan). All it took from there was one good (Jonathan Bornstein) and one great pick (Sacha Kljestan) from the 2006 SuperDraft to carry Chivas USA to their first post-season in 2006 and lift them higher still in 2007, when they won the Western Conference. From there, things fell off one season at a time and, slowly, the organization fell apart. By the time all concerned pulled the plug after the 2014 season, I think most MLS fans forgot Chivas USA was around until they showed up on the schedule…

Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, aka, the Spoiled Rich Kid that Transferred to Your Public School Under Somewhat Mysterious Circumstances

Still mid-orgasm. Started in 2021.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

With this post, this project arrives at the first team to play in MLS for less than a decade; Los Angeles FC has just six seasons behind them. It also gets to why, for all its shortcomings, the Joy Points Scale (methodology at the bottom of the post*) holds up all right. LAFC has enjoyed as much success as any team in the league over those six seasons. To do the math: they won one Supporters’ Shield, one MLS Cup, plus they made an unsuccessful trip to another Cup (the season just ended, in fact), and they made the playoffs in five seasons of six and, if memory serves, people and pundits read them as a bona fide contender for four of those playoff runs…

…also, what a bunch of assholes.

That’s good enough for them to rank eighth all-time on the janky little scale I concocted for this series – which gets to another truth about the American top-flight – i.e., that somewhere just shy of 20 teams have enjoyed either fleeting success or no success at all. LAFC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a history, not really, hence the temptation to roll Chivas USA into the mix and call it the history of LA's "other team." I dismissed that for the same reason I’m not counting the Miami Fusion as part of Inter Miami CF’s history. Just totally different animals in both cases.

Best Season(s)

A fucking no-brainer, obviously: they won the double in 2022 and capped off the Shield by winning what was arguably the best, wildest MLS Cup in league history (and pour one out for the Philadelphia Union for that loss). I’ve never experienced such a thing with any team I’ve followed in any sport, but imagine it feels like an orgasm after tantric sex.

Long-Term Tendencies

LAFC has a short, proud history of scoring tons of goals. Their 2019 team holds second-place for goals scored in a single season (at 72), but they’ve either been very over or very, very over the average for goals scored in, again, five of their six seasons. They even scored very over the average in the one season they missed the playoffs (2021), but even that’s a little weird given that they had a worse defensive record in MLS’s weirdest season, aka, 2020. Still, and not unlike the team as a whole, LAFC’s defenses have generally been good.

Portland Timbers 1-2 Los Angeles FC: Acceptance

Fuck it.

May as well start where the game did – i.e., with the line-up the Portland Timbers chose to field in a, for them, semi-existential Sunday afternoon. They lined up the now-familiar back three, if with the personnel gently scrambled, and Juan Mosquera and Claudio Bravo on either side of Diego Chara and Cristhian Paredes in a four-man midfield. Mosquera and Bravo played as fully-modern fullbacks - dropping back to defend and running into the attack, as needed., etc. The slightest riff on the more of the same, in other words.

The real place of curiosity, at least for me, was the front line: Dairon Asprilla and Santiago Moreno on either side of Jaroslaw Niezgoda – or at least that’s how ESPN’s broadcast had it. Then again, I’m looking at the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey version The Mothership posted as official line-up, and who really knows at this point? Assuming I have it right – i.e., Asprilla, Niezgoda and Moreno up top – the big question going in was whether that set of players knew how to handle and/or finish shot creation. Based on what I saw online, the reaction was equal parts underwhelmed and confused; “consternation” sums it up nicely.

As for me, I greeted the line-up with...all right. The broadcast team hepped me to a couple things I didn’t know – e.g., Eryk Williamson had a compromised hamstrung – but I didn’t mind it or could at least find some kind of logic to it. That assumed, however, that Timbers head coach, Giovanni Savarese, held the same thoughts in his head – e.g., that he would play a cautious first half, then trickle in game-changers like Eryk Williamson and Sebastian Blanco to salt away the big, playoff-clinching win. In short, it all made sense to me so long as Gio did certain things at certain times. For instance, get his game-changers into the game with enough time to find it.

Back in the game that happened – i.e., the Timbers 1-2 home loss to Los Angeles FC - Savarese didn’t introduce Yimmi Chara and Williamson until the 74th minute. I can’t say that cost them the game (I don’t do counterfactuals), but that doesn’t feel like enough time for most attacking players to get hold of a game. Yimmi’s special - 90 minutes may not be enough for him - but I would have liked to see another 10 minutes or more for Eryk; it’s not like Jaroslaw Niezgoda did much outside one shining moment early in the 2nd half, after all. Moreover, Eryk strikes me as the kind of player who needs some time to figure out who’s picking up what he’s dropping; Niezgoda’s seems the same, for what it's worth, but I gave up on seeing Gio put him anywhere besides the front line months ago.

Los Angeles FC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Running Through Hell to Glory

Ma tenders!

There was a lot to love about the Portland Timbers’ late, late (late, late, late, late) equalizer against Los Angeles FC tonight e.g., the way it felt like Portland looking at the right side of the mirror, for once, after they’ve looked at it from the wrong side too often this season, or the fluid beauty of the full faith and execution with which all the players involved found the right passes and made the right runs, not to mention seeing Diego Valeri drop the cross on a goddamn dime to Jorge Villafana’s back-post run. This was after 90 minutes into an exhausting duel and running on legs I’d given up on, frankly, too many seasons ago.

Personally, I most appreciated the aesthetic of the way it played out on my TV. I got only as far as “wai” into “wait, where’s that cross going?” before I spotted Villafana’s run. Watching the ball fly through the air as Villafana sprinted to meet it, seeing LAFC’s goalkeeper and defender pinch together to stop it - swear to God, it brushed the defender’s hair (who was it? no one important, just another victim) - and to see that it always could only land exactly where it did: ah, thing of beauty…

…what’s that? What about the 90 sweaty minutes passed before it? Yes, yes, LAFC pinged the woodwork like it was the object of the game - twice if byDiego Rossi, once if by Carlos Vela, and through disturbingly clear openings - but I’ve got caveats for days from Portland’s side of the “what ifs,” and Timbers fans got their fairy tale ending in a 1-1 draw that booked them a date with FC Dallas. In the grand scheme of everything, I’d call that result a steal worth not asking too many questions about.

First, either forget the box score (too even) or know that LAFC ran good-golly-gosh-darn riot for nearly all of the first half; hell, the Timbers could barely get out of their defensive third for the first 25-30 minutes. Portland settled down their affairs as the game continued, but I doubt even one dollar’s worth of the live betting shifted in their direction until the 80th minute. That said, the smart money would have started moving in the Timbers’ direction around the 85th, even if in search of a big payoff. They finally posted someshots and, I’m guessing, did most of the work to doing those last-minute revisions to the box score.

Portland Timbers 2-3 Los Angeles FC: Do It for Tiffany

I'll do anything, girl...

What was the most important part of last night’s game: Jeff Attinella’s colossal, opening-10 fuck-up, or the series of aggro-pointless skirmishes that tripped one over the next for the last five minutes of regulation? For me, that depends on one’s willingness to see each of those moments in symbolic terms.

To lean into controversy early, I don’t want Attinella to start until Steve Clark gets injured, Attinella’s nerves calm down, or Clark has a collection of episodes that evidence some equal or greater measure of nerviness than Attinella’s. I think Attinella is a damned good goalkeeper; I also think he’s set up a long-term campsite in his head and, until he packs out of that fucker, I’d rather see Clark start. Mind, this isn’t some kind of “Jeff Out” campaign; I’m just noting it as a big deal for scale.

Attinella owns just one of last night’s goals – and Los Angeles FC scored three of ‘em on the way to the 3-2 win they stole out of an…engorged Providence Park (let me have it; just this once). Other Timbers fathered LAFC’s other two goals: Jorge Moreira for dozing off and letting Diego Rossi slip past him to score their second goal, and (probably) Jorge Villafana for failing to track Latif Blessing’s second run to knock home their third. LAFC put up plenty of shots – like this one, for instance, which should’ve deepened Portland’s hole (because LAFC was on a roll; but it’s not like they’re dipping SKOL/Bandits) – and the fact they didn’t gives LAFC something of their own to think about. As well they should, the bastards…

…look, LAFC is the soccer team equivalent of the rich, new kid who shows up at your high school, and he’s better than you at sports, he just humiliated you in debate club warm-ups, and now you’re worried about a bunch of other stupid extemporaneous shit because of all the insecurity that follows from those realities, but it’s cool. You just need to get your head on, and your shit together, because that kid is soft…somewhere. It’s just…you haven’t figured out where, but you will. Or, rather, you have to, or Tiffany might dump you for him…I mean, she’s always been out of your league…

Los Angeles FC 2-0 FC Cincinnati: A Muted Announcement of Intentions

Of course it involves a chess metaphor...

When you support a team that isn’t competitive (e.g., the Portland Timbers), it sharpens both what you see in, and your appreciation about, another team you follow. Even though they lost 0-2 to Los Angeles FC, FC Cincinnati kept their chances…more or less alive in the game (or on life support), all the way to where you could hear the echo of the final whistle. And, in the context of “already presumed world champion” versus “guileless expansion team,” that’s a decent result for Cincinnati.

More to the point, it was a decent game for FC Cincy. They might not have made so many chances outside the only one I bothered to note (in…my notes), but they had chances. Sure, they got out-played on the math side of things, but, more importantly, they managed to play the game in the middle of the field for the most part, or at least that’s where their press showed up, and that worked for (literally) most of the night. At the same time, I think there’s an issue: if the rest of the league studies where defenders are when that midfield pressure breaks, Cincy might have at least a handful of slack-jaw goals in their future. LAFC’s late, back-breaking goal gives a glimpse of what I’m talking about, but, in my darkest visions, I’m talking about driving around the Maginot Line.

To yank that thought out of my history books, think Cincinnati’s line of engagement has worked for them for most of the season. I believe it works pretty well against teams without a lot of talent at the forward position – e.g., the Portland Timbers – but, against LAFC and Carlos Vela/Diego Rossi, it plays out differently. For instance, Vela can go shoulder-to-shoulder with quality defenders (in this case, an impressively-sized Kendall Waston; for video, see "late, back-breaking"), and Rossi can pull them apart (even if he mostly did not last night), and that’s the difference between LAFC and Portland, and a lot of teams in MLS. Also, Cincinnati did not put up a ton of shots, and that tells you that LAFC didn’t give up a ton on the defensive side either (and now I'm really freaked about my first team (Portland) falling behind). In just about any way you can think of, this was FC Cincinnati against the best team in Major League Soccer, and on the road. And Cincy kept the game within one thin fuck up, or one quality opportunity, of sharing the points until the very end of the game. I’d call that not bad, not bad at all.

At the same time, the approach taken by Cincinnati isn’t exactly sophisticated. I recalled them (or rather summoned up from my notes) relying too much on long diagonals to generate attacking momentum, and I don’t recall it working nearly often enough. By around the 70th minute, I scribbled that they looked like a team that can fight your team all day, only without necessarily winning the game. In that specific sense, the preseason knock on FC Cincinnati came true: they can defend (even if further upfield than the original theory held), but they’re going to scrap for goals against any teams they can't boss around in midfield, glass jaws, please apply, etc.. At the same time, why not interpret last night’s result as a way of placing FC Cincy into it proper spot within MLS? What if, for the time being, it makes perfect sense to call them the team that’s hell to play, but that won’t often win the game?

Los Angeles FC 4-1 Portland Timbers: Letting Jeff Down.

A wrong turn was clearly taken.

[Ed. – Spring forward caught up with me around midnight last night. Or it might have been the large containers of very strong ale. Either way, midnight felt like 3 a.m. I regret the delay.]

Had you turned off the TV (or, you piece of shit, opted to break the Seventh Seal on all things that are holy and left the stadium during) the Portland Timbers' 1-4 loss to Los Angeles FC at the half, where would you have pegged the final score for yesterday’s game? Close observers will recall that the score was 1-2 at the half, and in LAFC’s favor, but, based on what you’d seen to that point, how where would you have thought the game would end? A 2-2 draw? A 3-2 win for Portland? A 2-3 win for LAFC? What about a 1-5 loss for the Timbers?

That dip into a counter-factual comes in as an attempt to retrace the steps between here (call it the end of the first half) and there (the final whistle) to see if we can’t figure out where the wrong turn (in which they missed the bridge and plunged off the cliff and into the river) happened. Overall, the game played out fairly clear game states: LAFC scored the first goal during an opening 20 minutes of beating Portland to every ball and winning ever duel; the Timbers responded over the next 20-25 minutes by doing very close to no wrong, and scoring a goal of their own (at least they won the duel of the headers). LAFC would take over completely in the third and final game state, or, as some would call it, the second half.

I think the only question comes with identifying the precise moment that cracked the Timbers’ will. As much as it hurt in the moment, I’m hereby pulling the nomination for Christian Ramirez’s first-half-capping game winner, and on the advice of my gut (the thinnest of all grounds). With just two candidates left in the running, was it Carlos Vela feeding Adama Diomande for LAFC’s 3rd goal, or was it Diomande feeding Vela for LAFC’s fourth 3-4 minutes later? Or were those awful 3-4 minutes the Timbers pivot straight to Hell? On a higher level, did the Timbers fall apart or did LAFC pull them apart and is LAFC (perhaps) that good this season? In the end, where is the balance between LAFC’s (allegedly) great attack or the Timbers (allegedly) shitty defense?

On Portland’s side of the ledger, the conundrum comes down to this: at times, the Timbers played unstoppable soccer going forward, the kind of switched-on/half-blind riffing that ladders the ball upfield in a way that’s impossible to stop…at least without Jeremy Ebobisse seizing up on the kind of chance that makes a forward a forward (for the record, I really wish that highlight reel came in 2-3 passes earlier). The Timbers played some incredible, seeing-eye stuff yesterday – at times, the attack hummed with ambient beauty – but, Ebobisse’s one goal aside, they could only create danger, but not goals. Still, they put in a respectable shift, one that would do most road teams proud. Their aim wasn’t so good, and giving up four definitely leaves a mark (more below), but they played a better game overall than that score suggests. One simply must wonder what might have been had Ebo put away the gift of a break-away by Sebastian Blanco.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Los Angeles FC: A Song for the Unsung

Yes, that fucking good. "Everyone around the world...C'MON!!"

To venture into personally unfamiliar territory, seeing Liam Ridgewell pull up gimpy made me nervous. I’m generally cool on Ridgewell, but I’d also bought into this idea of balance and roles within recent Portland Timbers starting elevens, and balance between roles, and that idea seemed…threatened when Ridgewell lay face-down on the turf contemplating his bad luck, and by the idea of any given piece coming out of it. And so early in the game, too…

To spare one last thought for Ridgewell, I’m happy he played his way (back?) into my heart and confidence (just…I’ve always been a hardass with Ridgewell) before whatever injury struck him today, god speed and scare the shit out of the other guys as soon as you can, Liam, and thanks! Conversely, I was absolutely fucking thrilled, 1) to see Larrys Mabiala continue to look like Portland’s best central defender and, 2) that Julio Cascante came in, had at least two massive moments, and, one threatening ball skipping between his legs aside, looked like he could start if circumstance or Giovanni Savarese came calling. And the team has Bill Tuiloma in the back pocket inside its back pocket, and he’s been competent, if not good, and all that together could mean a stable central defense for the length of the season. Even if you think a great defense is the worst part of a championship team (it is), they matter immensely, and the Timbers have a sorted, solid defense, or at least one that keeps delivering - even via the understudies. And that leaves them only needing a slick attack in order to achieve unicorn-awesome, a real thing, look at the internet.

Before leaving the defense, I want to salute Zarek Valentin for starring in this afternoon’s game. My sense that I saw his face as much as anyone else’s and more than most hints at how often LAFC attacked Valentin’s flank, and all the LAFC clearances he sent back into their attacking third after set-pieces kept Portland in at least three attacks. I'm sure other players' names will get more mention after the game, but I think the broadcast booth mentioned Valentin’s more during it; he was everywhere he needed to be and a quarter-step early. Based on the past three, four weeks, Valentin wants to stay on the field pretty damn bad. That’s…just great.