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No MLS coach has won more regular-season games over the past three years than LAFC’s Steve Cherundolo. But that’s really been just an opening act, an appetizer. Because where Cherundolo and his team shine brightest is in the playoffs, which they opened again Sunday with a methodical 2-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps before a sold-out crowd of 22,298 at BMO Stadium.
With the win, on goals from Denis Bouanga and Cristian Olivera, LAFC goes into the second game of the best-of-three playoff next weekend needing a victory to advance to the Western Conference semifinals. If Vancouver wins, the series will return to BMO Stadium on Nov. 8 for the third and deciding game.
Since taking over LAFC, Cherundolo has lost just once in nine postseason games, winning one MLS Cup and losing by a goal in another. If he gets his team back to the championship game again this fall, he’ll become just the third man in league history — and the first in 17 years — to take his team to the final in three consecutive seasons.
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However, the road there is fraught with potential potholes, a couple of which Cherundolo’s team steered around Sunday.
“The guys did enough to win the first game and nothing more,” Cherundolo said.
“There’s more work to be done. There’s a couple more games. Maybe only one for us.”
LAFC weathered a shaky start that saw Vancouver blow a golden opportunity to go ahead in the seventh minute when Stuart Armstrong burst in the box alone with only LAFC keeper Hugo Lloris to beat. And he beat him cleanly, but his right-footed shot bounced off the left post and across the front of the goal without crossing the line.
Seven minutes later Pedro Vite threw another scare into the home team, sending a low right-footed shot inches wide of the other post. If either had gone in, it could have spelled trouble for LAFC, which won just once in 11 regular-season games when conceding the first score.
But all that became moot when a video replay convinced referee Jair Marrufo that Vancouver defender Tristan Blackmon had blocked Mateusz Bogusz’s shot with his arm, leading to a penalty kick Bouanga converted for a 1-0 LAFC lead. The goal, in the 30th minute, was Bouanga’s 21st of the season and his league-best eighth from the spot.
Vancouver nearly matched that in stoppage time when Ryan Gauld curled a left-footed free kick from 20 yards off the crossbar, giving the goalposts more saves than Lloris in a first half that ended with LAFC leading. And that brought two more stats into play: LAFC entered Sunday 15-1-0 in MLS play when leading after 45 minutes and 6-1-2 in its last nine games with Vancouver, including a two-game sweep in the first round of last season’s playoffs.
Neither of those trends would be reversed in a second half that LAFC dominated, doubling its lead 12 minutes after the break at the end of a passing sequence that saw Ryan Hollingshead and Bogusz steer the ball around the box before hitting Olivera charging in from the right wing. Olivera then one-timed a hard right-footed shot that deflected off Whitecaps keeper Yohei Takaoka into the roof of the net.
“It was fun to watch,” Cherundolo said of the goal. “Exactly how we kind of draw up on the tactical board.”
Vancouver made the final seconds a bit dramatic when Gauld found the back of the net in the fifth minute of stoppage time to make the final score more respectable — and perhaps give the Whitecaps a bit of momentum entering the second game next weekend.
“Definitely job’s not done,” defender Aaron Long said, repeating his coach.
“It’ll be a complicated match,” Olivera added in Spanish. “We will go there and look for the win. It hasn’t been easy. But we have a good team that deserves to advance.”
Gauld’s goal came nine minutes after Carlos Vela, the last member of LAFC’s original roster, drew a huge ovation when he came on for Bouanga.
When Vela, whose last appearance came in December’s MLS Cup final, was waved on, Long rushed to the sideline, pulled the captain’s armband off his bicep and handed it to Vela, who wore it through most of the team’s first six seasons.
“That was an easy one,” Long said. “Carlos coming on the field, his first time back? Yeah, he’s getting that for sure.”
The team did not make Vela available for comment.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.