Refreshed LAFC ready for Leagues Cup showdown with Juarez
The Leagues Cup knockout round begins Wednesday, giving the Los Angeles Football Club what could be its first and only taste of the inaugural competition between Major League Soccer and Liga MX clubs.
Or it could take a step toward claiming a new trophy and a spot in the CONCACAF Champions League.
An automatic pass through the tournament’s group stage after winning MLS Cup last year has set LAFC up for its first game in 2½ weeks.
Mexican side FC Juarez finished second in its Leagues Cup group behind Mazatlan with a 3-1 win at Austin FC, earning an opportunity to visit BMO Stadium.
“It is great to win this kind of match,” Juarez head coach Diego Andrei Mejia said through an interpreter. “We’re ready to win this type of match. We’re ready to pay the price and give everything to move on to the next round.”
Juarez is a young club relative to the Mexican giants, but the team enters with confidence following a solid start to the Liga MX season, taking wins over Club America and Toluca while drawing with Tigres prior to the start of Leagues Cup group play.
Formed in 2015 and competing in Liga MX since 2019, “this is our first international tournament as a club,” said American forward Sebastian Saucedo, who opened the scoring for Juarez in the Texas state capitol.
Defined by process and results, Juarez is “on the way to being a solid, serious club,” projected Mejia, who took over as manager after a 16th-place finish last season.
From what LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo and his staff have seen, they expect a well-coached opponent with a high football IQ from players who can interchange into multiple positions.
“When you give them time and space they will punish you,” Cherundolo said. “Making it difficult for them and disrupting their rhythm will be our objective defensively. And obviously with the ball putting them into a deeper defending position and making them move laterally should create some windows and opportunities for us as well.”
For the past 10 days, following a needed week away from soccer, LAFC players and coaches welcomed the chance to implement comprehensive training sessions.
The unrelenting physical and mental demands of a record-setting 33 games at this point of the year made Carlos Vela feel like, “you lose a little bit of what you are because it’s just again and again and again.”
The LAFC captain joined veteran defender Giorgio Chiellini in echoing Cherundolo, who said the space between games allowed the group to reestablish an eagerness and hunger to compete as they trained up the traits, habits and behaviors that make up their style of play.
If LAFC can breach Juarez’s back line with the ball, dispossess them in dangerous areas and make it difficult for Mejia’s team to play against pressure, that should bode well for success.
“When we press at a high level we are a really dangerous team and we will try to do that,” Vela said.
Playing at home ought to infer an advantage for LAFC, though the last time a Liga MX opponent visited, the Black & Gold fell disappointingly short of dictating the terms of the match.
Hoping to write some of its own history, Juarez was understandably lifted by Leon’s clear CONCACAF Champions League triumph against LAFC two months ago.
“This is very inspiring,” said Saucedo, who also recalled “very good memories” inside BMO Stadium after suiting up for Real Salt Lake’s playoff upset of LAFC in 2018. “We want to take advantage of it and move on and make our dreams come true in the club.”
JUAREZ AT LAFC
What: Leagues Cup, Round of 32
When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. PT
Where: BMO Stadium
TV/Radio: Apple TV+ – MLS Season Pass/710 AM, 980 AM