The return of Leagues Cup offers Major League Soccer clubs chances to compete against opponents they know well and those they don’t.
Following a comfortable group stage victory over Club Tijuana, the Los Angeles Football Club turns its attention from a team they had not played before to the very familiar Vancouver Whitecaps.
Ahead of their eighth meeting since April of last year, LAFC has taken the lion’s share of results versus Vancouver, going 5-1-1 including series sweeps in CONCACAF Champions League and the MLS Cup playoffs.
Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini called LAFC the best team in CONCACAF last year, which came up just shy of being true due to the unsuccessful Champions League final against Liga MX’s Leon.
When LAFC dispatched the Whitecaps 3-0 in their first regular season meeting at BMO Stadium this spring, the effervescent Italian coach somehow turned up the volume on his praise after Denis Bouanga nabbed three assists, two to Cristian Olivera and another to Mateusz Bogusz.
“I thought it was probably our worst performance of the year,” Sartini said. “The idea is that we’ve been a little bit naive and maybe presumptuous in the game, trying to be the team that was having the ball more and trying to overplay some situations. And we know you cannot do it against them because they are probably the best team in transition in the league, for sure, but I want to say even in the world.”
LAFC was hyperbolically good while running behind Tijuana’s lines on Friday, unleashing Bouanga and Olivera on a man-marking foe who couldn’t cope with the Black & Gold’s pace or determination to score.
Sartini fully understands the price opponents pay when LAFC is on.
In order to depart L.A. with at least a point before wrapping up the group stage at home against Tijuana, Sartini said his side must limit space without concentrating on a particular attacker in their zone-marking scheme.
The Whitecaps will need to find a way to do that without their best player,…
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