The Los Angeles Football Club played 103 matches the past two seasons, the most ever for an MLS team. Yet there were moments when it felt like the only opponent on the schedule was the Vancouver Whitecaps.
Between the MLS regular season, MLS Cup playoffs, CONCACAF Champions League and Leagues Cup, the Pacific Coast foes went toe-to-toe a dozen times.
After lifting the 2022 MLS Cup, LAFC came into each match against Vancouver as the “favorite.” Former Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini labeled the Black & Gold the top team on the continent at the time. And Steve Cherundolo’s group lived up to the billing, going 8-2-2 against them by an aggregate score of 25-13.
Vancouver took it on the chin, coping with elimination in consecutive best-of-three playoff series as well as a lopsided two-leg CONCACAF Champions League defeat in 2023.
The repeated encounters in close succession still caused LAFC to grow weary of seeing the Whitecaps.
And the feeling was understandably mutual.
“That’s funny,” said midfielder Ryan Raposo, a Vancouver player since the 2020 MLS SuperDraft who joined LAFC as a free agent in April. “I think we were thinking the same thing.”
Visiting Vancouver on Sunday without Raposo, who is sorting through the visa process, LAFC players and coaches remain positive about their chances having gone unbeaten in four straight since the CONCACAF quarterfinal loss to Inter Miami.
However, the first clash between the two in 2025 sets up differently for all involved.
Top of the table in the MLS, having qualified for the CONCACAF Champions Cup final in Mexico City on June 1 against Cruz Azul, the Whitecaps under Danish head coach Jesper Sørensen are the story.
“It’s a group that’s been together for a very long time,” Raposo said about a team he played for 122 times. “It’s a group that’s very close, inside and outside the locker room. It’s a bunch of guys pushing in the same direction. From what I’ve heard from them, they’re loving the new coach and they’ve all bought into what he wants from them.”
Sørensen’s group dominated the first third of the MLS regular season, posting an 8-1-2 record with a plus-14 goal differential. Through 19 contests in all competitions, Vancouver lost just twice, doing what LAFC could not by beating Lionel Messi’s Miami and reaching the continental championship.
“They are certainly the team of the season, and they have been fantastic and fun to watch,” Cherundolo said.
Beating LAFC (5-4-2, 17 points) at BC Place in the Sunday Night Soccer showdown would make Vancouver the fifth team in MLS history to accumulate at least 29 points 12 games into a season, and the first to do so since the 2010 L.A. Galaxy. Three of the previous four hoisted the Supporters’ Shield.
Transitioning from the Italian firebrand Sartini to Sørensen, Vancouver has emerged more active in the four phases of the game — offensive organization, defensive organization and both directions in transition — and, to Cherundolo’s eye, connected, fluid and fit across the board.
Moving from five at the back to a 4-3-3, Sørensen’s influence has helped the Whitecaps reach an all-time high in confidence, gleefully attacking in numbers without holding anything in reserve.
“Some would describe it as risk-taking, but for me it’s a logical consequence of staying connected and working very hard,” Cherundolo said.
To get it done as the underdog, “cheating and running a little less and getting by with experience or good fortune or individual quality is not going to work,” suggested the LAFC coach. “Vancouver’s star is the team and you have to beat that first.”
LAFC AT VANCOUVER WHITECAPS FC
When: Sunday, 4 p.m.
Where: BC Place, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
TV/Radio: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, Apple TV+/710 AM, 980 AM
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