Avid readers of the MLSsoccer.com Power Rankings can be assured that plenty of players and club staffers around the league follow them. Some even admit as much on the record, like Ilie Sanchez did last Friday.
“I just saw the other day, the Power Rankings,” LAFC’s Spanish holding midfielder noted to MLSsoccer.com and a group of visiting overseas journalists at his club’s training complex, in the aftermath of the postponed El Trafico match at the Rose Bowl. “And we are not in first place anymore.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Sanchez maintained he was not hurt or enraged by a perceived slight of his team in the wake of their 2022 MLS Cup-Supporters’ Shield double. In fact, he claimed to have no issue with the list’s preseason order, citing it as evidence of the league’s unpredictability.
“So how that can happen in other leagues in the world, right? And this just happens here,” he said. “I'm not complaining about it. I'm actually excited about this situation, where you are the current champion, and for next season, maybe you're not the favorite, or the only team favored to win it back. So no, I think that this makes this league more interesting compared to other leagues and definitely players, we feel that going into the season … it keeps us on our toes.”
That’s right: The cerebral metronome at the heart of LAFC’s engine room rates the Philadelphia Union, especially in terms of the Shield race, after narrowly outpacing Jim Curtin’s group last year on multiple fronts.
“Yeah, I think Philadelphia, it's probably the favorite,” said the 32-year-old, who senses that pundits expect his Black & Gold to be more of a tournament team, or more apt to make a late-season push. “I'm not saying that they're going to win, because especially in MLS with a playoff system, you never know.
“But for the Supporters’ Shield run, they kept the coach which is one of the pillars for their club, their organization, and they kept their best players. So they are going to be the team to beat in the East. The West, you never know. The West is just crazy, I think. Personally, I think that it is stronger than the East.”
That’s a departure from the us-against-the-world grievance-nursing found elsewhere in the game. Head coach Steve Cherundolo seemed to wave off the idea of rallying his squad around perceptions of external disrespect when he spoke to the media last week.
“The biggest source of motivation for this group is just trying to be as good as we can possibly be, and be as professional as we can possibly be with all of the games that we have,” he said.
“That's, to me, a much greater challenge than just using reverse psychology to try and motivate the group – which they don't need. This group is still hungry. Since day one of this preseason, everybody’s been pretty keen on getting out and playing, and preseason has gone fairly well. Performance has been pretty good.”
It’s not that LAFC won’t defend their Shield title vigorously. It’s just that they have so much else to fight for in 2023, and admit as much.
Thanks to torrential rains and flooding that scotched last weekend's high-profile derby duel with the LA Galaxy, LAFC will open their campaign a week late, with Portland’s Matchday 2 visit to BMO Stadium on Saturday (4:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, FOX). It seems they don’t mind the delay too much, considering this month marks a different sort of kickoff: the first of what they expect will be many three-game weeks this year, as they aim to truly compete on multiple fronts, starting with the Concacaf Champions League.
Next Thursday the Angelenos will open their second-ever CCL run with a tricky Round of 16 first-leg visit to Costa Rica’s LD Alajuelense. That’s a match they’ll have to manage carefully to prevent from slipping behind the eight-ball at the dawn of what they hope will be a deep run in the competition they were a breath away from winning in 2020 (lost the final to Liga MX's Tigres UANL).
“Certainly we are aware of the pitfalls, of the challenges that come with multiple competitions. You add Leagues Cup to that, which is a competition that we as a club will take very seriously, and it's going to become a matter of balancing priorities,” said co-president and GM John Thorrington, who admits that departures like Chicho Arango, Gareth Bale and Latif Blessing have changed the nature of the roster.
“I don't think we have the depth necessarily that we had at the end of last year,” he explained. “We chose to add key pieces that add versatility. So rather than, if you don't have the squad depth in terms of numbers of players, you have to address it through versatility. So we have players who can play multiple positions. We intentionally went younger and wanted to get a more robust profile of player, players that we think can play three games in a week without much issue."
Can LAFC, a club that aims to be and do things others in MLS can’t, really transcend the established limitations of fighting on multiple fronts? As past CCL contenders can confirm, it's hard to escape the reality that occasions like that trip to Costa Rica add a new facet to the old adage about ‘one game at a time.’
“The important thing is, continue to be hungry,” said star defender Giorgio Chiellini, whose elite levels of experience and mentality will be vital even on days when his 38-year-old legs are rested. “Continue to try to find new energy in order to lift new trophies. It's not easy because after the first win, it's normal – after every win, it's normal to relax a little bit.
“We have to avoid it. We have many trophies this year, because there is Champions League, there is Campeones Cup, Leagues Cup and all the usual other ones. It's very important to think game by game because yeah, we have some change in the roster. We know that it will not [be] so easy."
