Vancouver Whitecaps FC vs. LAFC: Keys to Sunday Night Soccer | OneFootball

By Matthew Doyle

The Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire roadshow heads up to Canada, home of the hottest team in the region: Vancouver Whitecaps FC. I’ve been watching it in awe for three months and honestly, you can still knock me over with a feather.

You could probably knock LAFC over with a feather, too, given how they’ve owned the ‘Caps over the past few years. In tournament after tournament after tournament – sometimes the Concacaf Champions Cup, sometimes the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs – the Black & Gold would just batter Vancouver, showing them the gap between the two sides. Even in last year’s playoffs, when it was clear that the gap had narrowed, a narrow gap was still a gap. It was undeniable.

The shoe is somehow on the other foot now. Vancouver are the Big Bad and LAFC are punching up (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

Players in focus

Vancouver Whitecaps FC

LAFC

What’s at stake for Vancouver Whitecaps FC?

I mean, if they win this game they get another week of me calling them The Best Team in North America™ in every column I write. If that’s not motivation, what is???

More to the point, though, is that stuff I wrote above: LAFC have bullied the hell out of Vancouver over the past few years, eliminating them from the 2023 CCC (née League), 2023 playoffs and 2024 playoffs by an aggregate score of 15-6. That’s pretty commanding.

I don’t really have much doubt about Vancouver’s legitimacy at this point – you don’t eliminate Saprissa, Monterrey, Pumas and Miami while averaging 2.4 ppg in the league despite battling various injuries if you’re not standing on business. New head coach Jesper Sørensen has this team playing soccer that is both winning and beautiful.

Symbolically, though, they need to slay the beast. Doing so, at home in front of a fired-up crowd that’s rapidly and justifiably fallen in love with this team, would mean quite a bit.

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What’s at stake for LAFC?

To be fair, Vancouver aren’t the only team that LAFC have bullied. Their standard of success from Day 1 can be matched by few teams in the league’s history.

Since Steve Cherundolo became head coach in 2022 they’ve been to two MLS Cups (winning one), won the 2022 Supporters’ Shield, won last year’s US Open Cup and made it to the final of the 2023 Concacaf Champions Cup and the 2024 Leagues Cup. Oh, they also played in (and lost) the 2023 Campeones Cup and topped last year’s Western Conference regular-season standings.

They are arguably the MLS team of the last half-decade.

But the shine has come off over the past six months. First they were handled by the Seattle Sounders in last year’s playoffs, then they got off to a slow start in the league, and then they got smushed by Messi & Friends in the second leg of the CCC quarters.

This would be a signature win and an announcement that their era amongst the elite isn’t over just yet.

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On Wiebe’s radar

Vancouver Whitecaps FC: Are you ready for Denis Bouanga vs. Édier Ocampo (or Tate Johnson)?

You can’t talk about how explosive and devastating Bouanga is without zeroing in on the man-to-man matchups that the LAFC attacker generally turns into one-man shows.

For all the Appreciation Posts™ rolling in as the long-time ‘Caps core levels up, there has been precious little mainstream attention paid to Ocampo, who barely played last year after arriving in the summer on a U22 Initiative deal from Colombian's Atlético Nacional, and Johnson, a 19-year-old left back filling in for Canada international Sam Adekugbe (he wasn’t even playing college soccer this time last year).

Both have been rocks. Both will get about as good a winger-vs-fullback challenge as exists in MLS on Sunday. Bouanga routinely swaps sides, and LAFC’s other wingers are no slouches either.

LAFC: What is the Cengiz Ünder endgame?

The Turkish international and on-loan Designated Player’s deal goes through June 30 with a purchase option. Ünder has started three matches in Black & Gold, but has mainly been a 20-minute bench player.

His eye for a pass changed the tide against St. Louis CITY on Sunday Night Soccer a few weeks ago, yet that potential return to Fenerbahçe is coming up fast. Is the 27-year-old just a piece to get LAFC through the FIFA Club World Cup (should they get there over Club América)? Does he have a future in LA come July? Past 2025?

Something to keep an eye on…

Tactical breakdown

Vancouver Whitecaps FC

The utterly remarkable thing about the ‘Caps is they've kept their same style and principles of play even when missing players via injury or international absence, and even when rotating the squad, and even when on short rest, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. It’s remarkable.

Let’s take a look at a typical Vancouver build-out. I picked this one at random – literally just opened our clipping tool, scrubbed forward until whenever and grabbed the sequence it landed on.

This doesn’t end up in a goal, or even a shot, but it puts a lot of pressure on RSL’s defense to cover from touchline-to-touchline, scramble, keep track of 1-2s, always be aware of the space they’re leaving behind them, and so, so many more things, until Justen Glad is finally able to cut out that attempted slip pass and turn things in the other direction.

So what are we seeing here?

There are other things at play here, too – goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka’s ability to distribute allows the ‘Caps to more easily shift teams from side-to-side (that semi-Cruyff he pulls at the 21-second mark is important to the shape of the whole thing), and they always have at least one player off the ball attacking space behind the opposing backline. Keeping those center backs occupied means it’s easier for the attacking midfielders and wingers to find time and space, right?

It’s incredible how resilient this has all been. Ryan Gauld is still out and Brian White is now on the mend as well. They’ve had to shuttle new signings Jayden Nelson and Emmanuel Sabbi in and out of the lineup due to injury, and same with both starting fullbacks. D-mid Andrés Cubas (their best all-around player) and Ranko Veselinović (their best center back) have both been rested and rotated.

They've now played 19 games across all competitions against teams from four countries.

They’ve lost two of them. They have a +19 goal differential across those 19 games and lead MLS in all the advanced stuff that matters.

It’s incredible soccer.

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LAFC

Once upon a time LAFC were the preeminent possession team in MLS, using the ball to create long periods of dominance that were as effective as they were aesthetically pleasing. The single-season record holders for all those underlying metrics that love Vancouver so much? It’s still 2019 LAFC.

They have become a much more direct and pragmatic team over the past four years, though, one comfortable with the idea of sacrificing both possession and field position for space to counter into. In a lot of ways that makes sense, since Bouanga is one of the three most devastating open-field players in league history (Landon Donovan and Hany Mukhtar are the other two, since I know you’re wondering). And they’re still very good at that: if you let them become a low-block-and-counter team, there’s a good chance they will beat you to death.

Cherundolo has started to change his tune in the past 18 months, though, and as a result, LAFC are rediscovering some facility with the ball. That has maybe accounted for some of the early-season choppiness this year, one exacerbated by a midfield personnel issue. To that end, while Delgado, Timothy Tillman and Igor Jesus are all good to very good players, none is a chance creator. None of that trio really ever sees the pass that opens up the whole game, which means their transitions from pure possession to full attack can sometimes be laborious, and other times far too linear.

They have, however, made visible progress in recent weeks.

This is a beautiful team goal, one that would be perfectly at home in Vancouver’s highlight reel, or Columbus’s, or Miami’s.

The defense is still one of the league’s best, though they have been more error-prone than in past seasons. The biggest difference between these two teams defensively is that when LAFC are pushed onto the back foot, they mostly choose to just get numbers behind the ball and weather the storm. They’re good at it, but as we all saw in the CCC second leg against Miami, some storms can’t be weathered. You have to be able to get on the ball and punch back.

We’ll see if they get that opportunity on Sunday.

Projected lineups

They’re missing some pieces and moving other guys back towards full fitness, so some of this is bound to be wrong. My best guess, though, is it’ll be their standard 4-3-3 with most of the available starters in the lineup.

The center forward job officially belongs to Nathan Ordaz now, right? He seems to have won it over DP Olivier Giroud and veteran Jeremy Ebobisse, both of whom are more classic target forwards than the type of mobile No. 9 Cherundolo has traditionally preferred.