Forty-five minutes was not nearly enough time for LAFC captain Aaron Long to find the words to describe a season that was both magical and crazy, a season that reached new heights but ended in disappointment and dismay.
So he didn’t even try.
“It’s tough right now,” he said after Saturday’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Seattle Sounders in the MLS Western Conference semifinals at a sold-out BMO Stadium. “It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.”
LAFC reached the League Cup and US Open Cup finals, winning the latter. In the regular season, they finished at the top of the conference table and won 19 games. Only one team has won more.
These are great achievements. But what LAFC really wanted was a trip to a third consecutive MLS Cup Final, something no team has accomplished in 17 years. But Seattle’s Jordan Morris dashed those hopes four minutes into the second overtime to send the Sounders to next weekend’s conference finals.
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Seattle will play the winner of Sunday’s second conference semifinal between the Galaxy and Minnesota United.
“I just look at this season — to get to two finals, win a trophy, win the West — I mean, any team is going to go into this season, right? It’s a great season,” Long said. “But as footballers we are so greedy and we always want more. We’re going to want this back.”
Especially since LAFC dominated virtually every phase of the game, taking 26 shots, twice as many as Seattle, and putting 10 of them on target. But few of them caused problems for Seattle goaltender Stefano Frei, who tied a career-high in the playoffs with nine saves.
“You did enough to win the game,” LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo said. “They created enough chances, also a lot of set pieces, which were close several times. So in the end I think it’s fair to say we beat each other.”
And as a result, Cherundolo had trouble turning the side.
“We’re disappointed for our fans that we couldn’t play a few more games at home,” said Cherundolo, whose team had home field advantage in the MLS Cup. “It was a really great opportunity for us this season, but that’s the sport. Sometimes you lose. You can’t always win.
“We will regroup, evaluate this season, which I think was extremely positive overall. That’s what I just told the guys. It was another fantastic season and we will try to do the same with a better finish next year.”
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The end of this season felt like a dagger between the shoulder blades, and the credit for that goes to the scrappy Sounders. As they did during the playoffs, they often bent but never broke. They swept Houston in the first round, won both games on penalty kicks and looked set to bounce back into a tie-breaking shootout on Saturday before stepping up for Morris, whose participation was considered questionable earlier in the week.
The forward sat out Seattle’s opening game of the playoffs last month with a hamstring injury, but with the MLS postseason cut short for the FIFA international break, the Sounders had three weeks off, which proved to be plenty of time for Morris to recover. LAFC, playing for the 50th time this season, have gone 15 days between games, long enough for some players to complain about a loss of momentum and rhythm.
After a scoreless first half in which he didn’t have a shot on target, LAFC took a 1-0 lead on a goal by Ryan Hollingshead in the 50th minute. That seemed to be a good sign, as LAFC had only lost twice in 23 MLS games when they scored first. But nine minutes later, defender Maxime Chanot restored the lead when he put his right foot in front of an unmarked Obed Vargas cross and turned it into his own net with half an hour left in regulation to level the scores.
That mistake gave life to the Sounders, who hadn’t had a shot on goal since the 39th minute until Morris scored just before the second overtime.
“We were limiting them very well at that point. So it gave them a lot of confidence,” Long said of the own goal. “It’s no different than any other goal you give up. It just gives the team some life on the other end. You want that momentum.”
LAFC continued to press, but Frei was undaunted.
LAFC hasn’t lost against Seattle in its last 10 tries — including all nine with Cherundolo on the sideline; The Sounders’ only previous win at BMO Stadium came in the 2019 Western Conference semifinals, which was also the last time LAFC lost a playoff game at home. However, Frei equalized these chances himself, when in the 87th minute he made a wide one-handed save on Longo’s shot and thus kept the match even.
That set the stage for Morris’ decisive score, which came after LAFC’s Ilie Sánchez headed a corner into the top of the box. Cristian Roldan’s volley sent it back into the penalty area, where LAFC’s Kei Kamara unsuccessfully battled the ball with a Seattle defender and deflected it to Morris, who turned left and fired a right-footed shot just wide of the far post. The goal was his ninth of the postseason, tying him with teammate Raúl Ruidíaz for most active MLS players.
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It also kept the Sounders unbeaten in their last 10 games and sent them to the conference finals for the first time since 2020. For LAFC, their second loss in three playoff games left them in the MLS Cup final for the first time since Cherundolo took over. after the 2021 season.
“It hurts.” It’s disappointing,” the coach said of the loss, which leaves the eye looking ahead not to the next playoff game, but to next season.
“We feel good where we are right now,” he continued, finally starting to turn the page. “We look forward to building a stronger team next year.”
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.