Lafc, Columbus to renew the rivalry in the CONCACAF Champions Cup – Orange County Register

Crick in your neck. The pebble in your shoe. During recent meetings, that’s what it did when the Los Angeles Football Club faced the Columbus crew.

Losing three consecutive games against the MLS 2023 Cup and the 2024 Legue Cup champions, the two titles arriving at LaFC, the original Black & Gold team of MLS has been particularly high since the French head coach Wilfried Nancy took the position two seasons.

This was certainly the case that each of the three times the Nancy teams shared the land with Lafc.

Last July, a month before the league collection, 3-1, in Ohio, the crew visited the undefeated sequence of 13-1 composed and aggressive of 5-1, the LAFC club record of 13 games and stopped a sequence of 14-0-2 at BMO Stadium.

“This is a consequence of how we acted, the way we were,” said Nancy that night. “I am not surprised, with a lot of humility.”

A little more than half a year after the disappointing final of the MLS Cup, the worst LAFC defeat at the BMO Stadium included “certain things that can never be repeated,” suggested that head coach Steve Cherundolo, whose team had won 28 of the 30 points against MLS opponents before Nancy’s arrival.

When the Triple Champion of the MLS followed against Lafc to win the title of the Legues Cup, they also won a Bye in the knockout stages for the Congacaf 2025 Champions Cup. Thanks to the drawing of the tournament, once LaFC passed the Colorado Rapids last week, another force test with Columbus was officially official in books. The two -leg series begins Tuesday evening at the BMO Stadium and ends the following Tuesday (March 11) on the Lower.com field in Columbus.

“I think the strongest line, and what is most underestimated in this team from Columbus is their work rate,” said Cherundolo. “I think it’s a team that works harder than any other team from this league, whether they have the ball or do not have the ball. And this is a success marker for me. I do not think that it talks about it enough, and so it said, I think for us, it is really important to correspond at least to the intensity and to understand that if you are going to compete with a team like this, and we can, you must run. You have to work.

A significant difference will be the absence of the Colombian striker Cucho Hernandez, who was appointed MVP MLS Cup in 2023 and the best player in the Legues Cup in 2024.

Hernandez, 25, dominated Lafc in his three games led by Nancy, scoring four goals, adding a decisive pass and generally a pest in the third party offensive.