Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire returns to LA, this time heading to South Central, where an LAFC side in the midst of a sort of reboot will host a St. Louis CITY SC side that’s still looking for some goalscoring punch (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).
That reboot for LAFC comes via their recent elimination from the Concacaf Champions Cup – they can just focus on the league now – and the shocking news that head coach Steve Cherundolo will step down at the end of the season. I’m expecting them to play like a team that has something to prove, which makes sense since they’ve now got a lot to prove.
With St. Louis, it’s less “something to prove” and more “proof of concept.” The defense is better, yes. But the overall structure of the system and the talent within it? There are doubts.
LAFC
- It’s been a slow start to the season for winger Denis Bouanga, though the former Golden Boot winner did put together his best outing of the year last week at Portland.
- The front office decided to rebuild most of the midfield this past offseason, which has led to a predictable amount of getting-to-know-you awkwardness at times. That said, U22 Initiative d-mid Igor Jesus has impressed.
- Olivier Giroud, welcome to MLS! The legendary French No. 9 scored his first league goal in his 16th league appearance since arriving last summer. Overall, he’s got just three goals in 29 games across all competitions in Black & Gold, so yeah. Not the smoothest integration.
St. Louis CITY SC
- When Roman Bürki broke his hand in early March, a lot of responsibility fell onto the shoulders of Ben Lundt. And he’s responded, allowing just six goals in six games.
- The biggest reason for that has been Henry Kessler’s play in the middle of the backline of St. Louis’s 3-4-2-1 shape. But he’s out for a month with a hamstring injury, so it’s veteran German CB Timo Baumgartl running the show from that spot now.
- With Eduard Löwen out, the job of midfield orchestration has fallen to Marcel Hartel, who’s more of a natural chance creator. It’s not the snuggest fit, but this team’s shown progress with the ball over the past game-and-a-half, and Hartel’s the driving force for that.
LAFC have set a high standard of success from Day 1, first under Bob Bradley and then under Cherundolo.
Since the latter became head coach in 2022, they’ve been to two MLS Cup finals (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 (née League) and the 2024 Leagues Cup. Oh, and they also played in (and lost) the 2023 Campeones Cup and topped last year’s Western Conference regular-season standings.
That is an insane amount of success, though at times it feels like we shine more of a light on their shortcomings in those finals, and on their less-than-artful style of play (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me).
Well, we now know Cherundolo is stepping down at the end of the year. With that news should come a new urgency to give a very successful coach a proper farewell, and for a team with this track record, that means just one thing: more silverware.
You can’t win anything in April but they are, at this moment, just seven points off the Shield pace. Which is to say they are very much in it if they start winning the games they should.
New head coach Olof Mellberg has come in and done what he could to right the defensive wrongs of the past few years. Very clearly that was his top priority, and even with Bürki injured – he spent most of the past two years being superhuman – there has been legitimate, measurable defensive improvement.
But it’s come at the cost of attacking productivity. Hartel, Cedric Teuchert and Simon Becher took the league by storm when they arrived in the middle of last season; this year they’ve hardly made a dent. In part, that’s because of injuries (Teuchert’s been carrying a knock all year) and absences (Hartel having to play deeper as an orchestrator instead of a playmaker hasn’t helped), but another and arguably bigger part has been Mellberg’s risk-averse approach to both game model and team selection.
Add in a reluctance to play young players (no one under the age of 24 got on the field for St. Louis until Matchday 8, and we’re talking about a market here that produces as much local talent as anyone), and it didn’t take long for the fans to start grumbling.
Honestly, I don't blame them.
LAFC: Good on you, Steve Cherundolo!
Surely, you saw the news last week. Cherundolo is stepping down at the end of the 2025 season to return to Germany. A couple thoughts…
- We’re witnessing the end of the second era in LAFC’s short MLS history. They’ve been blessed to have two incredibly successful coaches, and the only question left in the Cherundolo era is whether or not he can win another trophy (or two) to add to his already shining legacy in Los Angeles.
- Good on Cherundolo for recognizing what he and his family needed most, prioritizing that and communicating it in a way that gives the group, staff and club complete clarity about the future. The players know exactly how this will play out, and the club can immediately begin a search for the next manager. As always, Cherundolo epitomizes a professional, pragmatic, club-first manager. He will be missed.
- Though Cherundolo’s absence will leave a huge hole – and I hope we don’t see him out of management for too long – LAFC are poised to attract some massive names, both in terms of coaching the team and playing for it. I can’t wait to see what the club looks like and who’s leading it in 2026.
St. Louis CITY: Can Xande Silva add some pace and punch to the attack?
St. Louis CITY snuck a trade in just before the Primary Transfer Window deadline in MLS this week, picking up forward Xande Silva from Atlanta United.
On paper, the relatively low price tag (up to $250k in GAM, though that comes with eating the pro-rated cap hit) plus Silva’s profile – speed to burn, a desire to run at defenders and positional versatility – makes complete sense for a team in need of another attacking weapon.
The issue is Silva mostly hasn’t turned his promise into MLS on-paper production and put goals and assists up consistently. We’re talking 40 games (27 starts) and just four goals and four assists, though that doesn’t include three goals in seven Audi MLS Cup Playoffs appearances.
Still, it was well worth the swing at that price tag for sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel. Olof Mellberg can use Silva up top to threaten the space behind opposing backlines or on the left running off João Klauss.
LAFC
Under Bradley, 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.
Under Cherundolo, they have become a more direct and pragmatic team, one that has sacrificed a ton of the ball and a ton of midfield creativity for space to counter into. Meaning if you let them become a low-block-and-counter team, they will happily take that offer – and probably beat you to death with it, since Bouanga is one of the most effective open-field attackers this league’s ever had.
But teams really have caught onto that over the past 18 months, which has forced LAFC to rediscover some of their comfort in possession. And that’s been a work in progress since neither Jesus, nor the two veterans in front of him – Mark Delgado and Timothy Tillman – are chance creators. That’s made the default 4-3-3 for this season (they still have last year’s preferred 5-2-3 club in the bag when they need it) somewhat sterile and bereft of ideas unless they can draw the opponents forward with patient possession play from the back:
The defense is still good – though so far not quite as good as they were last year – and they mostly don’t beat themselves (please ignore last weekend’s highlights and just accept that assertion as true).
So truly, the question is whether or not Giroud can start doing for LAFC what he’s done for France forever. Which is become the team’s attacking organizer and secondary playmaker while occupying center backs as a true No. 9. His worth has never really been measured in goals (though it’d help if he scored more than once every 10 games), but in the way he creates space and patterns of play for his attacking companions.
And I remain just shocked that it hasn’t happened yet here. I thought he’d have instant chemistry with Bouanga and, to a lesser extent, livewire young attacker David Martínez. But there’s just been none of that.
Last weekend’s attacking performance, though, gave LAFC a double serving of hope. I assume they’ll try to build on that.
St. Louis CITY SC
According to folks who follow the team closely and Mellberg himself, the new coach spent a ton of time this winter rebuilding the defensive structure, which makes sense for a team that relied waaaaaay too much on Bürki through two years. As such, they’ve transitioned away from the Energy Drink Soccer-inflected 4-2-2-2 that became a 4-2-3-1 once Hartel and Teuchert arrived last summer (which coincided with John Hackworth taking over as interim head coach), and now play out of a 3-4-2-1.
That has resulted in one of the best defenses in the league, both by boxscore numbers (no one’s conceded fewer than St. Louis’s six goals allowed) and underlying numbers (they are tied for sixth in expected goals allowed as per FBRef).
The sacrifice has been attacking initiative. Lotta this happening for CITY:
The issue: Mellberg’s game model requires aggressive and immediate verticality when the opportunity presents itself, and doing that requires Löwen (or, with him out, Hartel) to get on the ball and open the game up in those moments.
Hartel has started to find the ball more in recent weeks, which is good. But the wingbacks have not held up their end of the bargain, which is bad.
St. Louis are generating just 13 take-ons (1v1s) per game, which is tied for 28th in the league, and they’re 27th in success rate at just 36.9%. Those are VERY low numbers for a team that plays with wingbacks, because a huge point of the 3-4-2-1 is to get the ball to the wingbacks in stride against a rotating, back-pedaling defense. It is, after all, easier to beat a rotating, back-pedaling defender than one who’s comfortably in his banks of four.
Mellberg, however, has been overly cautious with his squad selection (he’s played center backs at wingback more often than I’d like to count), and that’s robbed this team of any consistent threat from out wide, either on or off the ball.
The good news is there has been progress in recent outings, starting with the final half-hour of a 2-1 loss to the Crew two weeks back. That was followed up by a balanced, two-way performance in last weekend’s credible scoreless draw against Vancouver, currently the top team in the league.
I’m expecting only one change from last weekend’s XI, and this is no slight against Nathan Ordaz (who I really, really rate). But Martínez is something special, man, and it’s puzzling he’s not out there from the whistle every week.
No changes to the XI I’m expecting to see, though I’m wondering, after I talked a season debut for Mykhi Joyner into existence two weeks ago, if I can talk a start for the kid into existence this week? Joyner, an 18-year-old homegrown, is a natural wide attacker – basically the perfect fit for one of the wingback roles, and a guy who could fix a lot of the structural issues this team’s been dealing with.
