When defender Christie Pearce was roaming the backline for the women’s national soccer team, she lived by a simple adage.
“If we score, we might win,” she said. “If they never score, we can’t lose.”
For the most part that worked, with the U.S. losing just 20 times in the 311 games Pearce played in, more than half of them ending in clean sheets.
Pearce’s philosophy is now one LAFC appears to have adopted. In four of the five matches the team has played this season, goalkeeper Hugo Lloris hasn’t conceded a goal. LAFC has won all four.
The latest win came Tuesday, with Denis Bouanga scoring twice in a 3-0 victory over the Columbus Crew in the first leg of a round of 16 CONCACAF Champions Cup playoff at BMO Stadium. The second and deciding leg will be played March 11 in Columbus with the winner advancing on aggregate goals.
Tuesday’s victory was LAFC’s first in four games against Columbus since Wilfried Nancy took over the Crew three years ago. Two of those losses came in finals, the 2023 MLS Cup final and last summer’s Leagues Cup final.
Although LAFC has been solid on both sides of the ball in its short history, it has primarily won with offense, producing three MLS scoring champions in its first six seasons. It has never scored fewer than 53 goals over a full season.
But after a winter in which the team lost three of last season’s four leading scorers, replacing them with three defenders and a holding midfielder, LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo has asked his club to play defense first. And it has worked. Not only is LAFC giving up few goals, it’s giving up few shots, with Lloris needing to make just six saves combined in his four shutout wins.
Columbus put just one shot on goal Tuesday, with the clean sheet giving Lloris 17 in all competition since coming to LAFC last season. It also ran his scoreless streak to 370 minutes. Lloris tied the MLS record with a five-game scoreless streak last season.
But if LAFC has conceded few goals, it has also scored few of its own, with its first three wins all coming by 1-0 scorelines, matching the number of 1-0 wins from all of last season.
Bouanga gave LAFC the lone goal it would need in the 20th minute Tuesday, taking the ball off the foot of indecisive defender Andres Herrera deep in the Columbus end, then beating Crew keeper Patrick Schulte 1-on-1 from the center of the box for his first goal of the year.
It was also the first goal LAFC has scored in the first half this season.
Bouanga doubled the advantage 40 seconds into the second half, curling a right-footed shot from the left edge of the penalty area into the side netting at the far post.
Substitute Nathan Ordaz closed out the scoring in the 81st minute, with the three goals matching LAFC’s total from the previous three wins combined. That also left Columbus with a massive hill to climb in the aggregate score in next week’s rematch.
If LAFC holds on to its lead, it would probably face Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in the two-leg tournament quarterfinals next month.
