LAFC, Sporting KC eye US Open Cup title: "Everything is possible”

Steve Cherundolo saw the topic coming from a mile away, and was having no part of it.

“No. Nothing matters prior to this and Wednesday has nothing to do with what happens after,” LAFC’s head coach told reporters on Monday. “It's just one night where we're going to come together and give it our best.”

Cherundolo’s side have been constant contenders since he took over from Bob Bradley ahead of the 2022 season, winning two titles and reaching four major cup finals (five if you count last year’s Campeones Cup setback to Tigres UANL), the latest being Wednesday’s US Open Cup final, in which the Black & Gold will host Sporting Kansas City at BMO Field (10:30 pm ET | Apple TV - Free).

Yet the Angelinos have lost a string of those big occasions: Last year’s Concacaf Champions League (to Club León) and MLS Cup finals, and this year’s Leagues Cup final (both of those to the Columbus Crew).

Many teams who’ve suffered thusly – think of the New England Revolution group who lost four MLS Cup finals between 2002-07, or the NFL’s Buffalo Bills losing four straight Super Bowls in the early ‘90s – later spoke of a certain psychological weight that can accumulate after so much heartbreak.

The past isn’t even prologue here, LAFC’s boss maintains. It’s just the past.

“The reality is, every game has its own story, and nothing that's happened in the past can hurt us Wednesday night; it can only help,” Cherundolo responded. “We have experiences in these games, but that can only be positive.

“It's a completely different game, different opponent, different time of the year, different roster. So it's unfair to draw [parallels] and it makes no sense to me as the coach of LAFC – I understand your roles and your jobs, but in all due respect, it makes no sense for us to even talk about past finals.”

LAFC's drive

Sitting next to Cherundolo in front of the cameras and microphones, center back Aaron Long offered a player’s perspective on the matter.

“The group right now is hungry,” he said. “To taste these finals a couple of times in a row now, and to get this close, I'll just leave it as, we're a very hungry group. We know what's at stake. We know what's on the line. We know what it feels like to win, we know what it feels like to lose, and we’d really like one of those. So we're going to give it everything on the day.”

LAFC pride themselves on their culture of success, having already collected an MLS Cup and two Supporters’ Shields in their brief existence. This, however, is their deepest-ever Open Cup run, while their opponents are one of the most decorated clubs in the tournament’s long history.

If Sporting can overcome their hosts’ lavishly talented roster and home-field advantage to hoist the hardware on Wednesday, it will mark their fifth USOC triumph, drawing them level with Bethlehem Steel and Maccabee Los Angeles, legendary names of the past who top the 109-year-old event’s list of repeat winners. Notably, SKC are a perfect four-of-four in Open Cup finals, a fitting tribute to a tourney that bears the name of their club’s first owner, Lamar Hunt.

“There's the fact that it's open, and you have all these different teams that are starting at amateurs and all the way up through the different levels of professional, trying to compete and get into the tournament. I think from that perspective, it provides such a unique competition, which you don't have in other sports, other than golf,” said manager and sporting director Peter Vermes on Monday.

“I just personally think it's always been a great tournament. I love the fact that everybody gets to participate.”

The Midwesterners face a different sort of pressure from LAFC. While the Californians are alive and well in the pursuit of MLS Cup, 12th-place SKC have endured a mostly miserable league campaign and were officially eliminated from playoff contention last weekend. Wednesday’s cup final is their only chance at glory in 2024, even if LAFC’s qualification for Concacaf Champions Cup via Leagues Cup means that Sporting have already booked a place in next year’s ConcaChampions.

“We have to be honest, our season so far is not what we expected before, and we have the chance to turn the season a little bit around,” said SKC’s German playmaker Erik Thommy, who worked with Cherundolo at Stuttgart when the latter was an assistant coach at the Bundesliga outfit.

“We are already in the Champions Cup next season, that's a good step for us, a good thing. So the next step would be to get a trophy home.”

Embracing underdog status

Vermes noted that recently-retired SKC icon Roger Espinoza lived a similar story during his time in England with Wigan Athletic, helping the Latics win the 2013 FA Cup final in a massive upset of mighty Manchester City just a few days before suffering relegation from the Premier League. It’s worth noting that the Open Cup featured a comparable tale that same year, as last-place D.C. United shocked Real Salt Lake with a road victory in the tournament’s final despite their historically poor league season.

Sporting, who can take heart from the scoreless draw they took from their league visit to BMO Field in the spring, had to sweat to reach this showcase. They needed extra time to avoid a “Cupset” in their opening USOC match, a round-of-32 visit to USL League One's Union Omaha, and also edged FC Dallas 2-1 in a similarly dramatic situation in the quarterfinals. They won’t overlook this moment.

“When you start a season, you have all these different opportunities at certain trophies, and you want to try your best for each one of them, because winning a trophy at any time should never go unnoticed, nor should ever be taken for granted,” said Vermes. “It's not very easy to do that in any professional sport.”

Both sides rotated their squads over the weekend to rest regulars for this match, which poses a clash of styles between SKC’s aggressive press-and-possess model and LAFC’s expertise in pacey counterattacking.

“It's a fluid, free-flowing attack with four players and some outside backs overloading on some flanks as well, a team that, when they are in the opponent's half on the offensive end, they go for it, and that makes them dangerous,” said Cherundolo of Sporting. “It's a team right now who has been creating a lot of chances, and that's a warning sign, definitely, for us.”

With Thommy in form, creative wingers Johnny Russell and Daniel Sallói flanking frontrunner William Agada and Mexican international Alan Pulido having adapted to a hybrid withdrawn-striker role, will Kansas City’s attack rise to the moment and conjure up storybook magic? Or do Denis Bouanga, Olivier Giroud and their LAFC colleagues simply pose too many weapons for a rickety defense to manage?

“Our goal will be to control the game and to find maybe the right balance in the game between defending and attacking; that's going to be a key for us,” said Thommy. “Of course, we are the underdog. We are playing away, they have the home advantage. It's a role we take and yeah, I think the only thing is that we have 90 minutes, one game. Everything is possible.”