The Los Angeles Football Club can turn 2025 into the year it ran the table and claimed victories over every team in Major League Soccer.
That attempt starts Saturday at BMO Stadium against New York City FC, which ranks with the Fire, who are on LAFC’s schedule Aug. 9 in Chicago, and expansion San Diego as the one percent of MLS teams that remain unbeaten against the league’s benchmark organization since 2018.
Beginning its eighth year in MLS, LAFC has the most points (392), most wins (113) and scored the most goals (439) over that span, outpacing second-best Philadelphia by a decent margin in each category.
NYCFC sits fourth on the list, 36 points and 15 wins behind LAFC, but thus far the Pigeons avoided Olly the falcon’s talons.
The fourth installment between the clubs comes after a four-year pause. It’s been so long that Spaniard David Villa remains NYCFC’s leader for the most shots on goal in the series with three, all of which came in the first meeting, a 2-2 draw during the expansion year when visiting head coach Patrick Vieira lamented about the lack of a new stadium in New York after experiencing the Banc of California Stadium.
(Currently under construction, that will finally become a reality in 2027, when Etihad Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Willets Point, Queens, opens its doors.)
In 2019, LAFC traveled east and shared points on a crisp spring afternoon at Yankee Stadium punctuated by record-setting Carlos Vela, who celebrated the first of his two goals on the day with a home-run swing standing in center field.
Two years later, Bob Bradley’s last as LAFC head coach, New York City grabbed three points as visitors, rallying late to win 2-1 during their MLS Cup championship season.
In his ninth year with NYCFC, 38-year-old Maxi Moralez is the lone player on the current roster with a goal contribution against LAFC.
The Argentine midfielder started and played 78 minutes versus Miami for the club’s new head coach, Pascal Jansen, in the regular-season opener last Saturday, a gut-wrenching draw at Miami that hinged on the late brilliance of Lionel Messi.
“This team is excellent with some rotation in position and exposing teams in space behind, setting teams up, drawing defenses out, getting defenses caught in what we call no-man’s land and getting stretched between lines to then expose team in behind,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo noted of Jansen’s group.
“I’d love to see our team play with higher intensity and more speed” this Saturday, Cherundolo said.
For LAFC players, the match is their fourth in 12 days, with another pair of midweek games coming after advancing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup over Colorado on Tuesday.
“Going to the next round feels great,” said midfielder Timothy Tillman, who started alongside Tuesday’s series-winning scorer Mark Delgado and Igor Jesus in each match so far.
The heavy schedule has been a bit of a comfort zone for LAFC during the Cherundolo era, as the club learned to thrive with the demands of success.
“I think finding a good mix between building a functioning team but still managing minutes is a very tough part,” Tillman said. “I’m happy I’m not the one who has to decide about that. We all came out of a preseason that was really good. We worked really hard and we knew what was coming towards us, so we were ready for that and trained for that.”
NEW YORK CITY FC AT LAFC
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: BMO Stadium
TV/Radio: Apple TV (MLS Season Pass)/710 AM, ESPN LA App, 980 AM