LOS ANGELES — As the Major League Soccer regular season heads into its final stretch, teams across the league are vying for position in playoff standings that see the top seven teams in both conferences qualify for the postseason.
The Seattle Sounders look to be the team most likely to finish the season atop the Western Conference standings. But the Los Angeles Galaxy and Los Angeles Football Club could both play a factor in how the west will be won.
With just under two months left to play, let's take a look at how LA's two MLS franchises could chart a course to the postseason and what their playoff prospects might be should they get there.
Despite drawing their last three games, LA Galaxy sit at fourth in the standings and are in a pretty good position overall. Four points above fifth-placed Portland Timbers and five below the Colorado Rapids in third, the Galaxy remain safely above the playoff line and within touching distance of the teams above them, which in addition to Seattle and Colorado, include Sporting Kansas City.
The most encouraging thing for Galaxy fans is undoubtedly the return of Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez after a 10-week injury layoff. The Mexican superstar looked fit and hungry in his return away at Colorado last weekend and went one better on Wednesday, heading in an equalizer to save the Galaxy from a dispiriting loss at home to the Houston Dynamo.
The return of Chicharito is a huge boost to a Galaxy team that had figured out a way to play pretty well without him. With new signings like Kevin Cabral, Rayan Raveloson and Sega Coulibaly, all of whom experienced delays in joining the team earlier this season, now integrating into the squad, and other new arrivals like Samuel Grandsir and Dejan Joveljic hitting form, there's a sense that head coach Greg Vanney's new-look Galaxy side is coming to full strength at just the right time.
If the Galaxy can get it into gear and start turning draws into wins, especially against teams like Houston, and Chicharito can recover the scintillating form he was in before his calf injury, they could be a force down the run as we head toward the playoffs. While overhauling Seattle for the top spot might be a tall order, hanging in the top four to earn a seed hosting Round One games in the playoffs seems like an attainable objective for the G's.
Barring an outright collapse, the five-time MLS Cup Champions look to be solidly on track for just their second postseason appearance in the past five years.
After several seasons as the dominant force on the LA soccer landscape, MLS’s hottest expansion franchise has cooled somewhat this season. Just a few weeks ago, LAFC looked to be in serious danger of not making the postseason for the first time in franchise history.
But after an eight-game winless streak that included four straight losses, LAFC have rebounded this month with a 4-0 trouncing of Sporting Kansas City, a 3-2 win over Real Salt Lake, and a 1-2 win over Austin FC on Wednesday. The narrow win over bottom-dwelling Austin saw LAFC climb above the playoff line. Sitting in seventh, tied on points but lagging on goal difference with sixth place RSL and two points above Minnesota United in eighth, LAFC has a foothold in contention for the postseason.
The question is, can they maintain it?
On the attacking side, the team has been boosted by the arrival of Cristian "Chicho" Arango, who joined the club in August and has since netted five times in seven outings for the club.
The Colombian striker has proved a vital reinforcement for a once formidable LAFC attack that’s been blunted by an injury to Carlos Vela and the loan of Diego Rossi to Turkish side, Fenerbahce.
But despite Arango's strong start, LAFC remain prone to unforced errors, defensive catastrophes and a tendency to give away games you'd expect them to win. LAFC are currently on a good trajectory, but there's still something about them that's not quite convincing. Stealing into the top four seems like a tall order, but Bob Bradley's team should just about have what it takes to hold on to a playoff place.
Much may depend on how they fare against the teams they’re directly competing with for a playoff spot, like Portland and Minnesota. There's also the question of the surging Vancouver Whitecaps who are hot on their heels in ninth with a game in hand.
Neither team would likely be counted as a favorite to lift MLS Cup this season. But the MLS postseason is an unusual place, frequently dominated by teams that looked middling in the regular season.
Surprisingly, it's the Galaxy that looks like the more complete team at the moment. If Chicharito does get hot and Vanney's side can hang in the top four to enter the playoffs as a seeded team, you couldn't really rule a first run to the MSL Cup Final since 2014 out for the Galaxy.
LAFC are harder to peg down at the moment. Will they elbow their way into the playoffs? Probably.
But there are just too many questions hanging over this team to say anything solid beyond that. Which version of LAFC would we see in the playoffs? Will it be the team that crushed Sporting KC 4-0? earlier this month? Or the team that just a few weeks ago, was in the midst of a franchise record eight-game winless streak? There's also the question of when, or if, Vela returns this season.
As they say, in the MLS playoffs anything can happen and Bradley's team in the past has shown they have the quality to compete with the league's best. But if we're going to start seeing the team that in 2019, topped the Western Conference and won the Supporters' Shield, now would be the time.
Statistics provided by mlssoccer.com, lagalaxy.com and lafc.com.