LOS ANGELES — Watch them do it, too. Do it two?
Them: LAFC. Los Angeles Football Club. The Black & Gold. Your defending MLS Cup champions, L.A.
They have an opportunity Saturday to become just the fourth Major League Soccer team to repeat as champions, and the first since L.A.’s original MLS team achieved the feat, 11 years ago and in a galaxy far, far away.
Repeat championships are like cosmic events, phenomena that happen only rarely, under particularly fortuitous and inspired conditions.
One of those: Having a steward capable of calmly navigating the inevitable, additional obstacles in a team’s second ascent toward that doubly hard-to-reach peak.
A guide like Coach Steve Cherundolo, capable of plotting and mapping the smartest route – why, hello, defense! – while also instilling the necessary trust and belief in his group of explorers. And in LAFC’s case, being able to keep the main thing the main thing while guiding a notably restructured roster through a gruelingly long and congested 53-match season.
And now LAFC has emerged, with a few more gray hairs on Cherundolo’s head perhaps, and an all-the-marbles matchup against the Columbus Crew looming Saturday. Just one win from unfurling a black-and-gold tifo from the summit. Again.
But Cherundolo isn’t a bombastic, rah-rah guy, so you won’t catch him flexing about it. His is a quiet intensity, and it does the job.
Among the United States’ most decorated players, the 44-year-old returned to his native Southern California after a 15-year playing career in Bundesliga, followed by stints coaching as a Bundesliga first-team assistant, youth head coach and a role in the German national team’s youth development program.
Those experiences prepared him well, clearly, for his first head-coaching role in MLS; the man is on the precipice of becoming the second coach in league history to win championships in his first two seasons, possibly joining Bruce Arena, who did it in 1996-97 with D.C. United.
Cherundolo was the leader LAFC needed to propel it from good to great. Because if you Google “hit the ground running,” LAFC would be one of the first results.
The organization wooed L.A. in style, remember, opening up shop in 2018 with two-time MLS Coach of The Year and former U.S. men’s national team coach Bob Bradley leading a team starring Mexico’s Carlos Vela, LAFC’s first designated player.
And then LAFC became the fifth expansion team in MLS history to earn a playoff spot in its inaugural season before winning its first Supporters’ Shield – the league’s award given to the team with the best regular-season record – the very next year, when Velas was the league’s MVP.
But until last season, LAFC hadn’t yet gotten its grip on the grand prize at the end – the MLS Cup.
Not until Cherundolo took over and took LAFC all the way to the mountaintop. His team became the first MLS team to both win the Supporters’ Shield and the MLS’s season-ending championship, after an epic final against Philadelphia Union in L.A., won on penalty kicks after a wild 3-3 draw.
Now he’s helped LAFC turn around and trudge right back up and into the final, one sane step at a time.
The thing that strikes me every time I’ve listened to Cherundolo speak is how doggone reasonable he sounds. He’s mostly a say-the-right-thing type of coach, but it’s not quite coachspeak, it’s just the right thing. Rational thoughts.
Giorgio Chiellini on Steve Cherundolo,
"I was positively surprised about Steve. His best quality is [to] able to maintain the balance…I found a friend too. He is the closest to my age [besides] Carlos [Vela]."#LAFC #MLSCup
— Justin Ruderman (@JustinRuderman_) December 7, 2023
Even entering this weekend’s huge, high-stakes match, he was advocating for the importance of work-life balance, sharing how he relaxed on his day off.
“Thankfully, I have two amazing kids and a wife who can take me away from this,” he said. “We spent a great day at the beach, had a nice meal, watched the sun set, picked up seashells and lobster tails … it was a great day off. But now we’re back at work and focused.”
He was claiming not to know everything: “You never stop learning in this game; I am still learning a ton every day.”
And threading the needle, at once taking pressure off his players while feeding their championship impulses: “Absolutely, it’s a successful season,” he said. “To play at this level throughout the entire season consistently – yes, there was a small hiatus in the summertime, due to injuries and fatigue, which I think is totally acceptable and expected – so yeah, it’s a success already. But this group is not OK with just that.”
Telling me that, you know, it’s going all right over there at the team’s training center on the Cal State L.A. campus.
“For me, it’s just people first, and player second,” he explained. “Treat everybody as people and building relationships is really important. Understanding that we have work to accomplish, but we want to do it in a way that we enjoy it too. So it’s OK to laugh, it’s OK to have fun, but it’s just as OK to sweat and to learn. Creating an environment for that is something that we pay close attention to, and so far it’s been OK.”
None of that is a secret, he said, but it might be the key to doing it again, to scoring a second straight MLS title on Saturday.
#LAFC Coach Steve Cherundolo considers this a successful season already no matter what happens on Saturday pic.twitter.com/qkwyPCgkB4
— Eduard Cauich (@MayanTiger1) December 5, 2023
