Los Angeles FC has channeled a little of that old black magic while rocketing to the top spot in the Supporters’ Shield race, riding a swift attack led by you know who and the fruit of a profitable offseason to produce some of Major League Soccer’s tastiest fare through the season’s first month.
 
The Angelenos are off to a 4-0-1 start, same as their record-setting 2019 Shield winners, as Carlos Vela offers glimpses of what he was before injuries derailed the past two campaigns and new boss Steve Cherundolo‘s subtle alterations to Bob Bradley‘s aggressively attacking principles provides a balance that too often has been absent from their game, in times good and ill.
 
What was expected to be a year of transition, following Diego Rossi‘s and Eduard Atuesta‘s (and, of course, Bradley’s) departures and the uncertainty surrounding Vela’s future at the club, is blossoming into something else entirely. The foundation is GM/VP John Thorrington‘s crew’s savvy work rebuilding the roster, and in novel fashion for a club that has emphasized development and prospered with young South American talent: through the acquisitions of eight MLS veterans, mostly in trades, just one of them younger than 28.
 
Youth remains served, with Ecuadoran midfielder Jose Cifuentes, 23, steadily evolving into a difference-maker and the rises of 19-year-old Senegalese center back Mamadou Fall and Ghanaian Kwadwo “Mahala” Opoku, a 20-year-old forward, but underpinning this revitalization — for a side that, despite producing the requisite beauty, has played .500 ball since the pandemic began and last year missed the playoffs for the first time — is the presence of so much new grizzled talent and how snugly it has fit.
 
And they’ve got an open Designated Player spot — possibly two, depending on how Vela’s contract-extension talks play out — and enough assets to do some damage in the summer transfer window.
 
The quick-strike attack is roaring: They’ve scored three or more goals three times in five matches — with seven in successive victories at home over Vancouver and last weekend at Orlando City — while playing with a defensive acumen LAFC has rarely employed. Twice they’ve overcome deficits for points, most dramatically in Fall’s 93rd-minute, goalmouth tap-in equalizer against Portland, and fended off Orlando’s vibrant challenge by taking three leads, the last for good.
 
Yes, it’s early, and there’s a lengthening list of springtime frontrunners who faltered as the months wore on, but there’s something good happening here, with the talent and know-how and balance and a feeling that if it’s not 2019 all over again, that territory is nearer than 2020 or 2021. Now comes the biggest test, and brightest spotlight, of the young season: Saturday afternoon’s El Trafico derby against the LA Galaxy (3-2-0) in their rival’s stadium 12 miles down the 110 freeway.
 
It might already be MLS’s most intense clasico, the teams sit first and third in the Western Conference, and this time it’s got, as the marketing reminds us daily, the first MLS faceoff between Vela and fellow Mexican superstar Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, maybe the league’s two best forwards when atop their games, both with four strikes in five outings. LAFC has never won in Carson, taking points just twice in six games, and are 3-5-5 in the series, with victories in both outlier meetings: a 2019 playoff game and in the MLS is Back tournament two years ago in Orlando.

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