Saturday, November 7 | 4:00 p.m. PT
🏟 | Lumen Field - Seattle, WA
🖥 | WATCH: Apple TV | Coupang Play (Korea), SpoTV (Korea), Tubi, Local Bar Partners
📻 | LISTEN: 710 AM ESPN, ESPN LA App, SiriusXM Ch. 95, KFWB 980 AM La Mera Mera (Spanish), & KYPA 1230 AM (Korean)
LAFC completes its 2026 regular season with a visit to the Seattle Sounders, seeking to defeat a longtime rival on the road and build confidence headed into the Audi MLS Cup playoffs.
LAFC has already secured the 6th seed in the Western Conference playoffs, so its postseason position cannot change no matter the result on Saturday – also known as Decision Day – the final day of the league’s regular-season schedule.
The Sounders, on the other hand, need to win or draw against LAFC to get into the playoffs, and they need results in other matches across the league to fall a certain way.
- ALSO READ: Decision Day scenarios | MLSSoccer.com
“For them it's a really important game,” interim head coach Xavi Tamarit told the media on Thursday, “but also for us it's a really important game. I don't feel for them it's more important than for us. Of course there will be a lot of people, they need to win … so it's going to be a very good test.”
A two-week break for MLS playoff teams will follow Saturday’s regular-season finales, as dozens of MLS players travel abroad to compete for their countries. Teams will reconvene in time for the MLS Cup Playoffs, which get underway on Wednesday, November 19, with two Wild Card matches featuring the 8- and 9-seeds in each conference.
LAFC will face the West’s third seed – either Dallas, San Jose, St. Louis, or Houston – in its Round One Best-of-3 series, which starts on Nov. 20 or Nov. 21. Its Round One opponent will be known by Saturday night. LAFC will host Game 2 of that series at BMO Stadium on the weekend of Fri., Nov. 27.
FORM CHECK
LAFC and Seattle, clubs that are usually in or around the top four in the West on Decision Day, instead find themselves trying to right their respective ships as a pair of challenging regular-season campaigns draws to a close.
LAFC is coming off a 3-1 home loss to 12th-place Minnesota last weekend, while the Sounders have not won in nearly a month and are 0W-3L-2D over their last five outings, including a 5-1 defeat last weekend at the hands of conference leaders Vancouver. Club pride is on the line for these two accomplished franchises – in addition to playoff prep.
TACTICS TINKERING
Tamarit’s teachings have yet to fully congeal within an LAFC side that he has been tasked with reshaping in the weeks before the playoffs. It is not a simple assignment.
Saturday presents the opportunity to take what Tamarit and his staff have learned over the five games he has been in charge, and impart those lessons to one of the league’s most talented rosters, empowering it to enter the playoffs on a high note.
“The group has responded by training very well throughout the week,” Tamarit said in Spanish of the defeat at home last Sunday. “We’ve emphasized that anyone can have a bad day. What we cannot repeat is the passivity we showed during the first 15 minutes against Minnesota. At a club with the standards of Los Angeles Football Club, that is simply not acceptable. It cannot happen again—and, frankly, I believe the players and I are in complete agreement on this. It’s not just about the players; it’s about us—the staff and the club as a whole. Our standards must remain very high.”
RIVALRY RENEWED
Since LAFC joined Major League Soccer in 2018, these two clubs have won more games than anyone else in the Western Conference.
Only the Galaxy has faced LAFC as many times as Seattle has, and the stakes are usually high when these two titans meet. In the first match in LAFC history, a Carlos Vela assist gave the Black & Gold a 1-0 upset win at Lumen Field (above). Five years later, the Black & Gold faced the Sounders four times in various knockout rounds over a 13-month span, defeating Seattle in the 2023 Western Conference Semifinals, the 2024 Leagues Cup Quarterfinals, and the 2024 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Semifinals; and falling to the Sounders in the 2024 Western Conference Semifinals.
When LAFC hosted Seattle earlier this year, the Black & Gold was in a similar down moment right before an international break (for the FIFA World Cup). LAFC was on a three-game MLS losing streak and a five-game winless streak in all competitions — unfamiliar territory for MLS’ winningest club over the last decade. Timothy Tillman (below) scored the game’s only goal in the 86th minute, finishing a cross from Tyler Boyd to secure the 1-0 win, with backup goalkeeper Thomas Hasal making five saves to record the clean sheet. Following the World Cup, LAFC reeled off three straight wins by a combined 10-1 scoreline.
PERSONNEL NOTES
Tamarit said on Thursday that Tillman - a workhorse, box-to-box midfielder for the Black & Gold since 2023 - will soon rejoin the team following a recent injury. Tillman led LAFC midfielders in minutes played before he was sidelined in mid-August.
Defensive midfielder Igor Jesus, who recently returned to the fold following a one-year knee rehabilitation, said in Portuguese: “We feel the responsibility of the game, but our mentality is the same. We want to win. We want to be champions. Our confidence has not changed. We know the quality of the team that we have.”
Denis Bouanga, LAFC’s all-time leading goal scorer across MLS play and all competitions, needs two goals to become the first player in MLS history to record 20 or more goals in four straight seasons. Of the 126 goals Denis Bouanga has scored for LAFC in all competitions since joining the club in 2022, he has scored six against the Sounders.
Son Heung-Min (below), whose 15 assists this year are tied with Carlos Vela’s single-season club record, can break that mark by recording his 16th.
LAFC WILL WIN IF
The eleven that Tamarit places on the Lumen Field turf possesses the ball in the opening minutes, takes the sting out of the game and the home crowd, and finds the net first. LAFC remains unbeaten in all competitions in 2026 (17W-0L-5D) when it scores the opening goal, including a 12W-0L-5D mark in MLS play.
If and when the Black & Gold finds that breakthrough goal, Tamarit would like to see more. “What kind of team do we want to be when we’re winning?” he said. “Do we want to be a team that hands over possession and retreats into its own half, instead of pushing for a second goal? What kind of team do we want to be when we’re trailing? A team that starts blaming those around them, or a team that grows closer when things get tough, so that we can emerge even stronger? That is what matters—for us as a group, as a club—that is the most important thing. And that is what we are working on.”
SOUNDERS CAN WIN IF
The urgency of the moment and the loyalty of Sounders’ die-hards celebrating Fan Appreciation Day, shifts the emotions toward the home side.
“They are a team that when they have the ball they can maintain the ball, they have good movements,” Tamarit said. “So of course the space is going to be so important, the space behind them, but it's not just about ‘defend and counterattack.’ We want to have as much of the ball as we can. We want to progress all together to the opponents’ half, and we win to create [advantages] in many different ways … Big teams – and LAFC is a big team – you need to manage well most of the moments, not just one or two moments.”
