LAFC’s Round One Best-of-3 series against Austin FC might present the most intriguing matchup in the opening round of this year’s MLS Cup Playoffs. Austin won both regular-season matches between these two sides, but this Best-of-3 series, which begins with Game 1 in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 29, will include a pivotal player who did not participate in either of those matches.
Additionally, of the four regular-season matches Austin and LAFC have played against one another over the last two years, none were decided by more than one goal. One team thrives at home (LAFC won more home matches this year than any team in the West) and on the road (the Black & Gold strung together a league-best 11-match unbeaten streak in away games). The other, Austin, doesn’t seem to care where it plays, relying instead on grit and a collective survival instinct.
Game 1 - Round One Best-of-3 Series
The Black & Gold will host Austin FC on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7:30pm at BMO Stadium.
The stakes are heavy. The winner of this LAFC-Austin series will advance to a single-match Western Conference Semifinal against the winner of Vancouver’s Best-of-3 clash with Dallas.
That winner will move on to the Western Conference Final and a chance to face the Eastern Conference champion in the MLS Cup Final on Saturday, December 6.
CLASH OF STYLES
Austin has scored the fewest goals in the West this year (37). LAFC has scored nearly 30 more than that – 65 – the fourth-highest total in MLS, and second only to Vancouver (66) in the West. Twenty-four of those 65 LAFC goals were scored by Denis Bouanga, this year’s MLS Golden Boot co-runner-up.
Defensively, LAFC conceded the third-fewest goals in the Western Conference (40), trailing only Vancouver (38) and Minnesota (39). The Black & Gold’s plus-25 goal differential is the third-best in the entire league, behind Vancouver (plus-28) and Inter Miami (plus-26).
As for Austin, of the sixteen teams in this year’s MLS Cup Playoffs the Verde has the lowest goal differential, at minus-8. And yet Austin defeated LAFC in both of their regular-season meetings this year, each by a 1-0 score line. The Texans pulled off those two wins by playing intelligently and to their strengths.
One such strength is Brad Stuver. Only five MLS goalies started all 34 matches this season and played all 3,060 possible minutes. Stuver was one of them. The 2025 MLS All-Star made more saves (128) than any of the other four and helped his team take points from several games it probably should have lost. If you insist on identifying one single reason Austin is in the playoffs, look no further than Stuver.
THE MISSING PIECE
The biggest difference between the pair of regular-season matches these two teams played and their next two matches, is Son Heung-Min. The South Korean superstar, who joined LAFC in early August, has not yet faced the Verde, missing the October 12 match in Austin because he was captaining his national team in its pre-World-Cup friendlies against Brazil and Paraguay.
Son’s potential impact on this series runs deeper than his on-the-ball skill, his world-class finishing ability, or the nine goals he has scored in nine MLS starts. Disregard for a moment the 18 straight goals he and Bouanga tallied together after he arrived from England. The word that comes up most often among experts when speaking about the 2021-22 English Premier League Golden Boot winner is “movement.”
Watch the way Son lingers near a centerback’s shoulder then drifts away when his opponent’s attention drifts. Witness the unpredictable timing of his runs; his awareness of when to track back and receive the ball deeper; his decisions about when to play one-touch combinations, and his execution of them with near-perfect quality. These moments are what make his teammates better and open up space for the likes of Bouanga, David Martínez, and LAFC’s assist leader, Mark Delgado.
These are the moments that may decide this series.
“Sonny is a player that has a lot of qualities,” Austin head coach Nico Estévez said on Wednesday. “He's a player that has enough speed to run in behind. He's a player that in a one-v-one can go inside or go outside. He has a really good shot with the right foot and left foot, we saw that the other day in the goal he scored against Colorado. He also is a really good link-up player, he comes underneath and he can lay off the ball really well. He can turn, he can see, he’s very complete player. This is why the numbers that he's having since his arrival – he's making the difference for LAFC and he's making an impact in the league.”
TIGHT MARGINS
Including the 2024 season – when these two clubs drew 1-1 in both of their regular-season meetings – LAFC and Austin have scored six total goals in their last four meetings in league play. (LAFC’s two most recent goals in the regular-season series were a header at the death by Kei Kamara that salvaged a rainy 1-1 draw in June 2024, and a second-half equalizer by Martínez in August 2024 that earned an important point for the future number-one seed.)
LAFC had more shots and more shots on target than Austin in both of those matches last year. LAFC’s 2-0 win over the Verde in Leagues Cup 2024 was another cagey affair in which shots on goal were few and far between.
At the close of 2024, following a second straight MLS campaign without a playoff berth, Austin parted ways with its first and only head coach at the time, Josh Wolff. This year under its new coach, Nico Estévez, Austin has had a more pragmatic approach to playing LAFC, sitting deeper and allowing fewer opportunities in its defensive half.
The success of Estévez’s tactics is why Austin will likely play cautiously in this Best-of-3 series, particularly in Game 1 at BMO Stadium, where The 3252 Supporters Union helped LAFC win 11 home games this year, more than any other club in the West. Austin, meanwhile, suffered 10 defeats on the road. Only St. Louis (11) and Sporting KC (12) lost more often in foreign environs.
The best way to look ahead at what this playoff series holds is to glance back at this year’s two head-to-head meetings – tight, physical contests in which each team found little room to operate.
MARCH 15, 2025 IN LA
LAFC’s first meeting with Austin this year completed a stretch in which the Black & Gold played eight games in 26 days. LAFC was coming off a positive result against Columbus in Concacaf Champions Cup and had yet to allow a goal in four matches at BMO Stadium, in all competitions.
It would only allow one goal to Austin on this day, an 11th-minute header by MLS All-Star fullback Guilherme Biro on an outswinging corner kick by Owen Wolff—the 20-year-old attacking midfielder who would emerge as Austin’s best field player over the course of the season.
LAFC’s starting eleven that day demonstrates how much has changed since then:
March 15, 2025
LAFC (4-3-3)
GK: Lloris
D: Hollingshead, Long, Tafari, Palencia
M: Tillman, Jesus, Delgado
F: Bouanga, Ebobisse, Ünder
Two of those starters (Aaron Long and Igor Jesus) have since suffered season-ending injuries. Another (Cengiz Ünder) has returned to the Turkish Süper Lig from which he was loaned.
Austin’s rotation in that March fixture was nearly identical to the one it used against LAFC earlier this month—aside from forward Brandon Vazquez, who underwent season-ending knee surgery in July.
The game was notable for its physicality and testiness. Timmy Tillman earned a second-half yellow card after he and Stuver collided and got into a shoving match near the Austin goal. In the end, Biro’s glancing header in the opening minutes held up, despite LAFC’s advantage in possession (64%) total shots (17-11), and expected goals (1.4-1.1).
OCTOBER 12, 2025 IN AUSTIN
LAFC came into the rematch riding a season-best six-game win streak. Austin had lost three straight, including to Nashville in the U.S. Open Cup Final, but had recently notched impressive victories over fifth-place Seattle and fourth-place Minnesota.
This October match had been originally scheduled for July 5 but was moved due to severe weather in Central Texas. This meant that Bouanga and Son were unavailable on Oct. 12 because they had been called up by their countries during FIFA’s international window. In all, LAFC was missing 38 goals and 16 assists from its roster due to players serving international duty.
The Black & Gold stood unbeaten in 11 straight games on the road—the best away streak in MLS this year and the second-best in league history, and had earned three straight clean sheets. None of that mattered during a muggy affair in the mid-90s Texas heat that turned out to be a battle of dueling goalkeepers.
Following a scoreless first half, a laser from distance by Andy Moran, LAFC’s young Irish attacker, was saved by a diving Stuver. Another Irishman, Austin defender Jon Gallagher, fired a similar attempt in the 59th minute that was snared by Hugo Lloris. LAFC’s best chance came in the 81st, when centerback Nkosi Tafari won the ball in his own half then dribbled the length of the field before unleashing a shot that Stuver stabbed away with his foot.
It was Wolff who scored the match’s only goal, ending LAFC’s streak of 429 minutes without conceding by heading home an in-swinging corner by Zan Kolmanic in the 83rd minute. Yes, both Austin matchwinners this season came on set pieces from the right corner flag, a detail that LAFC assistant coach and set-piece strategist Marc dos Santos will surely address in training heading into October 29.
LAFC’s attacking personnel is deep, but the absence of Bouanga and Son—finalists for the MLS MVP and Newcomer of the Year awards, respectively – altered the October 12 match. Those two will be available and on the pitch for this playoff series, a fact that Estévez said his team will address with “a collective effort.”
“I think they've scored or contributed with assists in every game that they’ve played together,” the Austin coach said of LAFC’s two scoring stars. “No team has stopped them yet. This says a lot about the quality of these players. We feel confident in our talent on our roster and our players, but also in a collective game plan that will allow us to do well.”
Estévez continued: “We know any time you play against quality players, that they can bring something out of nothing. It doesn't matter how good your plan is ... For that reason I think it's important that we focus on the collective, we focus on how we can deal collectively against [Bouanga and Son], but also how we can be better in the attacking third [so] if they bring something out of nothing and they punish us, we also can punish them.”
“Things start over in the playoffs,” said LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo. “It’s a new scenario. It’s a Best-of-3, it goes straight to penalties [if there’s a tie after 90 minutes]. It does change the way you play a little bit. We’ve seen Austin twice, lost to them twice, very similar performances, very similar way we lost each game, and so it should be quite interesting … We have our solutions ready.”
LAFC hosts Austin FC for Game 1 of their Round One Best-of-3 MLS Cup Playoff series on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. Kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. PT, and the match will be broadcast on Apple TV (free for all subscribers) with radio overage on 710 AM ESPN LA, the ESPN App, 980 AM La Mera Mera (Spanish), and 1230 AM KYPA (Korean).
