Steve Cherundolofirst season in LAFC ended in a penalty shootout that decided one of the most exciting playoff games in MLS history. His final season ended in the same way last Saturday.
Cherundolo and LAFC won that first classic match, beating Philadelphia Union in the 2022 MLS Cup Final. They lost the second one drop in minority Vancouver Whitecaps in the Western Conference semifinals, which had more plot twists than an Agatha Christie mystery.
Meanwhile, Cherundolo proved to be one of the best coaches in the history of the league, winning MLS CupA US Open Cup and over 100 appearances in all competitions during his short four-year stay. He took LAFC to CONCACAF Champions League Final and in the first round FIFA Club World Cupbuilding a resume that can't be matched by any coach in MLS history.
And while his departure will clearly hurt, the club he leaves is in good form and has the core of its squad signed for next season. Of the 16 players deployed by Cherundolo on Saturday, only five were goalkeepers Hugo LlorisDefenders Nkosi Tafari and Ryan Raposo and midfielders Andrew Moran and Frankie Amaya are out of contract.
General Manager John Torrington Decisions on the club's squad are expected to be announced later this week.
“Moving forward, we will see how it looks next season. I wish this club all the best,” said Cherundolo, who has used 75 players in his four years in charge, the second-highest in the league. “I can say with confidence that this is again a very successful year. And for that I am very proud.”
The coach, a Hall of Fame player who was on three U.S. World Cup teams, announced last April that he would return to his wife's native Germany, where he spent his entire 15-year club career when LAFC's season ended. This meant he entered the playoffs knowing that his next loss would be his last.
But last week he made it clear that he was simply saying goodbye, not goodbye.
“In four years I can come back here,” he said. “I'm definitely not canceling it.”
Meanwhile, Torrington is looking for a new coach for only the second time in franchise history. For the first time he stayed at home, replacing Bob Bradley with Cherundolo, manager of the club's USL Championship affiliate.
It's likely to happen again this time, as two members of Cherundolo's staff are Mark Dos Santos, the former Whitecaps manager and former Galaxy and Chivas USA striker Ante Razov, an assistant for three MLS teams, are considered among the favorites to take over and build on what LAFC has already achieved.
“I think Steve himself would say that if he leaves and the culture collapses, then he didn’t do a good enough job of building it,” – Defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “We know things will continue to go the right way, and that's partly because he helped make it that way. He put it in the right direction, and that created something that has led to a lot of success over the last four years.”
Results aside, if 46-year-old Cherundolo had been allowed to choose an explanation to mark the end of his MLS coaching career, it's unlikely he could have chosen a better explanation than Saturday's game, which was dramatic and entertaining enough to become an instant classic.
Playing in front of an MLS Stadium record crowd of 53,937, the Whitecaps took a 2-0 halftime lead and remained in the lead with a goal in stoppage time. At that point, Vancouver's first-year coach Jesper Sorensen was so confident of victory that he replaced captain Thomas Muller.
However, that quickly changed when defenseman Tristan Blackmon received a second yellow card, leaving Vancouver down to just 10 players. Son Heung-min It took him little time to make the Whitecaps pay, with a superb free-kick in the dying minutes to score his second goal of the half – and his 12th in 13 games for LAFC – to send the game into extra time.
That's when the game went from classic to epic: midway through overtime, Vancouver lost another player after center back Belal Halbuni limped off with a leg injury. That allowed LAFC, who outscored the Whitecaps 26-9, to score against Vancouver, deflecting two shots off the post and another off the crossbar.
However, none of them hit the back of the net, and the game was decided by penalties – the cruelest, meanest, most unfair – and most exciting – way to determine the winner.
When Son, who finished the game with a muscle cramp, limped to the spot and sent his team's first penalty kick off the right post, LAFC were in trouble. When Mark Delgado sent the ball over the net and into the crowd on the third try, LAFC was done.
“Sometimes football is so crazy. That's why we love football,” Son said, before ending with: “See you next season.”
This Cherundolo could not say. But he still left with his head held high.
“If you look at the sum total of four years at LAFC,” he said, “we have a lot to be proud of.”
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