Are LAFC The MLS Cup Champions Elect?

There are a lot of great teams that currently reside in Major League Soccer, and that much kind of goes without saying. As the years go by things are getting progressively more and more competitive, and that can only mean good things for the state of the game over in the United States of America. Of course, that also means that we get some exciting spells towards the end of the season as we gear up for the MLS Cup play-offs.

Before all of that, though, we tend to get a pretty good idea of who is going to do well in the post-season based on what goes down in the regular season. Up to this point, it’s fair to say that there is one team and one team only that is leading the charge: Los Angeles Football Club.

Los Angeles, stand up

As reported by MLS Soccer and FOX Sports, LAFC was able to get back to winning ways last night with an emphatic 5-1 triumph over Sporting KC. It was the kind of performance that reminded us all as to why they’re just so highly thought of in the current MLS landscape, and it also gave us a pretty good insight into how much further ahead of some of their rivals they are.

The statistics, though, speak volumes above everything else. Not only are they six points clear at the top of the Western Conference with a game in hand, but they also have an utterly astonishing goal difference of +29. For context, the next best in the entire MLS is Philadelphia and NYCFC in the Eastern Conference with +11.

They’re scoring goals for fun and they’re keeping people out whilst doing it, which is the hardest combination to crack at this level of the game. They just seem to be more confident than we’ve seen any MLS franchise be in quite some time, and that includes the last few winners of the Cup.

Respecting greatness

As a recently developed team it always felt like they were going to do something special, but perhaps the best part of it all is that, even though they’re in Los Angeles, they’re not benefitting from some larger than life superstar such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic (although the same cannot be said for LA Galaxy).

The likes of Carlos Vela have been leading the line for LAFC and will continue to do so flawlessly, mainly because they just seem to have found a balance that works. This team functions as a unit as opposed to as a group of individuals, and that can be rare to see nowadays.

We aren’t about to suggest that they could give any major teams in Europe a game or anything like that, but they certainly aren’t far away from doing so.

Now is the time for people to jump on the MLS bandwagon, because as we can see via teams such as LAFC, the standard is progressively getting so much higher with each and every passing year.

They’re only just getting started, too.