Opening the Major League Soccer season at home in February, the Los Angeles Football Club got the better of the Seattle Sounders. Nine months later, BMO Stadium will also serve as the end of the line for one of the Western Conference rivals, who will clash for the second consecutive season in a conference semifinal. Unlike 2023, LAFC, the No. 1 seed in the conference, has the advantage of playing at home – not that that location has mattered much between the teams. Winless in their last 10 matches against LAFC, including an 0-4-0 spell in 2024, the Sounders’ long-tenured head coach Brian Schmetzer is 0-7-2 against the Black & Gold since Steve Cherundolo took over for Bob Bradley in 2022. “There is familiarity and sometimes you tend to, when you see a team a lot, you fall into certain rhythms and habits against that team,” Cherundolo said. “There is danger there. But I think you really, really need to approach each game individually. Even if you won 40 in a row, the 41st needs to be approached in the same manner as the first 40. And even if you’ve won them all or lost them all, I don’t think the approach changes. “The more you think about it the more you get into that psychological spiral of, ‘oh, we won, we’re going to win again’ or ‘oh, they’re bound to win at least one, so maybe this is the time.’ When you start to think like that, that’s wrong. There’s reasons why you win a lot of games against certain teams, but those reasons are only visible from the outside if you do your work and you approach the game in the right manner and you work on details. And you analyze why you actually won that game but you work on those and make sure you implement those in the next game. “But you cannot just approach a game and say, ‘oh, it’s a good match up, we’re going to beat them because we always have.’ That’s when things start to go sour, and we don’t do that at LAFC.” After opening day, the Black & Gold took care of the Sounders three times in the Pacific Northwest, winning an MLS regular-season contest, a Leagues Cup quarterfinal, and a massive U.S. Open Cup semifinal, all the while extending an unbeaten stretch in the series that dates to May 2021. LAFC has scored mostly in transition and with set pieces. The team has also held the Sounders in check, limiting American striker Jordan Morris along with other threats on the flanks and between the lines. “They have their tools as well,” Cherundolo said. “We’ve done a good job of negating their weapons.” This season that amounted to a 9-1 aggregate score in LAFC’s favor. “First of all, we know Saturday will be a completely new game,” starting midfielder Timothy Tillman said. “We played them so many times they know about our strengths. We know about their strengths. It’s even more difficult the more often you play against each other, so we need to be absolutely aware of everything. Think two steps ahead, probably, and just be ready for Seattle.” Since September, the Sounders have gone unbeaten in seven straight, rallying for a top-four seed prior to sweeping Houston in the opening round. That outcome provided them with three weeks off ahead of Saturday’s showdown, while LAFC had one fewer week to recover after a three-game series against the Vancouver Whitecaps. In the wake of an international break no one was pleased about, when LAFC sent five players to their national teams – Denis Bouanga, Mateusz Bogusz, Cristian Olivera, Kei Kamara and Nathan Ordaz – everyone has returned to L.A. and is ready to play, Cherundolo said. In their absence, the group trained with an intensity that, considering the circumstances, surprised even him. During postseason play, the Sounders have won two of three meetings against LAFC. Each time, the victor went on to reach the MLS Cup final. “We’re well-prepared and now it comes down to guys performing on game day,” Cherundolo said. “And it has in the last matches we played against them, too. They’ve been tight margins and we’re looking forward to another tight match, but we’re at home and our expectations are to win.” MLS Western Conference semifinal Who: Seattle at LAFC When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Where: BMO Stadium TV/radio: Apple TV+ (MLS Season Pass), 980 AM