By james art 
Baseball might not mean much in Rochdale, England, but Louis O’Brien didn’t need to watch America’s pastime to know how much winning the World Series means to Dodgers fans.
“The atmosphere around the place is completely different after the Championship,” said the 26-year-old midfielder, who arrived in Los Angeles this summer on loan from Nottingham Forest. “It’s always good for communities to win things, and so does your personal team. Hopefully we can bring some of that energy from this week and carry it into the game on Sunday.”
Practice for Game 2 of the MLS Cup playoffs best-of-3 opening-round series against the Vancouver Whitecaps As the Dodgers celebrated with nearly 300,000 fans on Friday, O’Brien’s teammates and coaches at the Los Angeles FC weren’t considering a double-decker bus of their own still driving.
“This is an incredible achievement. Congratulations to the Dodgers and Peter Guber, also part of our LAFC family,” said head coach Steve Cherundolo, whose debut to win the 2022 MLS Cup ended with a quick lap around Christmas Tree Lane that was cheered by 5,000 supporters at the Exposition Park.
“It’s great to see Angelenos happy and proud of their team,” Cherundolo added. “We’d like to give them the same in a couple of weeks, but we’re trying not to think about it too much.” We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We’re in the first round of the playoffs, so there’s a lot of work to cover until some sort of ceremony begins. We will focus on the next task ahead, which is to play in a difficult environment in Vancouver.”
If being healthy and mobilizing a deep bench are assets in the postseason — both were vital in ’22 — LAFC is in a great spot as they meet the Whitecaps for the 11th time in two years.
“You can think about a full 90 minutes,” said Cherundolo, who explained that this is the second time in 2024 that he has a full roster to deploy. “You can have all the options, which means you can start very offensively and switch to defense to finish plays or vice versa, start conservatively and finish offensively. Or you do a mix.”
Beating a familiar opponent repeatedly creates its own set of problems because neither side changes their personalities and players can learn enough about each other to create stalemates, O’Brien said. Starting a dozen straight games in midfield for LAFC since late August, the Englishman has already played against Vancouver three times.
“There’s always little things you can notice in games and little things we look at on video trying to change for the next game,” he said.
After handling the Whitecaps 2-1 at BMO Stadium last weekend, LAFC is poised to sweep the Canadians for a second straight postseason on the artificial turf at BC Place, where they are 3-0-1 in all competitions over the past two years.
During LAFC’s final away game of the regular season in Vancouver on Oct. 13, forward Mateusz Bogusz scored in 32 seconds and played a key role in the 93rd minute win by Elie Sanchez.
If LAFC avoids an elimination game at BMO Stadium next Friday, it will make it eight straight wins, starting with the US Open Cup in late September.
“It’s a three-game streak, but we really want to finish on Sunday because that can give us more days off,” Bogush said. “We can prepare well for the next round. But even if not, we want to finish this 2-0. That’s our focus, to go in there and win this game.”
Admittedly, Bogush isn’t much of a baseball person either, but he was blown away by the excitement that grew in the city after the Dodgers sealed their five-game streak against the New York Yankees.
“The Dodgers are bringing the championship here in L.A.,” Bogush said. “So now maybe it’s time for us to win the championship.”
LAFC AT VANCOUVER WHITECAPS
When: Sunday, 5:55 p.m
Where: BC Place, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
TV/Radio: Apple TV – MLS Seasons Pass, FS1/710 AM, ESPN App, 980 AM