The evening before his introductory press conference, Son Heung-min made his first appearance as a Los Angeles Football Club player at BMO Stadium.
Watching from a suite after landing at LAX, Son saw his new team, a heavily rotated Los Angeles Football Club, bring down Mexican giant Tigres UANL to cap its third Leagues Cup Phase One match of 2025.
Under a revised format, the point of the round robin first phase was to determine the four top points earners from either league who would advance to the knockout stage, which in 2026 runs from Aug. 25-Sept. 6.
Last season, LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo chose to heavily rotate for the Leagues Cup opener against Mazatlan and start his best XI against Pachuca, drawing both matches in regulation before losing and winning in penalties to tally three points. That rendered the Tigres match competitively worthless but spiritually valuable – an uplifting scene that coincided with the earliest flash of Son’s smile and massive appeal.
Exactly one year later, the sixth edition of the Leagues Cup begins Wednesday night at BMO Stadium, where Son can experience the CONCACAF-sanctioned MLS-Liga MX tournament himself against Mexican power Chivas de Guadalajara.
Son grew familiar with Mexican soccer this spring, visiting Cruz Azul and Toluca FC during the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and again in the summer with the South Korean national team for the World Cup.
Well before Son had designs on playing in North America, Guadalajara attempted to move into the U.S., bringing a subsidiary to Carson in 2005 under the name Chivas USA.
The MLS franchise shared the same venue as the Galaxy and folded after a tumultuous decade.
From those ashes, LAFC was born.
For the first time, the historically connected teams will compete, testing the allegiances of Chivas-loyal LAFC supporters who were instrumental in founding the 3252 and sprouting a local fan base who wanted no part of the Galaxy.
“For them, it’s going to be special, I think,” LAFC head coach Marc Dos Santos said. “For me, it’s another game against a giant of the Mexican league, and we’re used to it, so the experience we gain from the games against Cruz Azul and Toluca equipped us to be ready for this game.”
The Leagues Cup begins with 54 MLS vs. Liga MX matches over nine days. Each club plays three times against the opposing league. Divided into Eastern and Western regions, teams are ranked 1 through 36. Liga MX rankings are based on cumulative performance across a full year. Positioned 10th based on the MLS Supporters Shield, LAFC plays Chivas (21), the familiar CONCACAF champion Toluca (1) and Querétaro (31).
“These teams are really, really well-balanced,” LAFC defender Ryan Hollingshead said. “Really good defensively. Solid in the attack. Chivas has been struggling a little bit to start, but these guys love tournaments like this. They love playing us. So they’re going to be ready to go. It’s going to be a test for sure.”
Seattle (15) and FC Dallas (25) face the same rotation of Mexican opponents, which Dos Santos and defender Ryan Hollingshead called the hardest in the field.
At least LAFC won’t travel. Seattle’s opener comes with 8,750 feet of elevation at Toluca’s Nemesio Diaz Stadium, where in May the Black & Gold bowed out of CONCACAF, leaving them 9-6-4 all-time against Mexican opponents.
Led by the tournament’s all-time leading goal scorer Denis Bouanga, LAFC was the Leagues Cup runner-up in 2024, and stands 8-2-3 overall.
Through the previous three tournaments, Guadalajara, founded in 1906, went 1-3-3.
Coming off a hard-fought draw on Saturday at BC Place for an MLS contest in Vancouver that required slogging around a new turf field that seemed to sap energy from the ball, Dos Santos could understandably rest his first-choice lineup like Cherundolo did. Instead, he promised LAFC would “go for it” against Chivas.
Toluca and Querétaro? That depends.
“We haven’t had too crazy of a run in the last couple of weeks,” Hollingshead said. “We can push hard in this midweek game. And then from there we have a really good idea of what it will look like to get out of our group and get into the next stage.”
LEAGUES CUP: CD GUADALAJARA AT LAFC
When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: BMO Stadium, Los Angeles
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