LAFC heads to Energizer Park on Wednesday to face St. Louis CITY SC with three points on the line and two teams moving in opposite directions. LAFC sits third in the Western Conference and sixth in the Supporters’ Shield race, while St. Louis is 14th in the West and trying to stop a season that has already slipped badly out of reach.
The match gives LAFC a chance to steady itself after a rough stretch. It has 21 points from a 6W-3L-3D start, but its form has faded to 2W-3L-2D over its last seven matches in all competitions. That includes a home loss to Houston on Saturday night, a setback that ended about 70 hours before kickoff in St. Louis and added more pressure to a team already being asked to juggle a crowded schedule.
St. Louis enters with nine points from 11 matches and a 2W-6L-3D record. The club has scored 10 goals and allowed 18, a minus-8 goal differential that reflects how often it has been chasing games instead of controlling them. Its home record is 1W-2L-1D, so Energizer Park has not been the kind of advantage the club needed. LAFC, by contrast, has been sharper at the top end of the table, with Denis Bouanga leading the team with five goals and David Martínez and Mathieu Choinière each adding three goals in league play, while Choinière has also contributed two assists.
There is recent history between these clubs, and it favors LAFC. The teams met in Los Angeles on March 14, when LAFC won 2-0 and both goals came from Choinière’s right foot from long range. That result is part of a wider pattern in which LAFC has had more finishing power and more balance across the field, while St. Louis has searched for a steadier attacking edge under first-year head coach Yoann Damet.
St. Louis does have a few reasons to believe Wednesday can look different. Roman Bürki has started every match and played every minute of the club’s MLS schedule this year, making 32 saves in a season that has kept him busy almost every week. Marcel Hartel leads the team with three goals, Simon Becher leads with three assists, and St. Louis followed its MLS struggles with a 1-0 road win over Colorado last time out, with Jeong Sang-bin scoring the only goal. The club also advanced to the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinals two weeks ago and can reach the semifinals by beating the Houston Dynamo on May 19.
LAFC’s own workload has been relentless. Since its April 14 draw against Cruz Azul in Puebla, Mexico, the team has been playing roughly every three and a half days, a stretch that has tested its depth even before the loss to Houston. The club was eliminated from the Concacaf Champions Cup by Toluca, which makes league points even more important now as it tries to keep pace near the top of the Western Conference and the Supporters’ Shield race. Hugo Lloris leads MLS with eight clean sheets in 11 starts, and Son Heung-Min tops the league with eight assists, numbers that show how strong LAFC can still be when it finds control.
For St. Louis, the problem has been simpler and more severe: it has not scored enough. The club has the second-fewest goals in MLS, and that shortage has left little margin for error even when Bürki has been at his best. Wednesday is a chance to prove the Colorado result was a turning point. For LAFC, it is a chance to show that the recent wobble is only that, and not the start of a deeper slide.
