Pregame:

Hi folks, going to try something new and liveblog with our friends at Sounder at Heart. You can follow along here.

Los Angeles Football Club will embark on a new experience — road playoff games — as they head up to CenturyLink Field to take on the Seattle Sounders Tuesday evening to wrap up Round One of the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs.

Both teams have had over two weeks’ rest since their last game on Decision Day. LAFC played a 1-1 draw against the Portland Timbers where Carlos Vela scored again, but they conceded late to drop points, hopefully a warning sign for their playoff aspirations, while the Sounders coolly dispatched the San Jose Earthquakes 4-1 in their last game.

And while LAFC sound like they are pretty well healthy among the players training in recent days, per head coach Bob Bradley, they are of course missing Diego Rossi, Brian Rodriguez, Jose Cifuentes and Diego Palacios, who all tested positive for coronavirus and remain in South America. LAFC can weather the Ecuadorians’ loss fairly well, but the Uruguayans? Vela will be expected to carry the load for this game in attack, no question.

The Sounders look like they’ll only be missing Xavier Arreaga, who is not coincidentally an international teammate of Cifuentes and Palacios and caught up in their national team’s coronavirus outbreak. That is a miss but he takes as much off the table at times as he adds, so I have to think the Sounders feel pretty fortunate they haven’t been hit hard for the playoff game.

I can talk myself into LAFC winning this game, and I can talk myself into a blowout loss, and pretty much everything in between. The teams’ season series is tied at 2-2, with each game having a considerably different profile, but LAFC will hope the most recent performance, a 3-1 win in which they were missing Vela and Rossi, among others, will be the form they show once again. But the Sounders are wily, they are smart, and they will look to wreck LAFC on both ends of the field. I think both teams can easily win and I think both can be found out. This is going to be a fascinating game, no question about it, and we’ll see how it unfolds.

Odds:

According to our partners at DraftKings Sportsbook, as of Sunday evening, LAFC are (+195), Seattle are (+118) and a draw (for betting purposes) is (+270), so the Sounders get a slight edge but this one is considered anybody’s game by the bookmaker.

How to Watch:

Tuesday’s match between LAFC and the Sounders will be televised nationally on ESPN and ESPN Deportes, which you can watch via FuboTV. The broadcast is scheduled to start at 7:30 pm PT with kickoff to follow.

Come chat about the game with us in the comment section below!

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