Denis Bouanga and Leo Walta each scored goals in a span of nine minutes in the second half and Los Angeles FC clinched a spot in the MLS Cup playoffs by rallying for a 2-2 tie against the visiting Los Angeles Galaxy on Sunday.<\/p>\n
LAFC (12-9-11, 47 points) remained in sixth place with two games remaining in the season but are just one point out of fourth place and home-field advantage in Round One of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Hugo Lloris made three saves for LAFC, who remained unbeaten (1-0-3) under interim head coach Xavi Tamarit.<\/p>\n
Joseph Paintsil scored a pair of goals for the Galaxy (10-11-11, 41 points), who remained in the ninth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, two points ahead of Real Salt Lake.<\/p>\n
JT Marcinkowski made three saves with none bigger than a diving stop on a shot from LAFC’s Tyler Boyd just before the final whistle.<\/p>\n
The match was the 28th all-time between the rivals and the all-time series remained even at 10-10-8 for each club.<\/p>\n
LAFC thought they had the early lead 28 minutes into the match when Son Heung-Min scored. But the play was ruled offside and was confirmed on VAR replay.<\/p>\n
Less than a minute after the resumption of play, the Galaxy’s Robert Taylor forced a turnover at midfield, moved up the right side of the field and sent a cross to Paintsil, who found the net for a 1-0 lead in the 34th minute.<\/p>\n
Taylor received the start for the Galaxy only because Marco Reus was out of the starting lineup because of illness.<\/p>\n
Paintsil added to the lead six minutes into the second half when he followed a shot from teammate Erik Thommy and scored on the rebound from a Lloris save.<\/p>\n
LAFC needed just two minutes to respond and cut the deficit to 2-1 when Bouanga pounced on the rebound from an Armindo Sieb shot and scored past Marcinkowski. The goal was Bouanga’s team-leading 18th of the season.<\/p>\n
LAFC tied the match 2-2 in the 62nd minute when a deflected centering pass from Son fell to the feet of Walta, who poked a shot through the legs of Marcinkowski.<\/p>\n
Bouanga nearly gave LAFC the lead in the 85th minute but Marcinkowski made a save near the edge of the 6-yard box.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Field Level Media. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published October 25, 2026 at 8:31 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denis Bouanga and Leo Walta each scored goals in a span of nine minutes in the second half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-508252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}