Denis Bouanga scored from about 12 yards out in second-half stoppage time for his sixth goal of the season to lift host Los Angeles FC to a 3-2 victory over the 10-man Portland Timbers on Saturday night.
Bouanga had also helped create LAFC’s opening tally, ultimately ruled an own goal late in the first half, and Timothy Tillman added his fourth goal in first-half stoppage time.
The Black-and-Gold (4-3-3, 15 points) had let that halftime lead slip away, before a red card to the Timbers’ Diego Chara in the 76th minute turned the game back in LAFC’s favor.
Maxime Crepeau made four of his eight stops for Portland (2-4-4, 10 points) after that dismissal, but on his last he could only react in time to temporarily push away the danger from Kei Kamara’s header
The ball eventually cycled to Bouanga, who struck a curling right-footed shot off the inside of the far post and over the line two minutes into stoppage time.
The result extended LAFC’s unbeaten run to four matches, and their home unbeaten run to six to begin the season.
Santiago Moreno scored his third goal of the season and assisted on the second of Jonathan Rodriguez’s short MLS career, as Portland erased its deficit during an eight-minute stretch of the second half.
But three minutes later, Chara pulled back LAFC’s Eduard Atuesta during a transitional moment. The result was his second yellow card and a premature end to a night when the Colombian broke the record for most regular-season appearances (377) with one club in MLS history.
Rodriguez began the fight back in slick fashion in the 65th minute, when the new signing from Club America used his chest to control Moreno’s looping feed, then fired a low shot from the edge of the box past Hugo Lloris into the bottom left corner.
Moreno leveled the game eight minutes later when he took a layoff from Claudio Bravo in a similar position, and fired a shot from the left edge of the penalty arc that benefitted from a deflection that took it past Lloris and off the inside of the left post.
LAFC went in front in the 44th minute — only moments after Rodriguez had a dangerous header denied by Lloris — when Bouanga’s dangerous cross resulted in sliding defender Kamal Miller turning it into his own net instead of out of harm’s way.
Tillman added his effort from the edge of the box when he laced Cristian Olivera’s layoff into the bottom left corner.
–Field Level Media
