Olivier Giroud has played in two World Cup finals, won both a Champions League and Europa League title and scored more goals for France than any player in history.
There aren’t many things in soccer that he hasn’t experienced.
Sunday, however, will bring something new: the playoffs. In Europe, where Giroud has spent all but the last three months of his 20-year professional career, finishing atop the league standings means you’re the champion. In MLS, where he plays now, it only means you’ve qualified for the playoffs, where everybody starts over again.
It can be a difficult concept to grasp.
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“I asked the boys to explain it to me. And now I understand that if we go through this first knockout stage, we will play the semifinal of the conference, and then the final and then there is an MLS Cup final,” Giroud said. “That’s it.
“It’s different for me so I need to adapt. It’s the American style. You finish first [in] the regular season and then you can be out two weeks after [in the playoffs]. It is a bit strange. But it’s like that.”
LAFC opens the postseason at BMO Stadium against the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first game of a best-of-three series. The teams are familiar rivals, having met nine times in the past two years, including in the first round of last season’s playoffs. LAFC is 6-1-2 in those nine games.
The Galaxy, who joined LAFC atop the conference table but were seeded second in the playoffs on a tiebreaker, will meet the Colorado Rapids in their postseason opener at Dignity Health Sports Park on Saturday. That series is also a best-of-three while the next three playoff rounds, including the MLS Cup final, are single-elimination games.
“We’re not just happy to be in the playoffs. We actually think we have a team that can compete to win the championship,” said Galaxy coach Greg Vanney, whose team won both its regular-season games with Colorado. “We’ve got to go out now and we’ve got to perform and there’s a whole process of getting to that moment. And it won’t be an easy process.
“Now we’ve got to go execute.”
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Giroud will enter the playoffs looking for his first MLS goal, although he scored in both the Leagues Cup and U.S. Open finals and had three assists in 10 regular-season games since joining the team last summer. And he’s not the only LAFC player who has had to have the playoffs explained to him. In fact, he isn’t even the only former French national team player who was a little unclear on the idea.
“It’s going to be a new experience for me, especially this round,” said goalkeeeper Hugo Lloris, the all-time leader in appearances for Les Bleus. “Best of three? It’s something really new. The other rounds, I know what to expect. But this round is really interesting.”
LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo grew up in San Diego but spent most of his playing and coaching career in Germany, where the concept of a postseason playoff is a foreign one. But he said it hasn’t been a difficult one to explain.
“I guess we could reconvene after the playoffs and see if there were any misunderstood concepts or rules, but it’s pretty straightforward,” said Cherundolo, whose roster includes players from 16 countries. “We communicate everything. That’s probably standard of every club at the stage of the season.”
Yet few of those clubs have become more accustomed to the playoffs than LAFC, which has missed the postseason just once in its seven seasons and is bidding to become the first team to play in three consecutive MLS Cup finals since the New England Revolution in 2007.
Under Cherundolo, who is in his third season at LAFC, the team has never had a season end anywhere but in the league championship game. And in two of those three years the team finished the regular season atop the Western Conference table.
For the Galaxy, on the other hand, the playoffs have become a rare treat with Saturday’s game marking just their third postseason appearance since 2016. LAFC and the Galaxy both finished 19-8-7 and traded the conference lead three times in the final 11 minutes of regular-season stoppage time last weekend before LAFC claimed first place by the thinnest of margins, the goal-differential tiebreaker, denying the Galaxy their first conference title in 13 years.
That is a disappointment Vanney said his team will take into its series with Colorado.
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“The result is a reminder that every play matters and every play is precious this time of year,” he said. “The playoffs are a battle. You take nothing for granted. This is going to be a grind.”
And the last team standing at the end of that grind will be crowned champion, a concept even Giroud and his teammates don’t need to have explained. Although there is one other thing about that which is new since in MLS, that crown also comes with another piece of jewelry: a championship ring.
“We got one when we won the World Cup,” Giroud said. “I just keep it in a box. It’s nice, but I can’t wear it. I don’t have an MLS ring and that’s what I’m looking for.
“I really want that ring.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
