LAFC hosted Deportivo Toluca FC on Wednesday night at BMO Stadium in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals, a meeting that put the tournament’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams on the same field for the first time. The match was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on TUDN/FS1, with the second leg set for Wednesday, May 6, at Estadio Nemesio Díez in Mexico.
The winner of the two-match series will advance to the final on May 30 against the winner of Tigres UANL and Nashville. For LAFC, the game came without Denis Bouanga, who was suspended for yellow card accumulation, but the club arrived with recent knockout-round momentum after eliminating defending champion Cruz Azul 4-1 on aggregate. LAFC won the first leg 3-0 at home, then drew 1-1 in Puebla in the return leg.
David Martínez scored twice in that 3-0 first-leg win over Cruz Azul, and Son Heung-Min added the other goal. Bouanga later scored a penalty in the second leg. Marc Dos Santos said taking an advantage to Toluca mattered after that run, noting that the club had produced a complete first match against Cruz Azul but faced a far more difficult night in Mexico, where it spent long stretches defending. He also said LAFC wanted to win by as many goals as possible while recognizing the quality of the opponent.
This is LAFC’s third semifinal appearance in the continental tournament, and it advanced to the championship match in both of its previous trips. The club beat Club América 3-1 in a one-off semifinal in 2020 during the pandemic. Toluca, meanwhile, returned to a Concacaf semifinal for the first time since 2014 after sweeping past the Galaxy 7-2 on aggregate. Toluca won 4-2 in the first leg in Toluca and 3-0 in the second leg in Los Angeles, with Paulinho scoring five goals across the series.
Toluca was able to use Jesús Gallardo and Alexis Vega in the first leg after an agreement with the Mexican federation, while Marcel Ruiz was available after recovering from a serious injury and played against the Galaxy. That mix of availability and form gives Toluca a strong case in a series that opened with two clubs arriving from emphatic quarterfinal wins. The tie now shifts to Mexico with one finalist still to be decided, and neither side has much margin left to give.
