LOS ANGELES — The penalty kick shootout giveth and it taketh away.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Football Club fell short in a 12-round shootout against Mazatlan in its Leagues Cup opener.
On Friday night, at the end of a wild 90 minutes in which both teams finished with 10 players, LAFC needed four tries to find redemption, beating Pachuca 4-2 on PKs following a second straight 1-1 result.
Goalkeeper Thomas Hasal, starting for the first time since conceding five goals to Seattle in March, made two diving saves to his left, denying Javier Lopez and Alan Bautista.
Denis Bouanga, Mark Delgado, Sergi Palencia and Eddie Segura all converted for LAFC.
With one points-based contest remaining on Tuesday against Tigres, which defeated Houston and San Diego, LAFC is unlikely to advance in a 36-team tournament that will send the top four teams from MLS and the top four from Liga MX to the quarterfinals.
Giving everything it could against Pachuca, LAFC looked for an advantage from the opening whistle, finding space and joy against the Mexican side through most of the first half hour.
Ten minutes in, Pachuca goalkeeper Carlos Moreno made things very difficult on his defenders while attempting a pass inside his half down middle of the field.
Intercepted by Delgado, the veteran LAFC midfielder quickly pushed the ball forward to Nathan Ordaz, who recognized Bouanga was well positioned to his left.
The French winger placed his go-ahead shot between Moreno and the near post for his 13th career Leagues Cup goal, the most in tournament history.
One match after Bouanga missed the penalty in the 12th round against Mazatlan, “it’s always better to bounce back right away,” he said. “That’s one of the good things about playing four days later. Being the first one to shoot the penalty, I can move forward.”
LAFC continued to press Pachuca until Ordaz was sent off for cheap-shotting defender Sergio Barreto with a short elbow to the stomach. In real time it did not look like much and no foul was called, but when Guatemalan referee Bryan López went to check the play on video review it was deemed a straight red card.
“It’s a silly mistake from Nate that cannot happen at this level,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said. “Hopefully it’s a learning experience and it’s the last time he’ll see that card again. But it’s these errors that are hurting us as a group and hurting our results. Maybe that cost us one extra point tonight. I don’t know, but maybe. Regardless of what it did or didn’t do, it should never happen to us. It just makes the work for the others even more difficult.”
For Ordaz, a 21-year-old native of Van Nuys who has taken big strides in his on-field performances in 2025, the scene was reminiscent of an incident on April 2 during the first leg of the CONCACAF quarterfinal against Inter Miami.
That night, Ordaz received a yellow card for a hard foul on Maxi Falcon that included a raised arm and contact to the head. A video review did not yield a red, drawing criticism from Miami head coach Javier Mascherno, who said the circumstances warranted one “here, in China and on the moon.”
Disagreeing with Mascherano, Cherundolo considered the moments unrelated to one another, and described Ordaz’s actions on Friday as “totally out of character.”
“I’m not even sure he recalls what he did,” Cherundolo said. “But it needs to stop. Not that it’s a habit but it’s very out of character. It’s the type of player you don’t really say, ‘hey cool that, calm down,’ because he always is calm.
“You learn in this game that reactions can be punished. There are cameras everywhere. Rightly so it should be punished. There’s no room for that in our game, but he’ll learn from this. Nate’s a smart guy. I’m sure that won’t happen to him again.”
With Ordaz sent off this time, Pachuca did not waste its first opportunity to punish a short-handed LAFC.
After a whiffed clearance in the box by Delgado, the ball found Pachuca midfielder Elias Montiel outside the 18-yard box. His left-footed shot deflected through a defender’s legs and there was little Hasal could do to deny the equalizer.
Starting in place of Hugo Lloris, who is expected to miss all three of the Leagues Cup Phase One matches as he sorts through the process of obtaining a green card, Hasal kept the game level with a high-diving save on Montiel in the 56th minute before coming up big during the shootout.
“Full transparency, I love them,” said the 26-year-old Canadian goalkeeper, who stepped up after David Ochoa started against Mazatlan. “It’s an opportunity for the goalkeeper to be the hero. It’s an opportunity to especially help the team. Sometimes there’s games when you can’t make a difference, and in penalty shootouts you can.”
For much of the second half, LAFC played as if its life depended on avoiding penalties, placing Pachuca, a fellow 2025 Club World Cup participant, on the defensive.
“We said to each other, ‘Let’s fight today in front of our fans. Let’s make the game difficult for them,’” LAFC defender Sergi Palencia said. “And I think we did.”
In the 74th minute alone, LAFC forced Pachuca to scramble deep inside its box as Moreno came up big with three tough saves.
A rare chance for Pachuca, winners of four straight matches coming into tonight, nearly produced an acrobatic bicycle kick in the 79th minute. But when Venezuelan center forward Jhonder Cádiz went for broke, he drilled LAFC defender Nkosi Tafari square in the head with his boot.
Once again López did not call a foul on the field. And once again, after going to VAR, he pulled a red card from his pocket.
An entertaining and a wide-open finish in front of an announced crowd of 14,773 ultimately concluded with LAFC’s second penalty kick session in as many matches at BMO Stadium – this time securing two points instead of one.
“I was very pleased with the mentality and the ideas the group had, and the mentality of still trying to win the game even though we had 10 men because we believed we could,” Cherundolo said. “That I’m very pleased with. I think the players put in a really good shift and they were rewarded for their effort.”
