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LAFC takes on Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

March 10, 2026

Events leading up to the Los Angeles Football Club’s participation during last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup began with a protest by the winningest team in Costa Rican soccer, Liga Deportiva Alajuelense.

Black & Gold supporters can offer their kind regards to Alajuelense in person on Tuesday, when the 31-time top flight Costa Rican winners visit BMO Stadium for the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions Cup Round of 16.

Led by club legend Óscar Ramírez, one of Costa Rica’s most respected managers, Alajuelense enters the ongoing tournament as the highest ranked Central American club in the region.

It was that recent and long-term success that prompted Alajuelense to lodge a complaint about the makeup of the four CONCACAF teams that qualified through the continental competition into last year’s expanded Club World Cup.

Liga MX’s Club León had defeated LAFC to win the 2023 CONCACAF Champions Cup. The following year, C.F. Pachuca, operating under the same ownership group as León, Grupo Pachuca, captured the next edition.

Those results ran afoul of the Club World Cup’s multi-ownership rule, Alajuelense argued.

Having hired a law firm in Spain and reporting the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which denied León’s appeal once FIFA ruled the Mexican side was ineligible, Alajuelense’s attempt to take their place was also rejected, prompting the FIFA-mandated eliminator between LAFC and Club América at BMO Stadium for the right to become the final entrant in the 32-team field.

Less than a year later, LAFC and Alajuelense will cross paths in a more direct way when they clash for the second time in CONCACAF.

Denis Bouanga’s second-half hat-trick in 2023 at the nearly 19,000-seat Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto delivered an opening leg Round of 16 win in Costa Rica. Alajuelense returned the favor, beating LAFC 2-1 at BMO Stadium a week later, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the Black & Gold from continuing on the road to finishing runners-up to León.

Three years later, LAFC’s first round CONCACAF dominance (7-1 aggregate versus Honduran team Real España) brings the two sides together again.

“It’s a different story, a different game, different players, different context,” LAFC head coach Marc Dos Santos said.

Eleven games into its league schedule, Alajuelense (4-4-3) sits sixth in the Costa Rican table after winning its last two contests.

“Obviously it’s a Champions Cup game,” said LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who allowed one goal in four starts this year. “It doesn’t matter who you are facing. You have to be at the level of the competition and it’s all about details as well. Let’s put us in a good position for the second leg. That is the target for [Tuesday’s] game.”

On the heels of its 31st national title to cap Liga FPD’s Apertura 2025 tournament. Alajuelense, the current (and three-time) Central American Cup champions, qualified directly into the Round of 16 to reach this stage of CONCACAF four years running (and seven overall).

After exiting against LAFC in ‘23, Alajuelense fell to the New England Revolution in ‘24 and Mexico’s Pumas UNAM last season.

Ending that three-year skid to make the quarterfinals for the first time since 2003 would require snapping LAFC’s three-tournament run of getting that far themselves.

LAFC reached the final in 2020, losing to Tigres, and in 2023, losing to León, before falling short in the quarterfinals last year versus Inter Miami.

Off to a stellar start in 2026, LAFC (5-0-0 in all competitions) must quickly regroup following Saturday’s hard-fought 1-0 MLS win at home against FC Dallas.

“We have to take care of the first leg in the best way possible to put us in a position to go to a very difficult place,” Dos Santos said. “We know the atmosphere in Costa Rica.”

Orange County Register

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LAFC takes on Liga Deportiva Alajuelense

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