Cristian Olivera, Dénis Bouanga lead LAFC past Club Tijuana in Leagues Cup opener – Daily News

Cristian Olivera, Dénis Bouanga lead LAFC past Club Tijuana in Leagues Cup opener – Daily News

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LAFC forward Dénis Bouanga, center, moves the ball during the first half of their Leagues Cup group play match against Club Tijuana on Friday night at BMO Stadium. (Photo by Raul Romero Jr., Contributing Photographer)

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LOS ANGELES — On a winger and a prayer, Club Tijuana had no answer for Dénis Bouanga, Cristian Olivera or the Los Angeles Football Club.

The Leagues Cup group stage kicked off for both sides on Friday night as the second installment of the month-long tournament, composed of 47 Major League Soccer and Liga MX clubs, finished 3-0 in LAFC’s favor.

Playing at BMO Stadium in front of an announced crowd of 22,030, LAFC’s dynamic wingers each scored and assisted during an eventful opening half, and combined again for one more to push the game out of reach near the 1-hour mark.

Sandwiching striker Kei Kamara to start the match, Bouanga and Olivera missed quality early chances but multiple opportunities to come satisfied their ambitions against a Liga MX team that opened its season three weeks ago.

“After scouting the opponent you have an idea of how they’ll play but you don’t really know until the team shows up and confirms what you saw in previous matches,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said. “But we did see opportunities in transition and to put our guys into those half-spaces.”

Olivera gave LAFC the lead nine minutes in thanks to a terrific individual effort from his French teammate.

Bouanga split a pair of Tijuana defenders while driving into the box, forcing goalkeeper Antonio Rodriguez to come out and challenge him, which created space for a simple cross to the Uruguayan and a tap-in.

Moments later, play was paused for nine minutes when Tijuana captain Christian Rivera got knocked unconscious as he jumped for a header and collided with LAFC defender Eddie Segura.

“It’s always scary in that moment,” Cherundolo said. “It looked like a very unfortunate situation. I don’t think there was any malintent by Eddie. It was just a bad angle.”

Before Rivera was carted off the field on a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital, Tijuana head coach Juan Carlos Osorio, the former Mexican national team manager, was shown a red card by referee Iván Barton for screaming and making contact with the fourth official, Vimarest Diaz.

Numerous chances followed, but LAFC didn’t add to its lead until the 43rd minute when Olivera returned the favor to Bouanga.

Ruled out of LAFC’s last match, a 3-0 win in Seattle, Olivera’s determined effort to steal and retain the ball paid off with Bouanga’s seventh Leagues Cup goal, having notched a half-dozen in three tournament games last year.

With Bouanga trailing the play, Olivera showed as much patience as he could hitting a curler near the 6-yard box that required a deftly struck volley into the side netting.

“The whole team played very well,” Bouanga said. “We used all the areas where they were not. We hoped to score more goals and to have more players on the scoresheet.”

Olivera nearly scored his his second goal before the break, but he wouldn’t have to wait much longer than that to tally again.

Entering the contest to begin the second half, midfielder Eduard Atuesta took advantage of Tijuana’s high defensive line and delivered a ball over the top into space to Bouanga, whose attempt on goal hit the post. Crashing down on the rebound, Olivera put away his 10th score in all competitions this season.

“They are very difficult to mark,” Cherundolo said of his starting wingers. “But the way to deal with that in my opinion is to not give them open spaces. You have to suffocate them and Tijuana wasn’t able to do that, so advantage for those guys. Those are things we talk about and try to achieve, and we’re happy it worked for us.”

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