Denis Bouanga scored his 10th goal of the season in the 74th minute to lift host LAFC to a 1-0 victory over FC Dallas on Saturday night.
Bouanga’s goal ensured the Black-and-Gold secured their fifth consecutive shutout victory and kept hold of second place in the Western Conference, three points back of Real Salt Lake.
It came on a night LAFC (9-4-3, 30 points) — now 7-0-2 at home — had the majority of the chances again, but perhaps wasn’t in some of the previous wins during their streak, three of which came by multiple goals.
Hugo Lloris kept his seventh clean sheet in MLS with only three saves required against a Dallas side that had scored in all but one of its previous seven games.
Despite that, FCD (3-8-4, 13 points) remains winless through eight games of their away schedule.
Mateusz Bogusz and Bouanga both missed the target on previous quality chances, and Bogusz also forced Maarten Paes (nine saves) into a quality save in the first half.
But the duo finally combined to unlock Dallas’ back line on an incisive second-half attack.
After taking Ilie Sanchez’s pass in midfield, Bogusz turned and threaded an excellent through ball between Dallas defenders and into the path of Bouanga’s well-timed run.
Bouanga controlled it and then finished coolly past the charging Paes.
Dallas reached promising positions at times during the second half but came closest to scoring on a speculative attempt from Petar Musa just on the attacking side of the midfield stripe in the 82nd minute.
For a moment, Lloris looked beaten. But he backpedaled in time to leap toward his crossbar and push the goal-bound effort over it for a relatively harmless corner kick.
It was one-way traffic toward Dallas’ goal in the first half. Bogusz fired wide left in the 21st minute and forced Paes into a 29th-minute save, and Paes also denied Timothy Tillman five minutes later.
Bouanga missed the target with his 61st-minute header before making sure he converted another quality chance 13 minutes later.
–Field Level Media
