Houston Dynamo
- Houston Dynamo opened the MLS 2026 campaign with a welcome morale-boosting 2-1 win over a Chicago Fire side that were very good in the season just gone.
- Guilherme netted a pair of goals in his debut and looks to have brought a clinical edge that Houston have lacked in the front three for a few years.
- Behind him, Houston’s back-three system, which is designed to keep the ball and avoid transition mistakes, is likely to be tested by an LAFC side that have begun 2026 in devastating form.
LAFC
- Marc Dos Santos’ new-look LAFC team played their best soccer of the season in a 6-1 road win over Real España in the Concacaf Champions Cup last weekend.
- They then started their MLS season by thrashing Inter Miami 3-0, with Son Heung-min and Denis Bouanga combining for a couple of brilliant attacks.
Key Players
- Guilherme netted a pair of goals in his debut and looks to have brought a clinical edge that Houston have lacked in the front three for a few years.
- Denis Bouanga is the most in-form player for the Black and Gold, having struck a hat-trick in the Champions Cup, but the fact that Son Heung-min has already started to look like the creative engine of the side gives LAFC a psychological boost ahead of this clash.
Betting Insights
- LAFC are 2.0 to record another win here, which looks fair enough given their current form and the fact that they are about to face a Houston Dynamo side that showed signs of improvement in attack, but still have some defensive questions to answer from late in 2025.
- Ben Olsen’s side, which will operate from a back-three once more this season, are 3.45 to pull off an upset while a 3.5 draw seems a bit too high given the visitors’ superior quality.
- The value bet for the game is Under 2.5 goals at 2.0, as three of the last five head-to-head meetings between the teams have seen only one team score and only one of them has featured more than two goals.
Prediction
Houston look to have invested well in the off-season and will have a roaring crowd behind them for this early-season Western Conference battle, but LAFC are in red-hot form and should edge this game.
