LAFC vs Inter Miami: MLS Cup Holders Hoping for a Fast Start

by Bradley Gibbs

image LAFC vs Inter Miami: MLS Cup Holders Hoping for a Fast Start
The 2025 MLS Cup winners will get their 2026 campaign off and running on Saturday evening, and they’ll begin with a cross-conference game on the road.

Visitors looking to lay down an early statement of intent 

Last season, the men in pink were incredibly hard to stop, as any team containing Lionel Messi has been over the years. With magical Messi still pulling the strings, the Herons should create plenty in the final third, as my LAFC vs Inter Miami picks suggest. 

It’s never easy to dominate the Major League Soccer season from start to finish, and even the Inter Miami boys, who ended up lifting MLS Cup, failed to top the Eastern Conference during 2025. 

Despite having a strong team, Javier Mascherano’s men will face some very tough fixtures in their attempt to become the first back-to-back winners of MLS Cup since the Galaxy achieved that impressive feat in 2012, and let’s face it, they’ve got a tricky start. Very few teams find it easy to go to BMO Stadium and get a positive result, but if any team can upset the Black and Gold in their own backyard, then it’s probably this Inter Miami team. 

New coach to spark success for LAFC? 

When Steve Cherundolo worked his magic to inspire LAFC to their first MLS Cup success in 2022, many thought that the floodgates would open, but the men from BMO Stadium have not been able to repeat that success. As of late 2025, there's a new man in charge, or rather an old friend is back in the picture. Marc Dos Santos is now tasked with taking LAFC to the next level. 

In 2023, when expected by all to thrive, they made it all the way to MLS Cup Final, but they were downed by the Columbus Crew, and since then, they’ve not featured in the all-important final game of the year. 

In 2025, they were strong during the regular season, that’s for sure, ending the regular season as the third best team in the Western Conference, though they couldn’t stay the distance in the play-offs, losing to the Vancouver Whitecaps (in two legs) at the quarter-final stage. 

Now that they have someone like Heung-min Son, who after joining half way through the previous campaign struck up a deadly partnership with Denis Bouanga, in their squad from the outset, the LAFC boys will be looking to go all the way. Can they show how serious they are in that respect by starting the season with a win over the 2025 champions? We’ll soon find out.