Doug McIntyre’s MLS column, 24 Thoughts, parses through the latest insights and inside info from around American soccer.

After clinching the Supporters’ Shield with a 3-1 win over the Houston Dynamo on Wednesday night, just four points stand between LAFC and the highest single-season point total in MLS history. A win and a tie in the club’s last two games — at playoff-bound Minnesota United and at home on Decision Day to a Colorado Rapids side that could be eliminated from postseason contention by then — would be enough to pull off the feat. What a story that would be for the second-year club.

Yet there’s another story regarding LAFC that has mostly flown under the radar. Over the summer, with Carlos Vela and Co. well on their way to a record-setting campaign, the club added two blue-chip and heavily sought-after young talents from South America in 19-year-old Uruguayan forward Brian Rodriguez and Diego Palacios, 20, a left back from Ecuador.

Both players had legitimate options in Europe. Yet both opted for MLS in what is becoming a trend across the league, with LAFC at the forefront.

“For us as a club, the goal has always been to build a foundation for us to be sustainably successful by seeking constant improvement in everything we do,” LAFC general manager and executive vice president of soccer ops John Thorrington told Yahoo Sports. “These are two young players that we think will help us increase our competitiveness on the field right away, but certainly will grow with us for many years into the future.”

24 Thoughts

1. How did LAFC land Rodriguez and Palacios? Let’s start with the former, who was signed as a designated player Aug. 7. “With the sale of Andre Horta, we knew we would have the flexibility to add a DP,” Thorrington said of Horta, the 22-year-old midfielder who was sold to Braga in his native Portugal in July.

“And to be clear, it was not that we were going to definitely utilize that flexibility just because we had it. But our scouts and our technical staff always has a running list of targets, and we saw him, Brian, a player that had been on our radar for quite some time, and he had a bit of a coming out at the under-20 World Cup.”

2. Still, there’s an element of risk involved when you’re talking about a teenager who had just 18 first team appearances for Montevideo club Penarol and who had never played outside of his home country. But LAFC’s scouts were sold. “It was that conviction from our football people of what he would bring us on the field and the commitment of our owners to fulfill this ambition of being a global brand,” Thorrington said. “And the timing was such that we were able to strike in the face of quite a bit of competition from Europe.”

3. Palacios was in a different situation. He’d already spent last season in Europe, with Eredivisie club Willem II while on loan from from Ecuadoran side Aucas, and started more than 30 matches, including the Dutch Cup final against UEFA Champions League semifinalist Ajax.

4. “There were many teams that were interested, and we had four actual offers in writing,” Aucas’s American-born president Danny Walker told Yahoo over the phone on Thursday. “One of them was from Barcelona. The problem was that he didn’t have a European Union passport.”

View photos Diego Palacios helped Ecuador to a third-place finish at the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup. (Getty) More

5. La Liga restrictions on non-EU players meant that Barca would have sent Palacios to Barcelona B, which competes in the Spanish second tier. But that seemed like a step down for a player who had already established himself in a top-flight European circuit. With the MLS transfer window closing, LAFC had to act fast.

6. Palacios was open to the idea, especially after Walker consulted with his friend, the legendary Dutch scout Piet De Visser. “He agreed that going to LAFC was a very good choice,” Walker said.

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