Jacob Shaffelburg’s World Cup ride fueling LAFC’s post-break surge

“I don’t know how to skate,” Jacob Shaffelburg said last week.

For most people, that confession would hardly be noteworthy. But for a young athlete growing up in Canada, where the most-popular sports take place on ice, it was a deal-breaker.

So as a schoolboy Shaffelburg found a couple of other sports at which to excel — and another country in which to excel at them — beginning a 12-year journey that led him back home for this summer’s World Cup, where he and the Canadian team made history.

“It was wild. And to be in a home World Cup is even crazier,” he said. “It was such a cool experience.”

One made even cooler by the fact one of his LAFC teammates, Mathieu Choiniere, was also playing in his first World Cup for Canada while LAFC captain Son Heung-min was representing South Korea for the fourth time. Add in Canada’s Stephen Eustáquio, who was on the LAFC roster when he left for the World Cup but headed to Portuguese club Porto after the tournament, and LAFC sent more players to this summer’s World Cup than any other MLS team.

And LAFC coach Marc Dos Santos insists there’s a connection between that fact and the one that shows the team went unbeaten in its first seven games in all competition following the World Cup break.

“When you play in such a big international competition where the spotlight is on your country and you’re participating in it, of course confidence grows,” he said.

Since returning from that tournament, Son scored his first four goals of the season, Choiniere has contributed two assists and Shaffelburg’s desperation cross into the box set up the stoppage-time goal that beat Toluca in a Leagues Cup game LAFC had to win to stay alive in the competition.

None of the three came home with a trophy, but the memories and inspiration they drew may be even more valuable.

“It was a dream,” said Choiniere, who started and went 57 minutes against Switzerland in his only World Cup appearance. “So for me, sure it gave me confidence. It was an extra boost to believe even more in my qualities.”

“That experience gave me more excitement to come back here and play with these guys,” Shaffelburg, 26, said after stepping off the training pitch last Tuesday. “I don’t know exactly what it’s from. If it’s just playing in front of all those people or if it’s just thinking that I have been in a World Cup.

“But since coming back I’ve felt a lot more confidence.”

Shaffelburg came off the bench in all five of Canada’s World Cup games and teamed with Eustáquio on his team’s biggest moment, the stoppage-time goal that beat South Africa at SoFi Stadium in Canada’s first-ever trip to the elimination rounds of the tournament.

“I love to cross the ball,” he said. “You’ve got to cross the ball sometimes to make something happen.”

The ability to make something happen is an apt way to describe Shaffelburg’s entire athletic career. Because he couldn’t skate growing up in tiny Port Williams, Nova Scotia — population 1,100 — Shaffelburg turned first to running, winning the province championship at 3,000 meters in middle school. But that same year he left Canada — and distance running — to join the elite soccer program at the Berkshire School in Massachusetts, where he was named the state’s player of the year as a senior.

That led to stints in MLS with Toronto, where he won a Canadian championship, and Nashville, where he won a U.S. Open Cup, before being sent west for $1 million in allocation money last December. Shaffelburg’s boundless enthusiasm and high work rate led one LAFC staffer to liken him to an excitable golden retriever, a comparison the player did not challenge.

“I’m always in sixth gear. Because if I go below six, I’m not a very good player,” the winger said. “I have to make up for my less technical side. I go hard every time.”

That attitude is what landed him on the national team, where he got his first call-up under John Herdman but became a regular under Jesse Marsch, a former MLS player and coach who values the grit and tenacity MLS players bring — which is why Canada had a World Cup-high nine players from the league on its 26-man roster.

Shaffelburg, Marsch said, is a perfect example of that MLS mentality.

“There’s a lot of coaches that may look at Jacob Shaffelburg and think ‘yeah, he’s not the most elegant technical player,’” Marsch said. “[But] he was the kind of player that I like. A fearless player who likes to run, who’s aggressive, who likes to go at opponents. That relentlessness resonates with me.

“Do we need more players like him? I’d probably say yes. Just because of the qualities he has as a person even more than as a player.”

Choiniere, 27, is another grinder; a player known more for his selfless play than for any flashy stats. Growing up in Quebec, the midfielder said he was fitted for hockey skates long before he tried on soccer cleats. Those priorities soon changed, however, and he was playing organized soccer before he entered kindergarten, then joined CF Montreal’s youth academy before he entered high school.

He won two Canadian championships and was a two-time MLS All-Star with Montreal before jumping to the Swiss Super League. After just 17 games in Zurich, he returned to MLS on loan last summer, a loan LAFC made permanent in December when it signed Choiniere through 2028.

None of that compared to playing in World Cup at home, both in Canada where he was born and in Los Angeles where he now lives.

“The fans, the atmosphere, everything is going to be in the list,” Choiniere said. “When I’m going to retire, I’ll be like ‘wow, I’m so proud of this memory.’ It will be with me forever.”

Shaffelburg feels the same way.

“Walking out and seeing the whole stadium, 50,000 people in all red, was unbelievable,” he said. “I never thought there’d be a day like that.”

Despite the World Cup success, Shaffelburg isn’t resting on those laurels. He’ll be just as focused going into Wednesday’s midweek MLS game in Colorado as he was for Canada’s round-of-16 game with Morocco, the most-watched soccer match in Canadian history.

“I just try to be humble and try to prove to myself that I deserve to be here,” he said.

“That’s why I go [all out] to the wall every day.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.