LOS ANGELES -- When Denis Bouanga loses a game for LAFC, his nine-year-old son wants to watch his father’s highlights. “When I lose a game and come home, he wants to see the replay. He watches it every time. Sometimes he has school, and he'll say, ‘No, I want to see it.’”
Then comes the coaching. “He gives me advice. If I score two, he'll say, ‘Yes, but you can score four.’ He pushes me every time.” Bouanga knows that obsession well. He had it himself as a child. “I wasn't very good at school because I didn't want to be there. I wanted to play football. I was getting around 10 out of 20, which was okay for me, but for some teachers it wasn't good. I told them, ‘I want to become a professional soccer player.’”
There was no backup plan, Bouanga said during our sit-down interview after practice at LAFC’s training facility on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. “There was no second thought, no Plan B.”
That certainty carried him through his early years when others weren't convinced. In 2017, the doubt came from someone much closer to home: his own father, who questioned whether Denis was ready to play for Gabon in the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
“He said I was too skinny and that African players were strong and big. He was scared and wanted to protect me. I told him, I can go. Maybe I can lose, maybe I can win. He didn't think I was ready for it. I decided to go through with it and show everyone what I could do in 2017.” Gabon was eliminated after three group-stage matches, but Bouanga, then 22, emerged as one of the team's standout players.
Bouanga, now 31, has never needed to know exactly how things will turn out. After years of rejection and relegation, he learned to separate the highs from the lows and keep moving. “Since I was young, I had to build my character,” he says. “Sometimes challenges mean things don't work and you have to go somewhere else for them to work.”
Bouanga is French, born and raised there, but he represents Gabon internationally and has become an Angeleno as a star for Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) and one of the most recognizable players in Major League Soccer. Ask him which part he identifies with most, and he doesn't hesitate. “For me, one isn't higher than the other. They're all equal.” His identity may be settled. The need to challenge himself is not.
There is an edge to Bouanga's game, shaped by years of having to prove himself. But when asked about it now, he draws a distinction between the past and the present. “No, I don't think I have anything to prove. I think everyone knows my quality.”
Then he narrows the focus. “But when you're on the field, you always have something to prove—to yourself, to see if you're still good and if you can still do things, like score three goals.”
For Bouanga, that test is often physical. His speed, conditioning and relentless motor allow him to maintain his intensity deep into games, when defenders begin to fade.
“Last year 20 goals, the year before, 20 goals too. This year I have 17. Sometimes it's difficult because it's not the same team, but I want to push myself and do my best to reach 20 again.”
Bouanga is chasing history. He is tied with Lionel Messi and Bradley Wright-Phillips as the only players in MLS history to record three 20-goal seasons. Three more goals would make Bouanga the first player to record four consecutive 20-goal campaigns.
Bouanga is LAFC’s all-time leading scorer. None of it has made losing any easier. “I get so mad. Really mad. I don't talk to anyone. Sometimes I want to break everything. It's chaos. After a game when we lose, I hate it. I don't like losing in anything, not just soccer, but in life. My mentality is that if I play something, I want to win.”
That competitive drive is both Bouanga's strength and his burden. “I don't want to lose and just say, ‘Okay, you win.’ I want to play again and again and again. Keep going.” “Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes it's a bad thing.”
“When we lose, it's difficult for me to switch off. I'm thinking about it. But I don't want my kids to see me angry or hear me talking too much about football. They don't understand all those feelings yet.”
His nine-year-old son, though, is beginning to understand. “He's already got it: don't lose.” When his son loses, Bouanga says, “he cries like I did when I was younger. He's nine. He wants to win everything. Sometimes it's difficult because when you're good, you play with older players.”
“I tell him, if you're playing with older players because you're good, you have to beat them to go everywhere. Play to win. Don't play to lose.” Asked whether he pushes his son harder than he should, Denis doesn't hesitate. “Yes. It's difficult, but yes, I push him.” Bouanga knows what can happen when someone finally sees what you're capable of.
When asked what LAFC and MLS gave him that he couldn't find elsewhere, Bouanga offered one word: “Visibility.”
His profile has grown, but what drives Bouanga hasn't changed. “I think I have a little more confidence, but nothing really changed,” he says. “I want to score goals all the time, make people happy and write history wherever I am. I want people to remember me.”
On the surface, wanting to be remembered can sound like a pursuit of personal glory. For Bouanga, it is something shared. “When I score, the whole family scores, and when I win, they win.”
Bouanga spent much of his life believing in himself before others did. Now, he wants his son to understand the power of that belief. “I want my son to carry on my legacy and for the people who love me to continue watching me."