LOS ANGELES — Denis Bouanga scored twice, giving him goals in three straight games, as the Los Angeles Football Club came back twice in the second half to draw St. Louis City 2-2 on Sunday at BMO Stadium.

A statistically one-sided opening half in LAFC’s favor yielded no goals, but it was anemic St. Louis (2-4-4, 10 points) that broke the stalemate in the 52nd minute when forward Cedric Teuchert connected on his club’s first-ever goal against the Black & Gold.

Having been shut out by LAFC through four and a half games since entering the league in 2023, the visitors, who began the day with five goals in MLS this year — the fewest in the league — found the daylight they needed during the “Sunday Night Soccer” match when defender Jannes Born’s deep cross curled perfectly into the middle of the box.

Teuchert took a touch and guided it past Hugo Lloris’ reach for his second goal of the season.

With LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo serving a one-match suspension for the red card he received in last weekend’s 3-3 draw at Portland, assistant Ante Razov pulled the strings and his first move off the bench immediately paid off in front of an announced crowd of 22,212.

Swapping starters Olivier Giroud and David Martínez for Nathan Ordaz and Cengiz Ünder in the 68th minute, LAFC leveled the match in two minutes thanks to the Turkish forward’s first assist for the Black & Golf.

A well placed left-footed cross found Bouanga for a tap-in at the far post, beating German goalkeeper Ben Lundt.

Bouanga also had LAFC’s best chance in the first half when he moved into the box for a one-on-one situation against Lundt, however put the shot directly on the German’s face and it was rejected for one of his seven saves.

“In the first half it was just a few details,” Bouanga said. “Like we missed some opportunities. In the second half we put more pressure. It felt like we were more willing to go at it.”

Three minutes after scoring, Bouanga continued his rampage as he sped around the edge against defender Joshua Yaro, receiving a foul in the box that set him up for what had been almost an automatic goal from the penalty spot.

As Bouanga stood over the ball, his first instinct was to shoot it to the left. Before doing so, he switched and went to the right. Why? He did not know. The 30-year-old attacker could think of one other time that happened, also a miss, last year at Kansas City.

Lundt was up to the task, diving low and to his left to knock away Bouanga’s strike for just his second failed penalty against 17 made since joining LAFC (4-4-2, 14 points) in the summer of 2022.

“Look, it’s no secret Denis is a big weapon for us,” Razov said. “Denis could have scored four goals tonight. Denis put in a good effort. He got us two goals. We need other guys to score. We need other people to step up and start scoring goals, creating goals, because you cannot survive with just one guy scoring. Right now we’re kind of treading water and our record shows it. We’re not happy about it. Trying to encourage guys. Push guys along. But, yes, we do have a scoring problem.

“I think maybe we’re pressing too hard, trying to do too much instead of the simple thing. We preach the simplest pass. Receive the pass. Make a pass. Too many one-touch mistakes. Balls ricocheting off as we’re trying to do the perfect play, the spectacular play. When we are simple, clean, we create chance after chance and it’s been proven over time. When we get a little bit squirrely we have to chase the game.”

That is out of the norm for LAFC, and its inconsistency around the net this year came into focus considering Bouanga’s leveler was the 450th regular-season goal for the club in 236 games since 2018, making the Black & Gold the fastest to reach that mark, besting the record the Galaxy set in 2004 by 20 matches.