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| I'll retire this image the day St. Louis makes me. |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
St. Louis CITY FC came into MLS like a wrecking ball in 2023. Their inexhaustible high-pressing style gave them an advantage over teams shaking off early season rust and allowed St. Louis to run up the score against one team after the other. Over the first nine wins in franchise history – which included five straight wins in as many games – only the Portland Timbers (of all teams) limited them to two goals; St. Louis bagged three or more against every other team. But for the four losses and one draw that came between wins five and nine, St. Louis presented as a juggernaut. Brazilian forward Joao Klauss led the first wave, at least until injury slowed him down, but head coach Bradley Carnell’s system had (e.g.) Jared Stroud and Indiana Vassilev crashing after Klauss, Eduard Lowen to follow up and make the most of any turnovers. While that wasn’t good enough for a wire-to-wire performance, St. Louis rode a second winning streak of victories on either side of the 2023 Leagues Cup to a first-place finish atop the Western Conference. It’s (so very) possible I’m forgetting a thing or three, but that might have been the best debut season in MLS history after the 1998 Chicago Fire’s run to MLS Cup. Sporting Kansas City was one of the teams St. Louis steamrolled over those nine early victories – a 4-0 romp at CityPark stadium – and it was the same team that flipped the tables on St. Louis over a lopsided two-leg series in the first round of the 2023 MLS playoffs.
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| Maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be... |
St. Louis didn’t steamroll 2024 half as hard as 2023. 2025 went even worse when they hit a Swedish wall named Olof Mellberg. In one of the strangest MLS coaching careers I’ve judged from afar, Mellberg’s system seemed dedicated solely to defending. A pair of early wins at the Galaxy and versus Seattle may have tricked fans and pundits into higher expectations, but the four goals St. Louis scored over those two games chipped in four of the fourteen total they scored over the first half of the 2025 season. The organization sacked Mellberg just 14 games in and put David Critchley in charge of salvaging the season. The scoring picked up (almost doubled) and Critchley gently improved on Mellberg’s 2-8-5 record (he went 6-10-3), but a lot of those wins came late (i.e., three in September) and against crap-to-marginal teams. I'm not sure St. Louis caught even the scent of the playoff pack last year. So, what happened? I mean apart from Mellberg. Players they relied on to create goals – mostly, Eduard Lowen, but shout-out to Christian Teuchert – missed half the available starts; I have this dim memory of people yelling at me about Tomas Ostrak after last season’s preview and he missed even more time. With “Plan A” Henry Kessler…again, missing half the season, St. Louis’ defense didn’t fare much better. It’d be easier for St. Louis fans to forget 2025 if this weren’t just their third season in MLS...
Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
After over-performing considerably in their first season, St. Louis hit an unfortunate pattern over the past two seasons of scoring too few goals and allowing too many. They’ve actually been worse defensively, so maybe Mellberg’s Mania didn’t come from nowhere. Three season doesn’t provide enough time to establish a pattern, so let’s leave this at work to do.
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
St. Louis declined a few options, let a couple loans expire and didn’t renew one contract (fwiw, I recognize the names Rasmus Alm (M) and Conrad Wallem (M)), which means the Organization hasn’t cut into either meat or bone yet. I didn’t flag Joao Klauss in the “2025 Briefly” section, mostly due to hints of enthusiasm I’ve got online, but I still rate him a good wrecking ball/forward, even if he posts second forward numbers. Lowen’s great, but he gave what injury didn’t take to the worthy work of helping his wife through cancer treatment (bravo, Eduard) and they just aren’t the same team without him. Both Marcel Hartel and Teuchert appear set to continue, but that injury bug has to leave St. Louis fans antsy about the near future. I don’t know what kind of flexibility they have for rebuilding – and I’m not gonna look it up, don’t even do that for my Portland Timbers – but I’m guessing they put most things on hold until new head coach Yoann Damet (hold this thought) gets a lay of the land and pitches some thoughts on needs…
…about Damet, he coached FC Cincinnati to some of hair-rending results during his brief time as interim head coach in 2019. He’s had more reps since then, for sure, and best of luck to him, but I’ll need to verify just about everything about Damet before I trust him for a head coach.
At any rate, a lot of work to do for St. Louis. Keeping expectations modest for this crew…
Historical Success (/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: -2
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
No need to click the above link: per the Joy Points Scale, a team only gets credit for “making the playoffs” if they progress to the quarterfinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs. For all their success in 2023, St. Louis failed to do so. Then they missed the playoffs two seasons running. And, hey…they finished 24th overall in both 2024 and 2025. [Reggaeton horns!]
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