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| St. Louis, as their best possible selves. |
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 their first five 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 of the press, 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, not early victories – a 4-0 romp at CityPark stadium (and who knew there was drama around that?). Seeing SKC turn the tables over a lopsided two-leg series in the first round of the 2023 MLS playoffs sums up St. Louis short-‘n’-sweet history in MLS.
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
[Ed. – 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.]
Long-Term Tendencies
The only “tendency” St. Louis has established so far is being wildly successful on the attacking side in 2023, and then (almost) as wildly unsuccessful on the defensive side in 2024. Related, their defense wasn’t great in 2023, but it didn’t have to be.
How 2024 Measured Up
Despite a pretty credible end-run, St. Louis missed the playoffs in 2024. Any team that wins three games over the last five generally gets over the line, but that only underscores how bad they were over most of the 2024 season. St. Louis won five games total between First Kick and September 14, 2024 and pissed away (at least) 14 results with ties. They canned OG head coach Bradley Carnell on July 1, 2024, after a nine-game winless streak – and, sure, the six losses in that mix probably motivated the Organization – but they went to an “interim” situation from there and that didn’t help till the end. Because they fell just short of the league average for goals scored (50 v 53.5), I assume that included a number of games where wins schlumped into draws - notably, I see no less than five occasions where St. Louis scored three goals or more, but still took only 4 of the 15 points on offer (so that’s one loss in there) – but this was a team positively crying out for a goal-scorer. Instead, they have four players on five goals (Klauss, Lowen, and Cedric Teuchert), a couple players on four (Simon Becher and Nokkvi Thorisson), and a lot of random names thereafter. Seeing Teuchert’s name reminded me how dangerous he and Marcel Hartel looked at the beginning of 2024 [CORRECTION] when they joined at the end of 2024, but those players logged only 762 and 810 minutes, respectively, over the season. Because those two looked a lot like Plan A at the start of [CORRECTION] but didn't have enough time to rescue the season, I assume that was one major issue, but everyone's numbers collapsed in St. Louis’ Year 2. Both Klauss and Lowen logged…y’know, solid minutes, even if south of 2,000 in both cases, but that ol’ 2023 magic (or the blood sacrifices that came before) hit its expiration at some point. Maybe SKC shook out those demons in the 2023 playoffs?
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 their first five 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 of the press, 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, not early victories – a 4-0 romp at CityPark stadium (and who knew there was drama around that?). Seeing SKC turn the tables over a lopsided two-leg series in the first round of the 2023 MLS playoffs sums up St. Louis short-‘n’-sweet history in MLS.
Total Joy Points: -1
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
[Ed. – 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.]
Long-Term Tendencies
The only “tendency” St. Louis has established so far is being wildly successful on the attacking side in 2023, and then (almost) as wildly unsuccessful on the defensive side in 2024. Related, their defense wasn’t great in 2023, but it didn’t have to be.
How 2024 Measured Up
Despite a pretty credible end-run, St. Louis missed the playoffs in 2024. Any team that wins three games over the last five generally gets over the line, but that only underscores how bad they were over most of the 2024 season. St. Louis won five games total between First Kick and September 14, 2024 and pissed away (at least) 14 results with ties. They canned OG head coach Bradley Carnell on July 1, 2024, after a nine-game winless streak – and, sure, the six losses in that mix probably motivated the Organization – but they went to an “interim” situation from there and that didn’t help till the end. Because they fell just short of the league average for goals scored (50 v 53.5), I assume that included a number of games where wins schlumped into draws - notably, I see no less than five occasions where St. Louis scored three goals or more, but still took only 4 of the 15 points on offer (so that’s one loss in there) – but this was a team positively crying out for a goal-scorer. Instead, they have four players on five goals (Klauss, Lowen, and Cedric Teuchert), a couple players on four (Simon Becher and Nokkvi Thorisson), and a lot of random names thereafter. Seeing Teuchert’s name reminded me how dangerous he and Marcel Hartel looked at
[UPDATE: The above has been officially amended with notes/corrections by The Shinguardian (think his name is Mike Tomaszewicz, @shinguardian.bsky.social) as follows:
"Teuchert and Hartel did not join STL until Leagues Cup break (Teuchert playing during LC; Hartel starting when MLS resumed). That's only 9 total MLS games for them (and then however many Teuchert played in LC).”
Löwen missed much of the start of the season due to his wife having brain cancer.”
Also:
“True measure of '24 for STL was relying on Adeniran to replace Gioachinni's 10 goals in '23. Not getting a true finisher to replace him cost the team lots of points early on.”
“Brought in 6 guys at/after LC and saw a turnaround in form. Added 2 more and a head coach this offseason. That's a revamp!”
I take factual corrections with a smile and opinions when they’re good, but factual corrections are the big ones. I completely misremembered the way things fit together, hence the correction. Moving on…]
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Given the paucity of moves they’ve made, hiring Olof Mellberg looks like the biggest move of St. Louis off-season so far. Mellberg comes fresh off a stint coaching a Swedish side that sounds like a land from a Jonathan Swift tale (IF Brommapojkarna) through two consecutive(?) promotion campaigns, so that’s something, maybe even something good. After that, what passes for “big” acquisitions includes a German center back named Timo Baumgartl who may just be down on his luck (the mutually-terminated contract with Schalke 04…not great), plus a somewhat anonymous Norwegian midfielder named Conrad Wallem. It’s here where I circle back to the number of minutes so many of St. Louis key/key-adjacent players got in 2024 – e.g., Lowen at 1,863, Klauss at 1,969, Tim Parker at 1,790 [Edit: Part of this is down to Parker moving to New England on August 2nd.], Celio Pompeu at 1,246, plus the numbers noted for Hartel and Teuchert above – and ask myself how any coach can cure a problem like that. With plenty of team across the Western Conference reloading, and unless Mellberg has a highly-successful side-line as a physio, this doesn’t look like an approach that gets them back to those promising 2023 vibes, even if they try something totally new.
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| Yes, I'm being unfair to Sweden. |
Given the paucity of moves they’ve made, hiring Olof Mellberg looks like the biggest move of St. Louis off-season so far. Mellberg comes fresh off a stint coaching a Swedish side that sounds like a land from a Jonathan Swift tale (IF Brommapojkarna) through two consecutive(?) promotion campaigns, so that’s something, maybe even something good. After that, what passes for “big” acquisitions includes a German center back named Timo Baumgartl who may just be down on his luck (the mutually-terminated contract with Schalke 04…not great), plus a somewhat anonymous Norwegian midfielder named Conrad Wallem. It’s here where I circle back to the number of minutes so many of St. Louis key/key-adjacent players got in 2024 – e.g., Lowen at 1,863, Klauss at 1,969, Tim Parker at 1,790 [Edit: Part of this is down to Parker moving to New England on August 2nd.], Celio Pompeu at 1,246, plus the numbers noted for Hartel and Teuchert above – and ask myself how any coach can cure a problem like that. With plenty of team across the Western Conference reloading, and unless Mellberg has a highly-successful side-line as a physio, this doesn’t look like an approach that gets them back to those promising 2023 vibes, even if they try something totally new.
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