St. Louis CITY FC Scouting Report: Despite Everything You Will Read, I'm Not Taking This Lightly

The MLS website, one month ago...

With all due respect to the opposition, I didn’t remember the last time the Portland Timbers played a tough game until I checked Ye Olde Form Guide – which, just to note it, will be rendered useless by the overbearing ads on the right side within weeks. Some days, I think Don Garber has made crushing the spirit of amateur independents his personal mission…

At any rate, I’d date Portland’s last tough games to the second half of May when they played Seattle at home followed by a road game in Orlando. Just one point from six in there. Counting forward, they have two more soft-on-paper games to go before, per the proverb, shit gets real. That starts with…

St. Louis CITY FC
3-12-6, 15 pts., 21 gf, 34 ga (-13); home 2-4-4, away 1-8-2
Last Results: LDLLWLDLLL (1-7-2)
Strength/Location of Schedule
v SD (1-2 L); v SKC (2-2 D); @ MIN (0-3 L); @ COL (0-1 L); v SJ (2-1 W); @ POR (1-2 L); @ LAG (3-3 D); v ORL (2-4 L); @ HOU (0-1 L); @ RSL (2-3 L)

Those are the (brutal) basics, but let’s unpack some further details.

There’s the (comparatively) stronger home record, I suppose, though 12 match days separate St. Louis’ two home wins. Perhaps noteworthy: they have been good for one home draw per month since April, generally in the middle of the month, so arguably they’re due.

In all seriousness, 2025 has put a lot of hurt on St. Louis and their fans and, outside a two-hour window between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. PST Sunday, they have my sympathy. I don’t know enough to offer a deep read on everything that has gone wrong, but I do see they’ve been without some expected heavy contributors – e.g., Eduard Lowen, Tomas Ostrak and, to a lesser extent, Henry Kessler – for two-thirds to half of the season. (I have vague memories of people hyping Rasmus Alm, but…) I’d check the current availability report for additional, or even new, injuries, but that looks to have been abandoned as well…

Portland Timbers 2-1 St. Louis CITY FC: Anchor & Inspiration

Antony's contribution: a visual

The Portland Timbers have a long history of slow starts to the regular season. Now off to what I’m told is their strongest start to a season since 2013, and perhaps with a nostalgic glint in their eye to how they once had to rescue entire seasons, the Timbers have acquired a late habit of starting at half speed, even spotting the opposition the first goal.

I flagged the latter as potential kiss of death in one preview thread our another on Bluesky, but, for the second match day in a row, Portland snatched victory for the slackening jaws of defeat with a 2-1 home win over St. Louis CITY FC. Who knows? Maybe the Timbers only feel like their true and best selves when chasing something, whether season or game?

About the Game
Whether due to players they had missing (Eduard Lowen) to caretaker coach, David Critchley, trying to teach his old team new tricks, St. Louis rewrote my expectations by keeping the ball on the ground and working it forward from the back. They stretched the field occasionally (see the first attempt in the full highlights), but they looked up to playing through Portland and, for most of the second half, the Timbers seemed open to allowing it. While not totally helpless – a couple slip passes sent (I think) Santiago Moreno and Kevin Kelsy just behind St. Louis’ last defender – Portland spent most of the first half a step behind both the most recent play and the game. They escaped the first half without giving up a goal, but even that took a double save from James Pantemis on two (or three) clear, close shots jointly gifted to St. Louis by some light dicking around at the back and a clumsy touch by Joao Ortiz. Portland saved their best moments for first half stoppage time – including a shot at redemption for Ortiz that he side-footed softly to nowhere – but the cobwebs lingered long enough into the second half for Portland to give up the first goal 50 minutes in. Former Timbers academy kid, Akil Watts, put St. Louis up 1-0 when he created and capitalized on a wee crisis in front of Pantemis’ goal. Watch the highlights on that goal and you’ll see Watts have time to both give up on the play then get back into it before any Timbers defender even noticed him. You hate to see it, but, stick around. It gets better!

As with last match day’s win over Colorado, this game turned on a vividly decisive moment – specifically, Antony alley-ooping the ball over Tomas Totland, then backing Henry Kessler into his own 18 before equalizing just around the defender’s left shoulder. It was a move sweet and classy enough for The Mothership to give it a long-form puff highlight of its own. From that point to the final whistle, the Timbers played like a stalled car jump-started by a king-sized battery. Legs came to life, movement improved all over with David Ayala acting as an all-purpose gear box that kept the machine running and racing, shifting slower and faster as needed; they even forced Roman Burki to reprise Pantemis' first-half double save in order to keep the game from running away from them. While St. Louis never fully faded out of the game, I have this line in my notes about “losing their nerve, grasping for chances instead of creating them” that sums it up nicely. Had you split the game between St. Louis’ best period and Portland’s, I’m still guessing the Timbers outplayed them over the sum of it, but the final numbers broke close to even and St. Louis are no doubt gnashing teeth and rending garments over not just losing Ayala on the winner, but failing to see him at all. Just heartbreaking defending, but Ayala fully earned a slab of the log after that performance.

St. Louis CITY FC Scouting Report: Needing and Wanting. Or Vice Versa

Why not 9 center backs? Why not 13?

To get the big dodge out of the way, who knows what to make of St. Louis CITY FC right now, what with Olof Mellberg getting shit-canned for an unmissable lack of results and, I’m told, a hard kink for fielding eight center backs in his starting XIs? At any rate, he’s gone, replaced by interim head coach David Critchley…who, for the record, guided the team to its first win since mid-March.

To compile this dossier, I jumped around about…65 minutes’ worth of real-time footage of St. Louis’ 0-1 road loss at the Colorado Rapids and their gently weird 2-1 home win over the San Jose Earthquakes. Normally, I’d put more time into the road game, but suspect the coaching change to color their approach in enough ways that I think that anyone bored and restless enough will benefit more from watching long outtakes of the San Jose game. If nothing else, and barring injuries (looking at Cedric Teuchert here), I’d expect the team that lines up against the Portland Timbers on Sunday will look more like the starting XI versus San Jose. I’ll dig into that more below, but let’s start with…

The Facts
Record/Stats
3-8-5, 14 pts., 13 gf, 21 ga (-8); home 2-3-3, away 1-5-2
Last 10 Results: LLDDLLDLLW
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ SKC (0-2 L); v CLB (1-2 L); v VAN (0-0 D); @ LAFC (2-2 D); @ SEA (1-4 L); v SD (1-2 L); v SKC (2-2 D); @ MIN (0-3 L); @ COL (0-1 L); v SJ (2-1 W)

Clearly, things have gone coach-firingly bad for St. Louis this season and, based on the time I put into the San Jose win, I’m not sure now firmly they’ve turned the page. Big picture, St. Louis kept games tighter until recent weeks (see losses at Seattle and Minnesota), but the defense still tilts toward the stronger side of the league average. The attack, unfortunately, leans harder in the other direction. Still, soothe – which bring me to…

Talking Point No. 1: The Timbers Have to Match “Playing for Their Jobs right now” Intensity
That’s it. St. Louis looked listless and gun-shy at Colorado, at least until they had to chase the game after Darren Yapi’s 41st minute goal forced them to chase the game (weird one; also kinda notable; here's the other one by Josef Martinez). They also defended deep (to the point of nesting) in the stretches I watched and played like they forgot St. Louis’ hard-pressing tradition. Maybe the game plan tilts toward allowing shots from range, or maybe that's just what Mellberg's approach encouraged indirectly by way of tactics. I saw more pressing versus San Jose and, again, I expect to see that against the Timbers, road game be damned. St. Louis may press and foul half as hard as they used to, but Portland should come ready to battle…like, really battle.

St. Louis CITY FC Scouting Report: In 2024, You Can Totally French the Bully

Great live band, massive goddamn loss.

This Saturday gives the Timbers yet another chance to prove they’ve earned that finger-tip’s hold on the playoff line. Staying there or, gods forbid, climbing higher means winning against teams like…St. Louis CITY FC. And I will never, never get tired of shouting “CITY” the same way Howard Stern emphasized the “N” in “WNBC” in his mediocre biopic.

The Basics & the Big Picture
3-4-8, 17 pts., 23 gf, 25 ga (-2); home 3-2-3, away 0-2-5; 11th West, 23rd overall
Last 10:    LTWTTWLLLT
Venue:      AHHAAHHAHA

St. Louis is not the punch-you-in-the-mouth-and-steal-all-your-points team they were in 2023. Confidence sustained the belief they could bully other teams into submission and I’m pretty sure that dried up by the beginning of April 2024. If not then, the beginning of May finished it off. The 2-1-7 record they had by May 5, 2024 only looks worse after a string of losses (v LAFC, @ CIN and v SEA) landed themwhere they are now (see above).

On a raw numbers level, they hew close to average for goals scored and allowed (the average across MLS is currently 24.03 goals coming and going) and their stats leaders are Joao Klauss (5 goals, 3 assists), Celio Pompeu (3 goals, 3 assists), Samuel Adeniran (2 goals, 1 assist), and Tomas Totland (2 goals, 2 assists). Also of note, their assist leader, Eduard Lowen, who has three goals (plus one assist) has played just 379 minutes this season. That’s due to a hamstring injury and doing the right thing by his wife who has had some medical issues. And good for him for doing that.

I built my impression of St. Louis CITY 2024 on stats and highlights review of the home win over Chicago Fire FC, the home loss versus Los Angeles FC, and the road loss at FC Cincinnati, plus the stats and longer looks at the home loss versus the Seattle Sounders and last weekend’s wild road draw at Inter (Asshole) Miami CF. Some details aside – e.g., I expect them to get all up in Portland the same way they did against Chicago (and Miami; honestly, MLS’s big-spending darlings basically handed them a loaded gun) – I didn’t see a ton of what Portland typically does in all my review. Still, LAFC and Seattle offered some smart pointers as to how to absorb St. Louis’ pressure and break them – e.g., they don’t have a ton of ideas outside of turning the ball over in dangerous places, so don’t let them – but, bluntly, Seattle had no goddamn business winning that game (per either numbers or eye-test). I can, however, see Portland riding out the pressure and wrecking St. Louis a la LAFC, even without a Denis Bouanga to call our own…