Level Set 6, St. Louis CITY FC: Came in Like a Wrecking Ball...Then the Pendulum Swung the Other Way

I'll retire this image the day St. Louis makes me.

What follows is a brief history of St. Louis CITY FC, who, with just three seasons behind them, merit the brevity, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have (N/A). Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

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.

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…

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.

Getting Reacquainted with St. Louis CITY FC, the Boomtown (Rats?) of MLS

St. Louis, as their best possible selves.

[WARNING: Between St. Louis CITY SC not having much history and me feeling like I needed to fill "X" amount of space, I got over my skis on multiple details around this team. If you want to skip the whole thing - and that's probably advisable - here's a short version: St. Louis has played two seasons in MLS, one pretty good, especially for an expansion team, the other bad. There are multiple, credible reasons for their change in fortunes, and they made changes toward the end of 2024 that have a decent chance of paying off. Still, that's only two seasons for context, and that leaves a lot of open questions going into 2025 that can only be closed by results on the field.]

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.

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.

St. Louis CITY FC/Leagues Cup Scouting Report: A Mirror Into Portland's Past

legend.

Won’t lie. I would have loved to see the Timbers draw FC Juarez. If you haven’t watched the penalty shoot-out for their loss at St. Louis CITY FC, do yourself a solid and watch it. I’ve never seen a ‘keeper do that and it was a delight…

Speaking of Portland’s actual opponent…

In the interest of making these posts more reddit-friendly, and with apologies to people who come to this space for long-form content, I’m reducing Scouting Reports to literally five things I’d tell anyone about St. Louis CITY FC…well, aside from some basics – e.g., they have struggled to actually win all season, even at home, and that they have experienced some heavy turnover of (very late; farewell, Tim Parker, sweet prince). With that out of the way…allons y.

1) A Smarter Press, an Absent Wrecking Ball
St. Louis still defends quite high and leaves a fair amount of (exploitable) vertical space within that shape, but I haven’t seen them run the drunk-octane high-press that served them so well in 2023. The wrecking ball from the subtitle is Joao Klauss, who did as much as any player to make that work. He hasn’t appeared a ton in 2024 and hasn’t even made the bench during this Leagues Cup. At any rate, they have pressing triggers within that high defensive line and release them pretty effectively if a team can’t take them out of it. Related…

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…

Getting Reacquainted with St. Louis CITY FC, the Humiliation of Fatherhood

Keep talking motherfucker. Day's coming...

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

They came, they saw, they straight-up rolled some teams – including five straight to start the season. Hell, St. Louis CITY FC even rolled Sporting Kansas City 4-1 at home all the way at Week 32 of the season. The fact the same team that put them to the sword 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: impressive, but visibly incomplete.

Best Season

I feel good saying 2023…

Long-Term Tendencies

They went wildly over the median on goals scored – i.e., 62 scored versus the 46.8 average – and, as well as the defense did, it seized failure with both hands often as not. Almost certainly related, St. Louis played an aggressive press, aka, one of soccer’s great “yes/no” propositions, there is no try, only do, etc.

Identity: Your son beating you at a sport for the first time.

Joy Points: 1, because making the playoffs in your one and only season makes your history brighter than eight other teams. (Also, index for how these work is below*.)

[Ed. – There is no point to a “names to know” section on a team entering its second season…]

Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything

First in the Western Conference and a genuinely impressive fourth overall. To be completely frank, I did not like this team from the jump and wanted them to fail – mostly because I hate pressing teams. Shit’s ugly. Going the other way, they effectively ambushed the six of the first eight teams they played and staked them to 18 fast points early in the season. And yet, and to their very real credit, St. Louis picked up a healthy share of wins throughout the season. I won’t pretend I don’t think they’ve been found out, but they had a great season for any team, never an expansion team.

Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition

I don’t know enough to comment on the St. Louis front office’s state of ambition beyond acknowledging they did pretty damn all right in Year One. Even with the occasionally useful Niko Gioacchini and the infatigable (and pissy) Jared Stroud moved on to new and exciting professional opportunities, St. Louis comes in to 2024 with a good core. Having 2023’s goalkeeper of the year and MLS vet Tim Parker to organize the defense looks like a sound foundation to me and, so long as you have that and a competent midfield, all it takes to get your local team close to competitive is a couple smart attacking pieces. They seem to have those in Eduard Lowen and Joao Klauss, so long as he can stay fit. My best guess puts this team at playoff-competitive in 2024; add some talent – I hear they have an open DP spot- and they could make some actual noise in MLS’s Western Conference…that said, I’m still waiting for this team to get found out. The way they could go either way feels like a big deal for 2024.