ST. LOUIS - Sitting in 14th out of 15 teams in the MLS Western Conference and about to miss the MLS Cup Playoffs for a second consecutive season, St. Louis City SC parted ways with Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel on Monday morning.
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Pfannenstiel was hired exactly five years and eight days before his firing, taking on the job in August of 2020 when the team was little more than a logo and a press release. He oversaw the development of City’s training center and the development of its youth academy, all the way up to the reserve CITY2 team in MLS NEXT Pro.
More than just another face in the City offices, Lutz Pfannenstiel was a character with a reputation long before arriving in St. Louis. Famously, his playing career as a goalkeeper took him all over the world, playing for 25 different teams on every continent where professional soccer has been played.
He wrote his own biography detailing his career around the globe, The Unstoppable Keeper, which was a bestseller in Germany. Many saw him on Bundesliga TV broadcasts before he arrived stateside to take on the STL City job.
“These decisions are never easy, and with the legacy Lutz [Pfannenstiel] built during his time here, he will always be part of the extended CITY family,” said CITY SC President and GM Diego Gigliani in a press release Monday. “From the very beginning, Lutz has shown real passion and commitment for this project, and the foundation he established was integral to the club’s historic first season.”
“As we enter the next phase of the club’s long-term plan to lift up the region and help both the team and St. Louis achieve its potential, the next five years will be extremely important, and believe a change in sporting leadership will help in the club’s pursuit of its goals,” continued Gigliani. “Unfortunately, we’ve struggled to create sporting stability and haven’t been able to meet the expectations of our owners or our fans, despite increasing our investment in the squad consistently.”
Gigliani points to the struggles the team has faced since the inaugural MLS season, which saw the team defy most predictions and make the MLS Playoffs, where one could say City’s problems began. The top-seeded City were bounced out in the first round by their cross-Missouri rival, Sporting Kansas City.
What has followed that opening season has been far short of expectations, of both the fans and the owners, as Gigliani mentions. 2024 saw the club’s first head coach, Bradley Carnell, fired mid-season.
Although missing the playoffs, the team looked more competitive at the end of the 2024 season after the arrival of Marcel Hartel and Cedric Teuchert. 2025 was promised to be a playoff season, and Lutz Pfannenstiel was integral to bringing in Olof Mellberg to usher in the era of “City 2.0”.
City 2.0 was promised to be a re-definition of the team’s high-tempo, high-intensity style of play, one that cared just as much about defending and clean sheets as attacking and scoring goals. Some clean sheets came, but the goals largely didn’t, which led to Mellberg being canned in May.
Mellberg’s hire might have been a sticking point in the decision to let go of Pfannenstiel now. Not that Lutz was the only one responsible for Mellberg’s hire, but the team will likely want a different voice on the sporting side while it conducts its next search for a head coach.
In the interim, Diego Gigliani and Technical Director John Hackworth will take over Pfannenstiel’s duties for the remainder of the 2025 season. Hackworth, notably, has also deputized as CITY2 head coach for the past few months, ever since David Critchley was tapped to lead the first team.
Talking to the press in attendance at City’s Downtown West training facility Tuesday, Gigliani said there’s never an easy time to make these decisions, but they wanted to act before 2026.
“This is a good time [to let Pfannenstiel go] with the [summer] transfer window closed, we have some months to start getting ready for 2026,” said Gigliani. “We have several important decisions we have to make, and we want to make those decisions in the right sequence. There’s never a perfect time, but we think this is as good a time to make this decision as possible.”
As far as those who are still at the club, in particular, the players who have contracts expiring or those who are on club options for 2026, negotiations are ongoing. Roman Bürki falls in that camp.
“Negotiations are going great [with Bürki],” said Gigliani, asked by Tom Timmermann of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the status of City’s captain and keeper. “He knows how important he is to the team, we value what he brings on the pitch and off the pitch, he knows that, we’ve started having discussions with him and his agent. Lutz [Pfannenstiel] for sure, but also myself, and we’re confident we can get those [negotiations] to a good place.”
The team in front of Bürki will face a thorough examination in the coming months, but Gigliani said Tuesday that he thinks the groundwork of a good team is already here in St. Louis.
“I think we have the building blocks of a competitive team. Like in every transfer window, we need to look for places where we can improve that. We need to look at those big impact signings like DPs (designated players) and under-22s that make a big difference. We also need to make sure we have a squad of players that can be on the field and be available to play; low-injury players are really important. If we make a few impactful signings, we’ll be a better squad.”
Asked by Matt Baker of the Flyover Footy podcast, Gigliani dismissed the notion that the decision to fire Pfannenstiel was a result of the most recent summer transfer window.
“It was not a reaction to a disappointing window, I would say that. We have worked closely on this window together. We had the right support from ownership on what we wanted to do, and this window was our opportunity to make decisions on players that were occupying space on our roster and weren’t able to get on the pitch enough. We also signed some players that look like the profile of what we want to evolve to, players that are more physical and are adapted to our style of play, that’s the first step in this squad reconstruction.”
Justin Horneker of STL Mag and the Talkin’ Soccer newsletter asked Gigliani if the team would change from the on-field identity established by Lutz Pfannenstiel over five years with the club.
“We believe in the importance of having a specific style of play, and we believe in our style of play and how it connects to the ethos of St. Louis, a hard-working, gritty, aggressive team. We want to maintain that intensity. Then it's about ‘are there things that have worked and not worked?’ and do we want to make some adaptations to the style of play? That is, for sure, on the table. But we will not take radical steps backwards from our style of play.”
Gigliani also made a note to understand the building frustration of a fanbase that’s supported the club vociferously in its first few seasons of existence.
“We understand we’re not where we need to be. The first year was incredibly special; years two and three have been very disappointing, being far away from playoff qualification. We feel their pain, and we’re in a position to bring about change. That implies being able to make tough decisions, on head coaches, like we have, on sporting directors like we have now, but also in terms of having the ambition to win and putting investment behind that. I would feel comforted by the long-term potential of this project.
“We have amazing owners, we have amazing infrastructure in downtown St. Louis, we have an incredible market, and incredible support from our fans. We will find success, that’s what I would hope the fans believe in.”
City enters the post-Pfannenstiel era this Saturday, hosting the Houston Dynamo at Energizer Park.
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