ST. LOUIS - St. Louis City SC managed a 2-2 draw on the road against LAFC last Sunday, but the result left a sour taste in the mouth of fans and the team alike.
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Particularly, the stretch of play in second half stoppage time that saw LAFC star Denis Bouanga blow by Josh Yaro en route to a great finish for the goal that sealed the 2-2 result. City, down a man after Alfredo Morales was sent off but still defending a 2-1 lead, had most of its players joining an attack, leaving the back line vulnerable.
Bouanga has the skill to punish teams for those momentary mental lapses. City head coach Olof Mellberg acknowledged that on Thursday in the team’s pre-match press conference.
“There were many mistakes within a few seconds there unfortunately, in various ways,” said Mellberg Thursday afternoon. “It’s a learning experience that shouldn’t happen when we’re a goal up… we have to learn from it.”
But the game burst into life once Mellberg tweaked the strategy and lineup to be more attacking. City scored twice in the second half, only the second time this season they’ve found the back of the net more than once in a game.
“Looking back, we didn’t deserve to win,” Mellberg admitted. “Three points would have been great for morale, but we’ve had games where we deserve more… Frustrating in the way we conceded the tying goal. Ups and downs, highs and lows… we learn from it and bring the positives into Saturday’s game.”
City heads back to the Pacific Northwest Saturday evening to take on the Seattle Sounders, their first repeat opponent of 2025. City won the first meeting 1-0 on an Eduard Löwen free kick.
It is still a growing and learning process for St. Louis City with the new head coach at the helm. City Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel said before the season that a team needs ten games under a new coach to figure things out.
Lutz also coined “City 2.0” this offseason, which has been used to describe the system Mellberg is tasked with deploying, but also a change from the super-high press, super-high energy “Red Bull” style that came with former head coach Bradley Carnell.
Now, ten games into the season, expectations and frustrations are growing amongst the City faithful. “City 2.0” is still very much under construction.
Speaking to Jen Siess on KMOX Radio Thursday night, Pfannenstiel elaborated more on what the ideal for City is under Mellberg, “City 2.0”, and being patient with the current project.
“Do we want to have the ultimate super press that we had under Bradley Carnell? No.” said Pfannenstiel. To be honest, I believe it's not sustainable. In year one, nobody wanted to play against us, we literally destroyed most teams. But once they realized what we couldn't do, they just gave us the ball and said 'play'. We had no plan B, we had no plan C, and that made us vulnerable.
“After the transfer window, getting a good group of players in, you saw a bit more of 'City 2.0' where we had a good pressing momentum but were also able to hold leads. We had injuries holding us back last year, and [this year] we have to be very fair to Olof Mellberg and the team. Every week so far, we’ve had six, five, four, seven starters out. We’ve never been able to really have a full pool of players available to start the game.
“Unfortunately, we know how MLS is built, there’s roster rules, roster limitations, there’s a salary budget. We cannot just get out there and say ‘well, we have five injured players, let's just sign another three for now’, like it is possible in other countries and other leagues in the world. We have to deal with that as it is. [In 2022] Seattle won the Champions League, and then missed out on MLS Playoffs because they had fourteen players out.
“[Injuries] often sound like an excuse to fans and people out there, but let’s be realistic. If we have seven starters out, or six of the ten best players out, and talking about players like Löwen, Burki, Totland, Durkin, and go on and on, is it that easy just to throw players in and play exactly the same game you want to play? Clear answer: It’s not.
“This is where a little bit of patience and a little bit of fairness is very important. I believe in the coach, I believe in the boys. We have a good squad, and once we’re healthy, we’ll be just as difficult to beat as we were earlier in the season. But right now is a difficult time. No point to pick each other into pieces, we just have to stick together, work hard, improve in training, work on what really connects us, and we will be a decent team, and we’ll win some games.”
As Lutz mentions there, injuries and roster constraints have shaped what matchday squads City have had at their disposal. A closer to full-strength City team looked solid to start the season, but as injuries have piled up and players have been absent, those positive results and clean sheets have been fewer and further between.
Perhaps the best news the team could have received on the personnel front came this week when Eduard Löwen returned from an over-month-long absence due to a family matter. Löwen was a full participant in training this week, but is unlikely to play Saturday night in Seattle, given his long time off from competitive game action.
Olof Mellberg didn’t entirely rule out City’s midfield maestro, adding a hopeful “we’ll see if he can take part” when asked if Löwen could potentially play Saturday.
On the “almost ready but not quite” front, captain and keeper Roman Bürki was spotted training with his goalkeeping gloves on. He’s not available for Saturday night, but there’s optimism that City’s Swiss shot stopper could return next weekend.
Further on City’s injured/unavailable list: Alfredo Morales is suspended after his red card last week at LAFC. Tomas Totland, Henry Kessler, and Chris Durkin are still in the recovery phase and not training. Wingback Jay Reid is doing a bit of training but not ready to join the team just yet, same for winger Rasmus Alm, who is “not pushing fully in training yet” but is getting closer to being back in the team.
Jake Girdwood-Reich is training with the team and could make a start for CITY2 this weekend. JGR had a minor surgery on his ankle in the offseason and the team hasn’t wanted to push him back into competitive minutes too soon. He was on the bench a few times this season but was back off the squad last week.
Seattle are also dealing with injury struggles at the start of the season, and were dealt another blow when Jordan Morris went down late in their 1-1 draw with the Colorado Rapids last week. It’s the second time Morris has gone down in a game with a hamstring injury this season, and the first time caused him to miss the previous City/Sounders matchup.
Morris had only just returned to the Seattle team, having come on in two straight weeks off the bench as he the team ramped him back up to full fitness.
“It’s not good news,” said Seattle Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer when asked about the status of their star attacker. “It’s probably six weeks [out], give or take a week here or a week there, but it's the same spot, and that’s what [team doctors] are concerned about. There’s gonna be a rehab process, but hopefully we get him back by the Club World Cup.”
A Jordan Morris-less Seattle side will welcome a still banged up St. Louis City on Saturday at Lumen Field, with kickoff set for 9:40 p.m. Central Time. The game is streaming on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, and local radio broadcasts are available on KYKY 98.1 FM in English and KXOK 102.9 FM in Spanish.
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