ST. LOUIS - St. Louis City SC has never faced the Philadelphia Union in their two seasons and change of MLS play. That changes Saturday night when City heads to the shores of the Delaware River to face a Union team led by a familiar face.
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That familiar face is Bradley Carnell, City’s first-ever head coach, who led the team until his dismissal last summer. For both sides, it will be a fond reunion, but just another game.
“I’m going to welcome a lot of the faces and the people I've been in contact with,” said the now-Union head coach Carnell this week. “So special memories, for sure, but at the end of it, it's three points on the line.”
On the St. Louis side, maybe no City player benefited more from Bradley Carnell’s time with the team than Kyle Hiebert, who Carnell put a lot of trust in from the outset in 2023. Hiebert played often as a left-back under Carnell in City’s inaugural season.
“Bradley [Carnell] was the one who gave me my MLS debut,” said Hiebert during a pre-match press conference Thursday afternoon. “But we’re really focused on us.”
Facing Carnell means facing a system that many in the City camp are quite familiar with, the high-press, high-intensity “Red Bull” system that Carnell implemented to mixed results over his season and a half with the team. Even for those in City Red who didn’t play under Carnell, it's a familiar system to game plan against.
“I think it’s a style of play that the German guys are not unfamiliar with,” Hiebert said. “The ‘Red Bull’ style of play. A lot of players [in the middle of the field], it’s counter-pressing… To us who are familiar with the system and the guys who aren’t, they’ve seen this system before, it’s nothing new, so I think that helps, we know what we’re going to see.”
The biggest change for Philadelphia will be their actual gameday lineup, with seven players, including many regular starters, away from the team on international duty. Carnell had stuck with the same starting eleven for the Union’s first four games of the season.
Goalkeeper Andre Blake, right-back Frankie Westfield, midfielder Danley Jean Jacques, and striker Tai Baribo have all been drafted to represent their nations this weekend. All have been key to the success Philly has had early in the season.
One Union player looking to break into the starting lineup Saturday is former City regular and fan-favorite Indiana Vassilev. When St. Louis City fired Carnell last season, Vassilev admitted how hard it was for him to see the coach who put so much faith in him leave the club.
But since Vassilev’s move to the Union in the Eastern Conference, he hasn’t cracked Carnell’s preferred starting eleven. He’s made three appearances as a substitute, tallying just under 50 total minutes of game time this season. Vassilev made 63 appearances for City over two seasons.
“It will be good to see [Vassilev],” City’s Kyle Hiebert said this week. “Obviously it’d be much better to see him after we win, that’s what we’re really focused on. Then we can deal with all the handshakes and hellos and ‘good to see you’s’ after.”
City’s focus has been staying clean on the defensive end, locking down their 18-yard box in front of Roman Bürki, or for last week and the foreseeable future, Ben Lundt. City head coach Olof Mellberg was asked if a full week of preparation to start for Lundt was beneficial for both him and the club.
“For sure, both for him individually and for us as a team,” Mellberg elaborated Thursday. “[Lundt] is a different profile to Roman [Bürki], and it gives us a few more days to prepare the game plan.”
Part of Mellberg’s game plan for Saturday includes figuring out who will play as a right wingback while Tomas Totland is out with a hamstring injury suffered in the second half of last week’s 1-0 win over the Seattle Sounders at Energizer Park.
The City head coach didn’t want to reveal just who would fill that role, noting there are a number of players on the St. Louis roster who can fill that void on the right if need be.
“We have a few options we are considering,” Mellberg said. “We have center backs who can play that position, we have Akil [Watts] who’s played that position previously. We have Conrad [Wallem], and I think he can play on both sides. So we have options.”
Tactically, both Mellberg and Bradley Carnell have found success when their team is without the ball. In his time in St. Louis, Carnell hammered home that possession wasn’t the main focus, and when Carnell’s City had more of the ball, City often lost.
Now with Mellberg in charge, City hasn’t dominated possession by any means, but the defensive approach is much different. Mellberg’s back line drops deeper to cover runs from attackers, while Carnell always stresses a high defensive line to suit his high-press style.
Mellberg’s defensive style might just be the right counter to Carnell’s attacking strategy with the Union.
“Don’t think there are too many surprises in the way [Philadelphia] plays,” Mellberg explained. “They [attack] well, and even though you are aware of it, they can create danger, as they’ve done in the start of this season. We have to really be up for the battle, winning the fight, winning the second ball, and not dwelling on the ball for long periods of time. They like to press and they’re a high-energy team. We’ve got to be up for it on Saturday.”
If St. Louis City can keep the Union off the scoreboard for at least the first 68 minutes Saturday evening, they will set a new MLS record for the longest shutout streak to start a season. That would surpass the 427-minute mark the Vancouver Whitecaps put up in 2012.
With a clean sheet Saturday, City would become the first MLS team in history to start a season with five straight shutouts. Additionally, with a win or draw of any sort, City would be the first MLS expansion team to start their first three seasons going undefeated through five straight games.
Kickoff is set for just after 6:30 p.m. Central Time in Chester, Pennsylvania, just south down the Delaware River from Philadelphia proper. The game is streaming on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, with local radio broadcasts available on KYKY 98.1 FM in English and KXOK 102.9 FM in Spanish.
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