SEATTLE - St. Louis City SC hit the road for the Pacific Northwest for a showdown with the Seattle Sounders on Saturday night.
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In City’s short history, Lumen Field hasn’t been a happy hunting ground, losing twice and not scoring a goal before Saturday’s encounter. City found the back of the net for the first time in Seattle, but couldn’t keep up in the second half with the Sounders, falling 4-1.
Olof Mellberg started a fairly familiar team, at least in this moderately injury-stricken form of the club. Ben Lundt manned the goal behind three center backs, from left to right: Jannes Horn, Timo Baumgartl, and Josh Yaro.
Those center backs are flanked by two wingbacks: Conrad Wallem on the left side and Kyle Hiebert on the right. Akil Watts stepped up into the central midfield in place of Alfredo Morales, who was suspended after picking up a red card in City’s 2-2 draw at LAFC.
Joining Watts in central midfield was Tomas Ostrak, which allowed Marcel Hartel to play a more advanced and attacking midfield role. Hartel also donned the captain’s armband again, which has been standard during Roman Bürki’s absence.
Cedric Teuchert played in that attacking midfield role with Hartel, with the latter playing on the left and the former playing on the right side. João Klauss once again got the nod at the striker spot.
The opening half an hour of play didn’t have a ton of action in front of either goal. City struggled to get the ball upfield, leaving attackers like Klauss and Teuchert as onlookers or extra defenders. Seattle had more possession, but didn’t create any dangerous chances of their own.
The complexion of the game changed entirely when a rare St. Louis City attack led to referee Lorenzo Hernandez pointing to the penalty spot. Teuchert made a run into the box from the left channel, racing toward the byline when Seattle defender Yeimar Gomez got a hand on the City attacker’s shoulder.
Teuchert went down quickly, and the penalty was given. Marcel Hartel stepped up to the spot, and sent Sounders keeper Stefan Frei the wrong direction and giving City a 1-0 lead at the half-hour mark.
Frei was making his 400th appearance for Seattle across all competitions, and in three games against St. Louis, this was the first goal he had conceded.
City’s lead would last roughly three minutes. A penalty on the other end, committed by Timo Baumgartl trying to get back on defense on a Sounders counter, gave Albert Rusnak a chance against Ben Lundt from the penalty spot.
Rusnak made no mistake and erased City’s short-lived lead. From that moment, Seattle had control of the momentum for the rest of the first half. The hosts dictated the tempo and didn’t let City out of their own half of the field. Olof Mellberg’s team was lucky to get to the half with the score still 1-1.
City’s offense was pretty much stagnant in the first half, if they could even get the ball that far up the field. That trend continued through the second half.
The City defense was solid if not stunning, not allowing too many real chances as Seattle pressed and probed for a breakthrough.
In the 60th minute, City were dealt an injury blow when Tomas Ostrak went down and needed to be taken out of the game. Youngster Mykhi Joyner came on for the City midfielder.
In the 61st minute, a quick one-two pass from Ryan Kent to Obed Vargas led to a shot that took a wicked deflection off of City center back Timo Baumgartl and into the back of the net as a helpless Ben Lundt looked on.
Looking for answers, St. Louis brought on four substitutes over the next handful of minutes. Eduard Löwen made his return to MLS action, replacing Teuchert in the 70th minute. Xande Silva made his City debut, coming on for Hiebert in the 76th minute.
Klauss was hauled off for Simon Becher, and Joakim Nilsson filled in for Yaro as City shuffled the deck and formation in search of an equalizer after conceding the second goal.
After being on the field for a matter of moments, Nilsson was the center of a VAR review, where it appeared that a shot from Seattle’s Obed Vargas was blocked by the left arm of the City defender. While the shot did indeed strike Nilsson’s arm in front of the goal, it was deemed that the big Swede’s arm was in a natural position while moving.
As City switched shape to a back four in hopes of adding some juice to their rather anemic attack, their defense became shakier and shakier, and Seattle was the only team that looked like scoring in the second half at any point.
The hosts added a third in the 81st minute when Danny Musovski was left unmarked in the City box, he controlled a cross from Seattle left back Nouhou and side-footed a shot beyond goalkeeper Ben Lundt, diving to his left.
Two goals down and simply unable to create any offensive chances of any kind, the game was essentially over after 81 minutes. City had two shots on target late, a header and long shot from Mykhi Joyner, but neither troubled the Sounders legend Stefan Frei.
Seattle tacked on a fourth from a corner kick in stoppage time. Nouhou scored just his second-ever MLS goal in 221 appearances in the league with the Rave Green. Obed Vargas almost added a fifth in the 98th minute, but rattled the post with his shot.
4-1 would be the final, and the game wasn’t even as close as the scoreline suggests. City were outshot 31-7, outpassed 475-325, and only had nine touches in the Seattle box over 90 minutes of standard play and another 15 minutes of stoppage time between the two halves.
City created 1.05 xG (expected goals, a measure of how dangerous scoring chances are) throughout the game. A whopping .80 of that came on Marcel Hartel’s penalty conversion, meaning for a full game of open play, the offense only created .25 xG with three shots on goal.
After multiple performances against good teams that resulted in draws or tight losses, a big loss where St. Louis City never looked threatening in attack has head coach Olof Mellberg and crew back to square one.
“I think [Seattle] had way too many chances,” said Mellberg on a Zoom presser following the defeat Saturday night. “They didn't have that much before their penalty. So up until that moment, I thought we did fairly well. After that, they are much better than us in every way. So, I think afterwards we will see that not much was working, and they completely dominated the game afterwards.”
City will look to hit the reset button with midweek US Open Cup action and a break from MLS play when they host third-tier USL League One team Union Omaha at Energizer Park this Wednesday, May 7.
“I'll be disappointed for a while now,” said Mellberg. “But you must immediately start to work on the next [game]. I'm really looking forward to that one to be able to bounce back as quickly as possible. That's the good thing after a really disappointing game, to have a game on Wednesday again and to be able to bounce back. And that's definitely our goal, for me and for the players as well, to show off our best.*
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