MLS debutants are supposed to struggle. Don’t tell red-hot St Louis City
No expansion team in Major League Soccer history has been where St Louis City are right now. Never before has a newbie to the league taken 18 points from their first eight fixtures. The sight of Bradley Carnell’s team atop the Western Conference as MLS’s top scorers – they average 2.5 goals a game – is unprecedented.
Nobody saw this coming. Most expected St Louis City, who were largely assembled in the space of just 12 months and have few recognisable names, to struggle. Instead, they are early-season frontrunners.
So what have St Louis City got right that so many expansion teams have got wrong? Why did it take FC Cincinnati three straight seasons of winning the league’s ‘Wooden Spoon’ to become competitive? Why are Charlotte FC still struggling in their sophomore MLS season while St Louis are top of the class?
Much of it is due to a clear and coherent vision. They may not boast the biggest budget, with their two Designated Players arriving from unfashionable Bundesliga clubs, but Carnell and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel knew from an early stage what they wanted their team to stand for and built around that.
Pfannenstiel is an energetic character who has set the tone for an energetic franchise. The former goalkeeper is the only person to have played professionally in every Fifa confederation. His playing career spanned 21 years and 25 clubs. Pfannenstiel spent time in a Singaporean prison on a match-fixing charge. He also came close to death when his lungs collapsed after a collision during an English nonleague match in 2002. He played for Vinnie Jones’s Wimbledon ‘Crazy Gang.’ The German has stories to tell and if you spend enough time in his company, he will tell them.
Carnell was hired from the New York Red Bulls more than a year out from St Louis City’s first match, and the South African views the game as Pfannenstiel does. Both men have Bundesliga backgrounds and have implemented a high-pressing, attacking style that would make Jürgen Klopp and Julian Nagelsmann proud. St Louis City are a German team in spirit, and body – they signed four players (Klauss, Eduard Löwen, Joakim Nilsson and Roman Burki) from the Bundesliga.
“We haven’t just opened up chequebooks and signed five $12m players,” said Carnell, explaining the club’s recruitment strategy. “I feel we’ve got a pretty good roster together without going into the market deeply.”
St Louis City still have a DP spot free, and they have been linked to Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino, but the club won’t sign a big name just for the sake of it. Any new arrival must fit the system.
St Louis City already have a Brazilian DP in the form of Klauss, who has scored five goals in his first five MLS appearances. He’s had help: three of those goals have come from back passes played straight to him by opponents. But the 26-year-old’s style has quickly made him a fan favourite – Klauss plays “like a deer getting out of a car,” according to Taylor Twellman.
Midfielders Löwen and Indiana Vassilev, goalkeeper Burki and centre-back Tim Parker have established a strong spine, while Jared Stroud, Nicholas Gioacchini, Lucas Bartlett and John Nelson give the team a homegrown quality. Almost everyone in the squad is contributing in some way.
The fans are playing their part too. CityPark, opened for the start of the season, has sold out for every home game so far. But the venue is much more than just a soccer stadium: it is a downtown pillar situated within sight of the city’s iconic Gateway Arch. The club has made itself an unavoidable part of St Louis as a whole.
“The moment I stepped out I had goosebumps,” said Löwen, talking about the atmosphere for St Louis City’s MLS home opener. “You could tell the whole city was waiting for this moment for so long.”
Too long, in the view of many who argue St Louis, a long-established soccer hotbed, should have had an MLS team well before now.
“I’m part of three generations of St Louis soccer players and it’s awesome to see our city recognised on the national stage as the soccer capital that it is,” says Annie Lee Baldwin of the Saint Louis City Punks supporters group.
Soccer has been played in the city since 1882. The St Louis Soccer League, founded in 1907, was the USA’s first professional soccer division. The city has been home to teams that have played in the NASL, MISL, NPSL, WPS, USL and MLS Next Pro, where St Louis City entered a reserve team to prepare for life in MLS. “What makes this special is we’re new to this league, but not new to this sport,” said Clayton Kolkmeier, another member of the Saint Louis City Punks.
Now that MLS is finally in St Louis, the city is leading the way. A team widely predicted to finish near the bottom of the Western Conference is now in good shape to qualify for the playoffs at the very least. Expansion teams aren’t meant to be this good. St Louis City have raised the bar.