It was obvious to anyone really paying attention that St. Louis’s remarkable debut season – a 56-point campaign that perched them atop the Western Conference’s regular-season standings – was done with smoke and mirrors. If there was any question of that, Sporting KC left no doubt in last year’s Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
To the credit of sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel, he eventually caught on. It took him one transfer window too long, as the lack of big moves last winter doomed St. Louis’s 2024 campaign, but those moves did eventually come. And while CITY’s 2024 was, from a “hey, did they win the game?” perspective, much, much worse than the miracle they pulled off in 2023, they are much, much better positioned to move forward into 2025 as a team that should be able to sustainably win some games. And maybe play some good soccer while doing so.
Let’s dive in:
Know how you can tell the front office realized the 2023 team caught lightning in a bottle in a way that was not replicable? They fired the coach and replaced more than half the starters.
That could be the whole story for this section: the front office – whether it’s Pfannenstiel or club president/GM Diego Gigliani – decided that the guys they had weren’t good enough, and so they went out and got new guys. Those new guys have largely been much better than the old guys, with the attacking trio of Marcel Hartel, Simon Becher and Cedric Teuchert particularly impressive since their summertime arrival.
Suddenly this roster is good (maybe even very good), and they’ve mostly played like it since the summer window opened and new faces flooded in.
Bradley Carnell, he of the Red Bull lineage, was dismissed in early summer with the team performing poorly. It felt a little bit unfair at the time – Carnell never got a chance with all the summertime reinforcements – but it’s probably fair to say that his uber-direct, all-action game model was not a good fit for a team that was clearly making moves for players who would be more at home with the ball than without.
And frankly, it was a little bit weird that a team in a soccer city like St. Louis, which has long produced technical and tactical players, was going with the crash-bang energy drink soccer blueprint in the first place. Just anecdotally, a good number of the fans I’ve spoken with from those parts wished their side looked a bit more like the Crew, and a bit less like the Blues operating on the forecheck.
With Carnell’s exit and John Hackworth elevated to interim head coach, that evolution has started to take place. CITY are getting more of the ball and are more patient with it. They are still a direct and vertical team, but there are moments of misdirection and interplay that just didn’t exist with last year’s group, even when things were going well.
Overall they’re now 7W-7L-3D under Hackworth, but since the Leagues Cup ended they’re 4W-2L-2D. Not enough to climb back into playoff contention, but they’re looking like a team that’ll get there next year.
Not quite as godly as last year, but still one of the handful of very best ‘keepers in North America, and there’s no reason to think he won’t be among the favorites to win his second Goalkeeper of the Year award heading into 2025.
Provided, that is, they can figure out the central defense.
- Bürki (GK): Still the man.
- Teuchert (AM): Whether you call him more of a second striker or an attacking midfielder, he’s been awesome since his arrival.
- Hartel (LW/AM): Wherever he lines up (I like him best at LW in a 4-2-3-1), he’s the group’s primary creator, and has been Best XI-caliber at it.
- Eduard Löwen (CM): With the arrival of the two guys listed above Löwen’s finally getting to play in his best spot, orchestrating as a No. 8 in a double pivot.
- Becher (FW): He has been better on a per-minute basis than João Klauss, and the team has been better with him out there.
Priority No. 1 has to be figuring out if Hackworth is the guy to lead this team into 2025 and beyond. He has made a compelling case thus far in two ways:
- The game model is improved, and with it the results have improved.
- The centerpiece players have all seemed to buy in. Positive vibes matter a lot.
Are there other coaches out there who could offer more? Sure, in theory. But Hackworth has pretty methodically built a solid case for himself, even if their underlying numbers are still worrisome.
Priority No. 2 has to be fixing the central defense, and arguably defensive midfield as well. Jannes Horn has played most of his career as a center back, but since his arrival has almost exclusively been a left back. Henry Kessler has never recaptured his 2021 form. Joakim Nilsson seems like a strong buyout candidate, while Josh Yaro and Kyle Hiebert are squad players. Is there a playoff-caliber starting CB in that bunch?
D-mid is probably in better shape with the combo of Chris Durkin (he’s been decent, and has room to grow into more than that) and Jake Girdwood-Reich, the one summer signing we haven’t seen much of yet (he might be an answer at CB instead, for what it’s worth). But nobody’s gonna mistake this group for 2017 TFC in central midfield.
So yeah, an all-timer of a summer window has this team looking forward to what is certain to be a better 2025. But more work needs to be done this winter if CITY are going to emerge as a full-fledged contender, and the spots where they need to do that work are plain for all to see.
