ST. LOUIS - St. Louis City SC currently sits in an unenviable position. Results largely aren't going their way, and the transition following the dismissal of head coach Bradley Carnell has been a rough one.
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Interim head coach John Hackworth mentioned during the week that the team is trying to put together the pieces again and “finish stronger than they started.” On Saturday night, City hosted the Vancouver Whitecaps, looking to at least build positive momentum.
In their last home game before the Leagues Cup break, City’s lackadaisical defending cost them any chance at a result on a muggy Saturday evening. Two goals from Brian White led Vancouver to a 4-1 victory.
City captain Roman Bürki, who left last weekend's loss in Colorado with back spasms, returned to training this week and started at CITY PARK Saturday evening.
Eduard Löwen, who was ruled as questionable to start the game per the team's official injured list, did indeed start and played more than 70 minutes. Löwen was dealing with an abductor muscle strain that kept him off the training field a bit this week.
City went behind early when Njabulo Blom made a mistake pass right to Vancouver's Fafa Picault in the City half. Picault squared a pass to White for an easy tap-in goal in the 9th minute.
An all-too-familiar start, a simple mistake punished for a goal, and City went behind before many in attendance made it to their seats.
City started to get a foothold in the game closer toward the half-hour mark, and in the 28th minute found an equalizer. Nökkvi Thórisson turned at the corner of the six-yard box and fired towards the near post, and his shot squeezed through the legs of Whitecaps goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka.
Thórisson, to his credit, has improved by leaps and bounds by getting more playing time during this peculiar period for St. Louis City. The goal gave the hosts a little boost, as they had struggled to attack until that point.
That momentum came to a screeching halt when Vancouver found a second goal to retake the lead just minutes before halftime.
The forward progress that St. Louis City made in the first half was undone by yet another goal caused by a defensive lapse. A cross over the top of the City defense found the unmarked Picault at the far post, and White scored his second of the night.
Whitecaps striker Brian White, who was slumping a bit coming into City and Vancouver's last meeting north of the border, has now scored seven goals in three games against St. Louis dating back to last season's loss in Vancouver.
The visitors regained control of the game with the second goal, and spent much of the second half looking for more. City’s only real solid look at goal in the second half came when Löwen had a shot inside the box blocked, a shot that would have at least challenged Yohei Takaoka in the Whitecaps goal.
In the 63rd minute, Ryan Raposo stretched the Caps lead to two. It was calamitous defending by City, Vancouver slicing through the lines of the home side as if those in City Red were standing still.
A bit of bad defending, a bit of ballwatching, and a clearance gone awry led to the ball falling to the feet of Raposo in a crowded City penalty box. Raposo fired a shot beyond Bürki, who was less than thrilled with the defending in front of him.
Vancouver thought they had their fourth in the 80th minute when a Hosei Kijima pass forced Johnny Klein, starting once again for John Hackworth, into a bad touch that turned into a turnover. Picault was played into the City box, and beat Bürki, the Swiss shot-stopper only laying a finger on the shot.
Many of the 22-thousand-plus in attendance had seen enough and made their way for the exits after Picault’s goal. When the goal was wiped off due to a VAR review that ruled a handball in the Vancouver buildup, a faint cheer went up at CITY PARK, but people continued their way out onto the streets of Downtown West.
Picault would not be denied his goal, however, and in the 92nd minute broke through the City backline, went to Bürki’s left, and finished with ease to score a fourth goal that VAR couldn’t wipe off the board. The 4-1 scoreline at the final whistle was fitting of the dreadful product on the field.
“That performance is embarrassing,” opened Hackworth in the team’s post-match press conference. “It’s not acceptable to our club, not acceptable to the city, not acceptable to the fans who invest so much time, energy, and hard-earned money into us. We’re embarrassed, and we have to own that.”
Löwen, and the other City players who spoke to the media postgame, echoed Hackworth’s sentiments.
“I think we definitely need to have a sit-down with the guys, and we need to talk about their performance,” said Löwen. “This [level of performance] today is just not going to work out, and it's just unacceptable. What we did today is unacceptable. And as I said in Colorado, okay, like we shouldn't have lost the game four-one. That was a very bad result, but there was at least desire there. Today was just an unacceptable performance.”
Chris Durkin spoke to the lack of cohesion in the City team at the moment.
“You could see on the pitch, right now it's a fragmented group,” said the City midfielder. “It's not a group that's together. And you know, it’s frustrating to me, especially, we’ve talked about how it’s a sellout crowd and to walk down the tunnel after a performance like that is frustrating, and it’s embarrassing for our fans.”
Durkin added that while Hackworth volunteered himself to take the blame for the defeat, the team needs to step up at some point so the coach doesn’t have to take the blame, or in Carnell’s case, lose their job.
“It's a team sport. It's 11 guys out there and how they can best gel together,” Durkin admitted.
“Right now, we're not gelling. Hackworth can talk about and take accountability and all that but I think it's the players, the players have to step up and have his back and you know, everybody has to fight for themselves too… You know, a lot of guys are out of contract next year. You're fighting for your life. You're fighting for your job.”
Goalscorer Thórisson pointed to the team’s mentality recently, and how that has been more of a problem than the X’s and O’s.
“I think it’s more a mentality thing than something tactical,” said Thórisson. “We need to want to defend the goal more than we have been. Once we have that mentality back, I think we can turn things our way.”
So how does this seemingly listless and lost City team, eight points adrift from the MLS Western Conference playoffs, find that mentality to be the team they think they can be again?
“It starts on the training field,” said Hackworth postgame. “We have to get our mentality right. We have to get the competitive nature of -- these guys are good soccer players. There's no doubt about that, but we have to bring them together, play collectively and then try to go out and show our fans, ourselves, that this kind of performance is not acceptable.”
There won’t be a lot of time for training before City heads back to the Pacific Northwest for the second time in three weeks to take on the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday. The Sounders are one of the hottest teams in Major League Soccer, they’ve won five straight across MLS and Open Cup play, seven of their last ten, and only lost once in that span.
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