ST. LOUIS - St. Louis City SC have been road warriors in recent times. Saturday’s home match against Inter Miami will be their first home match following City’s first extended road trip of the season.
Get The Latest News!
Don't miss our top stories and need-to-know news everyday in your inbox.
On that road trip, they flew to Toronto last Thursday before a 1-0 win over Toronto FC Saturday night. They got on the first plane to Los Angeles that night and set up a temporary base in sunny California.
Wednesday night, City faced LAFC in what had been hyped as a battle of the best in the West. Coming into Wednesday night’s matchup, City led LAFC by 5 points at the top of the MLS Western Conference.
An LAFC team ripe with star power faced a St. Louis City team that was heavily rotated from their match in Toronto four days prior. Rotated so much that co-captain Tim Parker was left out of the matchday squad entirely for rest. In his place came Jon Bell, making his first City start.
Aziel Jackson, who scored his first MLS goal and otherwise dazzled with his play on Saturday, was left out of the starting eleven when many presumed City head coach Bradley Carnell would stick with the man in form.
To Bradley Carnell’s credit, the rotation largely paid off. City played a good game and were right there in the match for 72 minutes. In those final stages, LAFC’s elite quality turned the game on its head and City ended up on the wrong end of a 3-0 scoreline.
“Yeah, I think the result sucks. The scoreline sucks,” said Carnell Wednesday after the loss. “But I think the performance really gave me things to have hope about. We fought for 71 minutes and then, you know, the randomness of a long ball, a long play, and the quality of LAFC in transition, they can hurt you and they certainly did.”
That long ball was a beautiful pass from LAFC’s José Cifuentes that found Carlos Vela running with a full head of steam beyond the City defense. Vela launched a shot that three Roman Bürkis couldn’t have stopped into the top corner.
At that point, the game became a bit more stretched as City began to chase for an equalizer, but LAFC’s second goal from Stipe Biuk was a dagger, and Cifuentes added a third in stoppage time to send the home fans into LA traffic in a good mood.
“I look at the stats, three shots on target and three goals,” Carnell said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, we lost the critical moments at critical times, and we see the score line at the end of the day. I thought we grew as a group together today. You know, we win so many times together. Today, we lost together.”
A good performance for City despite the result, but the real highlight for the team on Wednesday night was Eduard Löwen returning to game action. Löwen played just over 20minutes, and unfortunately was mostly chasing the game after City fell behind late.
“Obviously it felt great, for sure,” said Löwen on his first playing time since his quad injury. “But of course, there are better games to come back in, so that was a little bit of a bummer.”
Is the next step for Löwen a start against Inter Messi, I mean, Inter Miami on Saturday night?
Forgive me for mixing up Inter Miami’s name, as pretty much any news about the cellar-dwelling team playing roughly 30 miles north of Miami has been entirely focused on the arrival of Lionel Messi this week. Messi has lightly participated in some Inter Miami practice, but presumably won’t so much as be in town to watch his team play at CITY PARK on Saturday.
Inter Miami are hosting an unveiling of Messi at their home DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale Sunday before his expected debut in Miami’s Leagues Cup match against Liga MX powerhouse Cruz Azul.
“We don’t want to be phased by everything that’s going on, on the Miami side,” said Bradley Carnell Friday. “We just want to focus on us, there’s three points on the line, three points for us to go into this little break (from MLS action until August 20) with some success.”
Part of Messi Mania in Miami has been the overhaul of the Inter Miami squad. Phil Neville was fired, and underperforming Designated Player Rodolfo Pizzaro has been granted his release and will be heading to AEK Athens in Greece.
In their stead: Tata Martino, former Messi manager at Barcelona and with the Argentine national team. Messi’s longtime teammate at Barcelona, defensive midfield star Sergio Busquets, is expected to join him in Miami in the next few weeks.
“There are things happening in Miami that are great for the league,” Carnell said of Miami’s Messi-induced overhaul. “It makes it harder for us, a new coach for the first time out, no Messi, but still the hype of Messi, they’re playing with a bunch of homegrown players now who you can never underestimate. You know how much we value young players.”
One within the City ranks has intimate knowledge of Inter Miami, and that is midfielder Indiana Vassilev. Vassilev appeared 45 times for The Herons in 2021 and 2022. Vassilev knows that City can’t underestimate the young talent Miami has filling the void until Messi and company man Miami’s midfield.
“They have a lot of quality and we need to be wary of them,” said Vassilev Friday. “Some people look at young age as a detrimental factor, but some of these young guys have plenty of games under their belt.”
“I say young, I’m like three years older than them.” The 22-year-old Vassilev quipped.
Offensively, Inter Miami is led by Josef Martinez amidst their turnover. He may not be as prolific as he was during his Atlanta United days, but still possesses high-level scoring quality.
While headlines about Tata Martino’s return largely focus on the Barcelona/Argentina reunion with Messi, Martino is also reunited with Martinez. When Tata led Atlanta United from 2016 through 2018, he brought Martinez aboard and Martinez set the league alight with his goal-scoring ability.
While there’s no Messi yet, a revamped Inter Miami is slowly improving and looks to take another step forward when they take the field in St. Louis Saturday night. City will have to be sharp on the back end of three games in eight days' time.
Kickoff from CITY PARK is set for 7:30 pm, streaming live on Apple TV. Local radio broadcasts can be found on KYKY 98.1 FM in English and KXOK 102.9 FM in Spanish.
More like this:
