Coaches may change at St. Louis City SC, formations may change, the attackers may change, but through three seasons, there has been one constant for the club, one person who has gotten them out of more tight spaces than anyone else with the club: goalkeeper Roman Burki.
In the team’s first two games of this season, it didn’t need Burki too much as the defense allowed only one shot on goal. But when the Los Angeles Galaxy turned up the heat in the first half Sunday in Carson, California, Burki took over. He had eight saves overall, but it was the ones in the first half, when the game was 0-0 and could swing in either direction, that stood out.
“What an amazing game,†said City SC coach Olof Mellberg. “He kept us in the game.â€
“That’s why he’s the best goalkeeper in the league,†said forward Cedric Teuchert.
People are also reading…
Burki was diving, punching, parrying as City SC’s defense allowed more chances than it had in the previous two games but still came away with its third shutout in three games. Teuchert had a goal and an assist, getting the season’s first goal and setting up Marcel Hartel for the second, and then Simon Becher scored a late goal as City SC beat the defending MLS Cup champion Galaxy 3-0 at Dignity Health ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Park. The Galaxy became the first defending MLS Cup champ to lose its first three games of the following season.
All of a sudden, City SC, which had left some questions unanswered about how the team’s rebuilding was going after two ties to start the season, is unbeaten in three games. It is the only team in the league yet to allow a goal and is one of eight teams, four in each conference, yet to lose. Also, it got its first win on the road, and did it in March, six months earlier than it did last season and became just the 11th team in MLS history to start the season with three shutouts and just the fifth in the last decade.
And while its possession stats were every bit as bad as they were the previous week, they did way more with the chances they had and, if not for some sloppy finishing, would have had even more.
“We had our chances as well,†Mellberg said. “We probably should have scored at least one more goal in the in the first half. We had a lot of half-chances as well when we went on the break. We lacked that quality in the final pass and the finish on a couple of occasions.â€
Burki did not lack quality. City SC had most of the chances in the first 22 minutes, but when Teuchert couldn’t finish a nice feed from Hartel and shot into the outside of the net, it turned around. Suddenly, the Galaxy were constantly in front of City SC’s goal, and in the 24th minute, Marco Reus, a former teammate of Burki’s from Borussia Dortmund in Germany, took a shot that required a diving save from Burki, tipping the ball off the post.
Burki punched away a corner kick in the 33rd minute and extended his right arm in the 34th minute to make a reaction save on Christian Ramirez. All of those had the potential to put the Galaxy ahead.
“Amazing,†Teuchert said. “I don’t think he made a single mistake. Quite a lot of shots on goal, and he managed to hold most of them strong in the air and was good on the ball. So top, top performance.â€
But to avoid another 0-0 tie, City SCs offense had to do something, and it did. With a beaten down Galaxy roster that already had key players hurt and played a game in Costa Rica on Wednesday, City SC attacked from the start and nearly scored a few times. The team’s first goal of the season finally came in the 44th minute, off a corner kick by Hartel. He put the ball amid a cluster of Galaxy players, who pretty much got in each other’s way. Goalkeeper Novak Micovic could not get hold of it and ball bounced off Klauss and Henry Kessler (who got his first MLS assist, in his 109th game) before coming to Teuchert. From five yards out with an open net in front of him, he drove it in.
“I think it was one of my easiest goals in my career,†Teuchert said. “But I think for us as a team, we need sometimes goals like this. I’m very happy to score the first goal of the season for our for our team, and I think it was a very deserved win.â€
City SC almost got another goal before the half but Tomas Totland missed from close range but got it four minutes into the second half, where Klauss fed Teuchert, who fed a sprinting Hartel who shot from an ever-tightening angle and roofed it to make it 2-0. Becher scored in the 84th minute to seal it as the three attacking players the team picked up last summer all scored. Teuchert had five goals after joining the team, Becher had four and Hartel had three and now they all have one on this season’s ledger. Last season, the three combined for 29 goal contributions, and none of them played in more than 10 MLS games.
“We’ve been working during the week on our focus,†Mellberg said, “a lot on our own game and our quality on the ball, especially under variation, trying to be direct at times, looking for the ball in behind but also have a little bit more possession attacks.
“I liked our positioning. I thought we looked really dangerous. I was just hoping for us to be able to put three or four good passes together and we were dangerous. We had our one-versus-one situations, our two-versus-two situations. I was really happy with the way we looked formation wise, and added a little bit more quality today, especially in the final third. Some great finishing for the goals.â€
