At a time in the season where every point matters, where St. Louis City SC’s ever-shrinking playoff hopes have created a situation where, as the players admit, every game is a final, City SC was a no-show on Saturday night.
And they know it.
“That performance is embarrassing,†interim coach John Hackworth said. “It’s not acceptable to our club, not acceptable with the city, not acceptable to the fans who invest so much time, energy, money into us. So we’re embarrassed and we have to own that.â€
“It was horrible,†said midfielder Eduard Lowen, back in the lineup after missing one game to a leg injury. “It was a horrible performance. Bad body language. Just as we spoke about, no belief, no desire, no hunger to win. We defended horrible. The goals we defended is just very bad. That’s the straight truth.â€
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“You can see on the pitch right now,†midfielder Chris Durkin said. “It’s a fragmented group. It’s not a group that’s together.â€
In what might be the low point in the franchise’s brief history, City SC lost to Vancouver 4-1 on a sweaty Saturday at CityPark. The team has won just one of its past 12 games and, if Saturday’s game is any indication, is not on the brink of turning things around. It was the second straight game City SC has allowed four goals, and third time in its past four. The team is 27th in points out of 29 teams in the league and is every bit deserving of that spot based on recent performances. Two weeks prior, City SC lost to Vancouver 4-3 on the road; losing 4-1 does not constitute progress in any way, shape or form.
The club had what Hackworth termed a “Come to Jesus†meeting after the game, in which he laid out his displeasure with the team’s performance. Among the most damning things was Brian White, who scored three goals two weeks ago in the game that got Bradley Carnell fired as coach, scored two goals and assisted on a third Saturday. There couldn’t have been a player more heavily stressed in the week’s scouting report, yet there he was, getting clean looks at goal.
“If we aren’t able to defend just the general ideas of what an opponent is going to do against us, we don’t have a lot of chance to win an MLS soccer game,†Hackworth said.
“We should be called out,†Durkin said of the impromptu meeting. “This is a performance-based job and we’re not performing well. Pressure is important in our industry. You either rise to the top or you crumble and right now we’ve got to figure out a way to rise back to the top. I look back only two months ago and we were a team that was performing well. Yeah, we were drawing a lot of results but still really in the games. And yeah, it’s frustrating. I know we can talk about injuries and we can talk about decisions and all this stuff, but it’s what we can control.â€
The goals City SC gave up were reminiscent of a lot of others the team has allowed, opponents making a pass or two and an attacking player finding himself alone on goal for a shot goalkeeper Roman Burki has little or no chance to save. The mistakes made defensively against Vancouver were the mistakes made against Colorado in the game prior.
“It says that we are not a very good team right now, quite candidly,†Hackworth said. “We thought we had fixed those through the week. We felt really positive about it. I even felt positive at halftime; that despite giving that up goal late, we could get back into this game.â€
The night started with a wayward back pass by midfielder Njabulo Blom that could not have set up Vancouver captain Ryan Gauld any better for an attack on goal. Gauld and White crossed paths going toward goal, which caused center backs Tim Parker and Josh Yaro to go toward Gauld, if only for an instant, which was enough to leave White by himself to score.
A goal by Nokkvi Thorisson tied the game in the 27th minute. But in the 44th minute, a long ball into the City SC box led to a chance Burki stopped, but he couldn’t control the rebound and White put that in to make it 2-1. Burki kicked the goal post in frustration.
“To give up one at the very end of the half, again, on a very, I would say predictable-type ball that should not beat us,†Hackworth said, “and to have the heads go down and the body language; it’s something, again, I don’t want to sit here and tell you that I have all the answers right now because I don’t.â€
Other than a brief flurry immediately after the second goal, City SC was seldom dangerous after that. Vancouver went up 3-1 in the 63rd minute when the ball was pingponging around the City SC box before Ryan Raposo put it in.
“We concede a third goal,†Lowen said, “and then it’s over. Guys are just lifting our heads down. You can just tell that the body language is not there and we just don’t have the belief to turn it around again. And that’s just not good enough. There has to be more hunger, more desire to win the game.â€
Turning it around will be a challenge. City SC’s next game is Wednesday, so there isn’t much practice before that one. There’s another on Saturday, and there won’t be much practice before that one either. And in any case, Durkin suspects, the answer won’t come from drills but from what the team does in the locker room, trying to find the now-missing spark.
“The hardest thing to do is score and right now the goals are easy against us,†Durkin said. “We really need to take a big look at that. We have the quality on the pitch. That’s not a question in my mind. But it’s a team sport. It’s 11 guys out there and how they can best gel together. And right now we’re not gelling. Hack can talk about and take accountability and all that but I think it’s the players that have to step up and have his back and everybody has to fight for themselves, too.â€
City SC has another opponent now: The clock. City SC has 11 games remaining, and needs to get 22 points out of them to be in the playoff chase. That’s seven wins in 11 games for a team that has just four wins in its first 23 games.
The team has one more game, in Seattle on Wednesday, before the team’s summer transfers arrive. Joakim Nilsson is ready to return to action after an injury and Kyle Hiebert returns Sunday from Canadian national team duty. But if City SC doesn’t get at least three points out of its next two road games, everything else might become irrelevant.
“Bad performance today, but now it’s time to stick together and problem-solve,†Thorisson said. “I would not say the team is falling apart or anything like that. We got back into the game today, so that’s the positive, but now it’s just a matter of problem solving together and focusing on the positive and bounce back from this.â€
Spain wins Euro title
BERLIN — Spain won a record fourth European Championship title on Sunday, beating England 2-1 after Mikel Oyarzabal’s 86th-minute goal broke a 1-1 tie. Oyarzabal slid in to poke home Marc Cucurella’s cross, just when the game at Olympiastadion seemed destined for extra time.
Substitute Cole Palmer equalized for England in the 73rd minute to offset Nico Williams’ opener in the 47th from 17-year-old prodigy Lamine Yamal’s pass.
— The Associated Press