Following a two-hour weather delay, St. Louis CITY SC put five past FC Cincinnati to jump to the top of the Supporters’ Shield standings. CITY SC opened the scoring through Jared Stroud in the 3rd minute, followed by Eduard Löwen, Kyle Hiebert, Niko Gioacchini’s finish and an own goal from Roman Celentano.
Back on Top!
FC Cincinnati came into the match with the most points (17) in MLS, two points ahead of CITY SC. Following the win, CITY SC leaped Cincinnati at the summit of the Supporters’ Shield table. With the 5-1 victory at home tonight, CITY SC rank first in points (18), goals scored (20), wins (6), and goal differential (+11).
Goals, Goals and More Goals
CITY SC came into the match on a two-game goalscoring drought. CITY SC came out the gates flying, scoring five goals in 57 minutes to take their season tally to 20 goals.
Midfield Maestro
Eduard Löwen put in a man-of-the match performance against FC Cincinnati. Along with his goal, the midfielder led CITY SC in touches (76), total passes (48) and total crosses (6). With his assist tonight, Löwen is tied at the top of the assist charts with Thiago Almada, Léo Chú, Daniel Gazdag and Nicolas Lodeiro.
Additional Notes
- With their five goals tonight, CITY SC ended FC Cincinnati’s three-match shutout streak.
- Prior to tonight, FC Cincinnati hadn’t lost an away regular season game since 7/17/2022. Their record during that time was 3-0-6.
- CITY SC is the third team in MLS history to score at least 3 goals in 5 of their first 8 games of a season, joining the Red Bulls in 2018 (6) and the Galaxy in 1998 (5).
- With his assist, Klauss is now tied for second in MLS in goal contributions (8) with Dániel Gazdag, Jordan Morris, and Dénis Bouanga.
- With his goal and assist, Stroud ties his MLS career high for goal contributions in a single game (2).
- Stroud’s goal in the 3rd minute is the earliest goal scored by any St. Louis CITY SC player this season.
- With the win, St. Louis CITY SC’s 18 points is the most by an expansion team through their first eight games in MLS history.
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Goal-Scoring Plays
STL – Jared Stroud (João Klauss), 3rd minute: Jared Stroud right footed shot from the center of the box to the bottom right corner.
STL – Eduard Löwen, 39th minute: Eduard Löwen right footed shot from the left side of the box to the bottom left corner.
STL – Kyle Hiebert (Jared Stroud), 45’+2 minute: Kyle Hiebert header from the center of the box to the bottom right corner.
STL – Niko Gioacchini (Rasmus Alm), 53rd minute: Nicholas Gioacchini right footed shot from outside the box to the bottom left corner.
STL – Roman Celentano (Own goal), 57th minute: Own Goal by Roman Celentano.
CIN – Sergio Santos (Dominique Badji), 62nd minute: Sergio Santos right footed shot from very close range to the bottom left corner.
Next Game
St. Louis CITY SC are on the road against Colorado Rapids.
St. Louis CITY SC (6-2-0, 18 pts) vs. FC Cincinnati (5-0-2, 17 pts)
April 15, 2023 – CITYPARK (St. Louis, Missouri)
Goals by Half 1
St. Louis CITY SC 3 2
FC Cincinnati 0
Scoring Summary:
STL: Jared Stroud (João Klauss), 3
STL: Eduard Löwen, 39
STL: Kyle Hiebert (Jared Stroud), 45’+2
STL: Niko Gioacchini (Rasmus Alm), 53
STL: Roman Celentano (Own goal), 57
CIN: Sergio Santos (Dominique Badji), 62
Misconduct Summary:
CIN: Obinna Nwobodo (caution), 27
CIN: Sergio Santos (caution), 43
STL: Tomáš Ostrák (caution), 76
STL: Jared Stroud (caution), 80
Lineups:
STL: GK Roman Bürki ©; D Jake Nerwinski, D John Nelson (Selmir Pidro 61’), D Kyle Hiebert, D Tim Parker; M Jared Stroud (Célio Pompeu 82’), M Eduard Löwen, M Indiana Vassilev (Akil Watts 75’), M Rasmus Alm (Isak Jensen 61’); F João Klauss, F Nicholas Gioacchini (Tomáš Ostrák 75’)
Substitutes Not Used: D Josh Yaro, D Lucas Bartlett, M Miguel Perez, GK Ben Lundt
TOTAL SHOTS: 17; SHOTS ON GOAL: 7; FOULS: 26; OFFSIDES: 3; CORNER KICKS: 3; SAVES: 4
CIN: GK Roman Celentano; D Nick Hagglund (Marco Angulo 46’), D Santiago Arias (Rayman Gaddis 87’), D Yerson Mosquera, D Matt Miazga ©; M Obinna Nwobodo (Malik Pinto 59’), M Álvaro Barreal; F Sergio Santos (Alvas Powell 77’), F Brandon Vazquez, F Quimi Ordoñez (Dominique Badji 46’)
Substitutes Not Used: GK Alec Kann, D Joey Akpunonu, D Ian Murphy, D Isaiah Foster
TOTAL SHOTS: 11; SHOTS ON GOAL: 5; FOULS: 14; OFFSIDES: 2; CORNER KICKS: 5; SAVES: 3
Referee: Lukasz Szpala
Assistant Referees: Ryan Graves, Jeffrey Swartzel
Fourth Official: Nima Saghafi
VAR: Kevin Stott
AVAR: Claudiu Badea
Venue: CITYPARK
Weather: Rain, 58 degrees
ST. LOUIS CITY SC POSTGAME QUOTES
VIDEO: Bradley Carnell
AUDIO: All recordings
BRADLEY CARNELL
Q. How did you guys spend those two hours?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, the guys keep themselves busy in the locker room obviously with some analysts going on the East Coast, so we were able to pick up some games.
Yeah, just have some about fun. I just heard some good stories in the locker room, and yeah, it was our purpose to come out of the locker room as energized as that as what we were for two hours. It was incredible to see the boys hanging about with a bunch of friends, and yeah, just good teammates.
Yeah, obviously to get the goal early on, it’s kind of a massive weight lifted off the shoulders. You can feel the relief of the group and you could feel the energy of the group and they were really excited for that.
Yeah, I think Jared obviously didn’t play the last game, so I think that’s his third goal now. So yeah, I think Jared’s a worker. He has some final third quality, and I’m happy he could reward himself then, which then advertently rewards the team later on and sets the tone for the game.
Q. Rasmus Alm, back from injury tonight after being out a couple games. What did you see from him?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I think we could have pushed him in the last game already. But with the medical staff and Jarryd Phillips, head of performance, just making sure that if he’s ready to go, he needs to come with an impact, right, not to like just see how it is for a couple of minutes and try and try and try.
But we wanted to know, if he can go, he has to go with 100 percent mentality, and free in his mind mentality to say that it’s okay, right.
So we knew nothing was broken, nothing structural, so it was important for us to know when he is ready to go hundred percent, and I’m glad he could show it just with the qualities he possesses. He’s a threat against the ball and he’s a threat with the ball, and I’m glad he could — I don’t know, is that an on-ball? I’m not sure if that’s classed as an on-ball, but still I’m happy for him.
Q. Following up on Rasmus Alm, can you describe what he was doing specifically to make such an important impact on tonight’s game?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I just think the energy he puts on the opponent. When we are on the front foot closing down time and space, he’s got an ability to close down time and space. He has a good reading of the space and a good reading of the passing consequence sequences and he gets into good spots early on. So that’s one of his qualities, and yeah, I think you can see it many, many times. And then he’s got the ability to come back in the game and he’s got the ability to connect. For us it was really important tonight to work as a unit and work as a collective, and keep our frame intact. It got away from us a little bit in the second half but we were just all so happy to get some guys some runs who didn’t get minutes, who had not got many minutes. But yeah, disappointed that we couldn’t keep the shutout for Roman.
Q. Played a lot of tight, low-scoring games all season and you had a big lead early in the game. How do you approach the tactics when all of a sudden you’ve scored three, four goals?
BRADLEY CARNELL: The complexion starts to change, and you know, a 2-0 score line, a 3-0 score line, can still be, if you shoot those early on, can still be a tricky result to manage to the end of the game, right. So I don’t think we are too ignorant or arrogant or inexperienced enough to think that we’ll just throw any changes and just give guys a run out who haven’t really played. But as the game progressed, we really wanted to get guys in, like Selmir Pidro, Akil Watts, Celio Pompeu, I wish I could have got him on a little bit earlier. But yeah, we know we’ve got games coming up, and we know we have got midweek games coming up. So we wanted to make sure that we keep everyone fresh and ticking along.
Yeah, just excited for the group, and like I said, just a little bit of a — yeah, sticks in my — 5-0, I don’t think it was a 5-0 game; I think they had one or two chances too many, in my opinion as the game went on, but we were a little bit loose.
But then if it is a 5-0 score line, we want to keep it that way. We want to keep the clean sheets, and that’s the only thing that’s upsetting me right now.
Q. Löwen, other than that goal, can you talk about how good of a defensive performance he put in?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Really good because we spoke about our sixes and the connection of our sixes with Indy and Edu, a lot of they are quality comes from their wing backs in their 3-4-3 system. If they are dribbling on the inside, Barreal on the one side, Arias on the other side, this is a big quality of theirs to create overloads, and if we shift and connect with one step too late, unfortunately they can create some headlock. So yeah, that was a real proud moment for Edu to go as he did and get stronger as the game went on, besides his goal, I think he was connected every single time. We speak about the weak side pivot and whatever, but yeah he just did enough to make sure that he’s defensively solid.
When we won the ball in transition, he was clean on the ball. When there’s a bit of an edginess in the game then he’s really strong and can ride tackles and challenges as well. So it was a complete performance.
Q. Gio was asked midweek about how he has a striker’s mentality. What do you think of his performance tonight?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, really good. Gio works hard in training. Gio enjoys his training. He enjoys winning games. Yeah, he enjoys scoring goals and getting around the final third. We played him at times as a floating striker, was just underneath a little bit and then we put him up top high with Klauss, so he shows a lot of flexibility as well. Yeah, he’s growing. He’s growing all the time. He needs some people around him to have confidence in him, and I think he’s found a good environment for him to perform, right. He’s a bit of an artist and he enjoys that type of game. And yeah, he’s got the qualities to change a game, he’s got the qualities to accelerate a game, and he’s got qualities to break a game. Yeah, he’s got weapons of tools of running behind. He’s very technical underneath. He can create a lot of havoc.
Q. Was there ever a point that you thought you might not play tonight? And also, you started by thanking the fans. What was the atmosphere like? You guys took the field, did it help you fire back up? I think there were 15,000 fans that stuck around.
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, we were, I don’t want to say we were surprised, we were not surprised, but it’s amazing when you walk out there and you think, wow, there’s so many that stayed and endured this with us, and that’s why that was first off my lips because yeah, I even said it to John Hackworth on kickoff, that’s the first thing I want to do after the game is thank the fans. Yeah, this was amazing.
Q. Was there ever a doubt you were going to play or were you pretty convinced you would get it in?
BRADLEY CARNELL: We were pretty coined and edge we got finished after midnight. So I think we finished a little bit earlier than a couple years ago.
Q. You were talking about you don’t think this was a 5-1 came. Can you talk about what went right and what went wrong?
BRADLEY CARNELL: We took our chances. We speak and preach about getting shots on frame. The more pressure we can apply on the opponent and we force some crucial turnovers and it changes the momentum of the game. If we can jump those past us and end them with final plays and just exude a lot of pressure and create a lot of havoc on the opponent, then we start to thrive. You can see, we are on the front foot, we are going all the time and it just creates errant passes. So yeah, I was really happy with that from tonight’s performance, and yeah, where we start wanting to enjoy the show too much, right. So everyone is attacking and we lose a little bit of shape and a little bit of scroll in the mid feel and the gaps start to appear front to back, so that’s the worst thing when your three departments are stretches all over the field and there’s no compactness. So for us we just try and reset it a few times and yeah, listen, it was a good chance to have.
Q. You said this week was about your team. What did you learn? What did you see from your team tonight for a game like this against a team who is at the top of the table?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, we never really want to speak about anything’s broken, right. We are the creatures or the creators of our own destiny, right. We got off the blocks really quickly with the five wins, and so we as a group set our standards really high and when we lose two in a row, and then it doesn’t feel great, right. So then how is the bounce back, without anything being broken, because yeah, everyone expects us to lose in Seattle, and yes, we lost in Seattle. So totally fine. But to accept that mentality, mentally-wise, it’s not easy to travel back, arrive at 6:00 AM and do it all for nothing. So how do we bounce back? Yeah, just try and keep it competitive. Try and keep things jovial, fun, loose, but still serious. There’s just a bit of mixture in training, how much do you push the needle, how much do you drive intensities and then how much do you loosen up and enjoy it. And so there’s just always this ebb and flow, and yeah, a little bit of balance between the chaos and the intensity we bring, and yeah, guys still like to compete.
Q. You had five different goal scorers tonight, I guess you could call it five different goal scorers tonight and everyone played a role in scoring in some way throughout the game. What do you think that says about your team and what they can do?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Yeah, I say that all the time. I see our principles are strong and we have trust and belief in every player. I wish Celio would have gotten on the score sheet. He would have been great, too. He trains every single day in a really high level. Just to try and find the ways and the mechanisms to try and get him in the game from all the different profiles that we are looking for tactically as well as positionally, so from that point of view, I’m just really excited. Yeah, we have faith and confidence in our players and in our rosters, but again, it’s our biggest enemy, as well, because then everyone wants to play 90 minutes, and unfortunately, you know, there’s only one game a weekend and that’s only 90 minutes. So we have to try and manage that as well and so far, the players have been incredible.
Q. I’m curious, you guys are obviously atop the Supporter Shield standings right now, and I think probably at least external expectations around you guys are raising significantly. How do you maybe guard against complacency potentially while also still pushing on and saying, you know what, we are ahead of schedule maybe, how do we push on and go for more?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Great question. I think it’s just like we said, this whole group this evening, we said this week, this is about us, right, and total expectations are growing after eight match days. We know where those expectations were after match day one, so we are not playing that game. We are playing the game that we want to control and dictate and we’ll leave the outside chatter, we’ll just leave it as that, outside chatter, what we want to achieve internally stays with us and drives us every single day. I don’t think there’s any cause for complacency when you have just lost your last two game and you didn’t score a goal, right. So that pushed us. We were unhappy about that and yeah, the guys, I wanted them to play with courage, drive and passion and that’s what they did.
Q. How good did it feel to get Selmir in the game?
BRADLEY CARNELL: Really good. Awesome. You can see he’s really good in a 1v1 challenge. Yes, he gets caught a little high off the goal we concede, but again, he worked his way into the game and made some crucial challenges and played some good vertical balls. Started some good sequences in the attack.
Yeah, we know we have two weapons on the left back position on the outside back position, so from that point of view, we know the games are coming up thick and fast and the calendar now gets condensed over the next two months, so yeah, we are excited to get him some minutes.
Q. Is that an armband, black armband you were wearing?
BRADLEY CARNELL: It was. Our team administrator, Bomi Park, had to travel to South Korea, and I’ll leave it at that. She lost a family member.
Lutz Pfannenstiel
On playing like they did after two straight losses…
Yeah, I think in general, you know, it was a difficult game coming from the two
losses. Obviously, you make yourself some pressure, but it was a healthy kind of pressure. We made ourselves — to come back and get back on the winning ways. Cincinnati not necessarily the perfect opponent for that because they are,
and I think they showed it also partly today, they’re a very good team. But I think the rain delay was very difficult — or thunderstorm delay — for everybody because you hanging around here for two and a half hours more. You don’t know are you going to play? When are you going to warm up? So, it’s difficult for your mindset. And I think it was, yeah, it was a strong message for our mentality today because when it was needed, we went out there and I think we had a very concentrated first half I believe. Very efficient in front of goal. And then in the second half, I mean things just also fell into our path and way. But in end of the day, you know, five-one, we take it. We are happy and move on.
On if the game rekindled the team’s momentum…
Yeah, I mean it was flowing because we – but again, last week I think you could pick the positives, but we also discussed the negatives. And I think after a great first half, we had a similar issue against Minnesota. We came out and we’re not as sharp. In the second half today, it was different. We came out very, very focused. We came out very physical as well. And as you saw, it was a physical game from both sides, which was important. So, to be up for the challenges and be ready and fight, also with the weather, wet pitch, late evening — so I think it was a nice kind of setup for us to go out there and really like bite and scratch.
On if he liked that the goals came from five different sources…
Yeah, you know, then I can come back again and just give my general phrase again that you I believe in the team and it’s not just about that every time Klauss or Edu need to score every time three goals. So, that’s not who we are. And you saw how Klauss was sprinting in the 78th minute from his own box. I think probably 80 yards in a full sprint to get the ball back because he wants to go on the score sheet. But at the same time, he works hard to make spaces for his guys. And having these five different scorers is of course a great thing.
Kyle Hiebert
On playing a team like Cincinnati…
Yeah, I think it shows our resolve. You know, we knew we weren’t going to go
through the season undefeated. Every team goes through a spell where the goals weren’t coming, you know, and so to be able to put five past a Cincy team that really doesn’t give up much. Like yeah, they were missing, you know, two of their top players but defensively that same structure was there, so that was a big time for us for our confidence moving forward.
On not getting a shutout…
Yeah, overall very solid. Like they are a very good team. I think. Definitely some stuff looking back on you can kind of see it in the guy’s eyes, like we were disappointed after the game not to get the shout out. That was something you know, we set goals for ourselves and sort of missed the opportunity for this one, and it does sting a little bit so it didn’t take away some of that joy, from the win but still an overall great win, but it was tough to give up that goal.
On his goal…
Yeah, just the whole space in the box. Amazing ball in by Jared. I forget who won the second phase to get over to Jared too, so great play by them and then just special. You know, so many being in St. Louis. You know, so many family
and friends here.
Eduard Löwen
On how he felt they played against Cincinnati…
I mean, obviously and I don’t want to you know, say like, our performance wasn’t
great. Our performance was amazing, but gotta be honest, Cincinnati lost some very good players. But still, I mean, Cincinnati is a is a very good team. And I mean, we won 5-1. And I think we could have scored some more goals. And yeah, as you said, I think that there was a great preparation of the coach to not focus so much on Cincinnati, but more focus on us and you could tell that there was the performance we wanted to have like in the first game we pressed, we were always there. It was so ugly for Cincinnati to play against us and you could feel that we just, you know dominated the game.
On whether he was curious to see how many fans stayed through the weather delay…
Yeah, I was honestly, my hope that’s still many fans in the stadium. We came out to the warmup, and it was already pretty good. But when the game started, I was really surprised and shout out to the to the fans. That is just incredible. And a great example like always, how the fans and the city is supporting us, and we are very thankful for that. And that is always also a huge win for the city and also for the offense as well.
On his goal…
Yeah, yeah, I’m very thankful that it went in. I was a little bit disappointed that I couldn’t score one of the free kicks. The one was very close. But yeah, I’m very happy that I could score but even more because the win.
Jared Stroud
On the importance of getting a goal early in the game…
I felt good. I told Klauss we were going to score in the first half and that was
going to. Yeah, it felt good. helped us get a couple more things.
On coming off two shutout losses and then to play against Cincinnati who is at the top of the league….
Shows resilience. We’ve had tough times in the year where we’ve been down a goal and we’ve come back and won those games. It’s important for us to have the right mentality. It shows the guts that the guys in the locker have and the camaraderie we have.
On the momentum possibly being lost after two losses….
The way I see it is always a one game weekend. We’re still five and two, we’re still up at the top of the table, and that’s where we want to be.
