St. Louis CITY SC fell 4-1 to Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday night at CITYPARK. Vancouver opened the scoring in the first half, but St. Louis responded with a strike from Nökkvi Thórisson. The Whitecaps scored three second-half goals to earn the three points. St. Louis will head to Seattle to take on the Sounders Wednesday night before a rivalry match up with Sporting Kansas City on Saturday.
Postgame Notes
- Nökkvi Thórisson scored his second MLS goal of the season
- Thórisson’s other goal this season was against Vancouver on June 29
Goal-Scoring Plays
VAN: Brian White (Ryan Gauld), 9th minute – Brian White scored a right footed shot from the center of the box.
STL: Nökkvi Thórisson, 27th minute – Nökkvi Thórisson scored a right footed shot from the left side of the box.
VAN: Brian White (Fafa Picault), 44th minute – Brian White scored a left footed from the center of the box.
VAN: Ryan Raposo (Brian White), 63rd minute – Ryan Raposo scored a right footed shot from the center of the box.
VAN: Fafa Picault (Ryan Gauld), 90th minute + 2 – Fafa Picault scored with a right footed shot from the right side of the box.
July 13, 2024 – CITYPARK (St. Louis, MO)
Goals by Half 1 2 F
St. Louis CITY SC 1 0 1
Vancouver Whitecaps 2 2 4
Scoring Summary
VAN: Brian White (Ryan Gauld), 9’
STL: Nökkvi Thórisson, 27’
VAN: Brian White (Fafa Picault), 44’
VAN: Ryan Raposo (Brian White), 63’
VAN: Fafa Picault (Ryan Gauld), 90’+2
Misconduct Summary
STL: Njabulo Blom (caution), 19’
STL: Jay Reid (caution), 53’
STL: Chris Durkin (caution), 71’
VAN: Andreas Cubas (caution), 88’
VAN: Levonte Johnson (caution), 90’+6
Lineups
STL: GK Roman Bürki ©; D Tomas Totland, D Josh Yaro (Sam Adeniran, 70’) D Tim Parker, D Jay Reid; M Njabulo Blom (Akil Watts, 46’), M Chris Durkin; M John Klein (Caden Glover, 90’+4), M Eduard Löwen (Hosei Kijima, 77’), M Indiana Vassilev; F Nökkvi Thórisson (Michael Wentzel, 90’+4)
Substitutes not used: GK Ben Lundt, D Joakim Nilsson, D Jake Nerwinski, D Anthony Markanich
TOTAL SHOTS: 14; SHOTS ON GOAL: 3; FOULS: 10; OFFSIDES: 2; CORNER KICKS: 5; SAVES: 5
VAN: GK Yohei Takaoka, D Mathias Laborda, D Ranko Veselinovic, D Bjorn Utvik; M Ryan Raposo (Sam Adekugbe, 84’), M Luis Martins (Alessandro Schopf, 67’), M Sebastian Berhalter (Ralph Priso, 90’+3), M Andres Cubas; F Fafa Picault (Levonte Johnson, 90’+3), F Brian White (Damir Kreilach, 90’+3), F Ryan Gauld ©
Substitutes not used: GK Isaac Boehmer, D Belal Halbouni, M Giuseppe Bovalina, M Pedro Vite
TOTAL SHOTS: 14; SHOTS ON GOAL: 9; FOULS: 10; OFFSIDES: 2; CORNER KICKS: 5; SAVES: 1
Referee: Pierre-Luc Lauziere
Assistant Referees: Kyle Atkins, Diego Blas, Jeremy Scheer
VAR: Daniel Radford
AVAR: Eric Weisbrod
Venue: CITYPARK
Weather: Sunny, 88 degrees
ST. LOUIS CITY SC POSTGAME QUOTES
Audio: Recording
Video: Footage (Password: mHr5zE#P)
Interim Head Coach John Hackworth
Opening Statement:
First of all, sorry for making you guys wait. We had to have a little come-to-Jesus moment in the locker room there.
The second thing is that that performance is embarrassing. 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.
Where did that begin? The players, you give an early goal, is it just from the very start, is it just not there?
No, not necessarily. Look, we have some problems, and I can’t sit here right now and tell you exactly what it is.
But when you’re playing a good team, and Vancouver is a good team. We know how they are going to try to play against us. If we don’t — 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.
I give our team a lot of credit for coming back into the game for getting an equalizer. That’s two weeks in a row we did that, and we’ll try to build on that for sure.
But 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. 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.
But I don’t want to defend things that aren’t real and I want to make sure that I can look at the game film, talk to the players, talk to the staff and try to fix as much as we can in a short amount of time as we head into Seattle.
The players’ response, presumably they saw what we all saw; it was not good.
Yeah, I think the players are embarrassed, too. But as the interim head coach, I have to take responsibility for that.
And we have to evaluate whether it was our tactics, whether it was something that we did or we did things differently, I’d be happy to talk to you about that if you want.
But at the end of the day, Vancouver is a team that plays a certain way and we have to be able to at least at a minimum collectively come together as a group and work towards that and that didn’t happen for us.
Might be more of the same of what you already said, but last week you said you were looking for progress and this match was strikingly similar to the loss last week in Colorado. Any things that you can point to off the top of your head that did feel like progress or is it one of those performances that you have to look at everything?
Yeah, there’s not a lot you can point at as a positive. There’s not.
What are the options going forward here?
We are still a team that’s not at full strength, and I don’t want to make any excuses, but we’ll have more options heading into Seattle because we’ll have a couple players coming back from injury and then we have a summer transfer window that opens, and we’ll have players that we already brought in that will be available for Friday, or for Saturday in Kansas City, and that’s the options.
But it starts on the training field. 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.
Was there anything in practice this week that seemed that this might be in the offing?
Nothing on the field. Nothing on the field. I felt good about the practices. The guys certainly worked hard. Put in a good shift, that kind of thing. But at the same time, we have things wrong that we have to do a better job identifying, and again, I’m going to hold myself accountable for that.
Defensively, the goals look like so many other goals where guys get loose and there’s no one; Brian White gets his alone, which seems like that probably wasn’t in the game plan.
Probably not. Probably not.
So, when you see those same things happening defensively, what does that say?
It says that we are not a very good team right now, quite candidly.
So, we’ve got to, I don’t want to say too many clichés here. We didn’t play well. That’s not acceptable in this building, and we have to go fix it. The only way we can get better is by fixing one thing at a time.
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.
For about ten minutes in the second half, it felt like we could find the equalizer and put it on our terms. That didn’t happen for us. Then the other goals come, and those are not acceptable, and especially the reactions of the group.
To focus on things individually, Nökkvi Thórisson has been a striker by necessity over the past month or so, but seems like he has shown some progress, especially with the two goals against the Whitecaps. Do you see him as a striker?
Yeah, I think Nökkvi, I don’t want to say anything positive in this press conference, but there’s not a lot to say. But if you look at Nökkvi, he’s been asked to play out of position and done an admirable job of that and provided us with some goals.
So, there are still positives in there. The problem is not necessarily any individuals. It’s more of a collective. We’re not a good team right now and we’ve got to fix that.
Midfielder Eduard Löwen
On why the team struggled tonight:
I mean, we have to analyze that. I don’t know where — we have to figure it out within the group, what the problem is, why we have performances like this. San Jose, we have an amazing game. Colorado, in many ways, wasn’t that bad of a game. At two-one, we can still do something. Then we ended up losing four-one, which sounds very high and wasn’t deserved. But today the performance was just very bad.
On whether he felt the team was going to struggle early on in the match:
I don’t think it was a bad first half. It was not that Vancouver had a lot of chances. They were just, like, circulating the ball the entire time, and we were just running back and forth and back and forth. Our pressing wasn’t good. It wasn’t, yeah, we didn’t wait for the right triggers. We were not — the intensity was not there when we were pressing. But they still didn’t have a lot of chances. We were just caught sleeping a couple of times and that’s why we conceded easy goals.
On how the team is going to use its upcoming road trip to make progress returning to form:
Yeah, I think we definitely need to have a sit-down with the guys, and we need to talk about their performance. This 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 there was a very high result, but there was at least a desire there. But today was just an unacceptable performance. And I would say now we have two games coming up, and we have to get points. We have to be able to deal with the pressure to get at least three points. And then we have the Leagues Cup coming up, which is a good thing. We have a couple of guys coming in. And then we need to figure this out, and we need to have belief in ourselves again that we are able to turn this around. Yeah, so I think this is then, for us, kind of a reset, and we have to use that.
Midfielder Chris Durkin
On his feelings about the game against Vancouver:
I think you know; you could see on the pitch right now it’s a fragmented group. It’s not a group that’s together. And you know, it’s frustrating to me, especially, you know, we’ve talked about, it’s a sellout crowd and to walk into the tunnel with the performance like that is frustrating and embarrassing for the fans. So, we need to do everything possible. You know, words are cheap right now, I think action is the most important so we can talk all we want but it’s the action that counts.
On the team’s performance tonight:
Yeah, I think you know, going into the game we knew that Vancouver was good on the counterattack, and you know, can definitely catch you hanging. They did it when we went to Vancouver, that same thing to us. So yeah, I felt like a good momentum, like you said within the first 15 [minutes] of the second half. You know, one doesn’t find the net, but that’s where you just got to keep pushing on. And you know, stay. The hardest thing to do is score and right now the goals are easy against us right now. And you know, we really need to take a big look at that. Yeah, I think you know, 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. And, you know, [John] 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.
On where the problem for the team began against Vancouver:
Just a run of results, and I think when you start to not win over a period of time, you start to have question marks and you know, pointing fingers and that’s the worst thing in this sport is pointing fingers and talking behind people’s backs. All of that it’s you know, it’s like I said, it’s a group of 11 out there and then another group of, you know, five other guys that come onto the field, four or five, so we all have to find a way to sync together again. You know, I believe in the character of the group. I think there’s a lot of really good individuals on the team, a lot of you know, good personalities, but something’s not clicking right now. I think it’s up to not only the leaders in the group, but everybody to rise to the occasion right now because there’s nothing else to do. You know, a lot of guys are out of contract next year. You’re fighting for your life. You’re fighting for your job.
Forward Nökkvi Thórisson
On if the team is falling apart:
No, I mean, bad performance today, but now it’s time to stick together and problem-solve. I would not say the team is falling apart or anything like that. We got back into the game today, sothat’s the positive, but now it’s just a matter of problem solving together and focusing on the positive and bounce back from this.
On if it was frustrating to score a goal but then have the game go sideways after:
It’s a team sport, so obviously I’m also a part of the loss, so it’s collective. It starts upfront with me. I’m the first defender and so, yeah, frustrating is the right word.
