St. Louis City SC played to its’ second consecutive draw on Saturday night in San Diego; but this one had a much different feel to it. After a dominant performance against Colorado, City were held to only two shots on goal and less than 30% of the total possession in San Diego’s inaugural home match.
The hosts were on the front foot from the outset, nearly creating an opportunity inside the first five minutes on a long ball over the City defense to forward Hirving Lozano. The San Diego attack would only press on from there as they registered five shots and won six corners in the first 45 minutes. Despite, the statistical advantage, the game was scoreless at the break with St. Louis eyeing adjustments to deal with overloads in the midfield.
Chris Durkin came on to start the second half in place of Cedric Teuchert; who registered just six touches in the first half per FotMob. The change was a premeditated one according to head coach Olof Mellberg. “Cedric didn’t have more than 45 minutes, it was planned from before the game”, he said. “We wanted to be a little bit stronger defensively; We were also hoping to get another player on the ball in the buildup, and for [Marcel Hartel], to maybe try to be a little bit more involved in our build up. I think that defensively, it worked out well. Attacking, it didn’t work out so well,” Mellberg said. The addition of João Klauss and later appearance of Célio Pompeu didn’t boost the offense either as St. Louis generated only two shots the entire match.
San Diego, however, was able to continue pushing for goals throughout the second half as they generated 10 total shots over the second 45 minutes. None of those proved to be a threat to Roman Bürki as the St. Louis defense blocked seven of those chances to preserve a scoreless draw and secure a point away from home.
City Fought for a Point on the Road
While San Diego ended the game with 14 shots, only one of them was on target and San Diego only generated just .84 expected goals (xG); a reflection of the resilient St. Louis defense. The resiliency is something that Bürki believes is evidence the team is growing.
“If you compare our performance that we had in a game like this last season, we would have never gotten away with a point,” he said. “We played really good defensively and that’s not just the defense; the whole team. I think there was just a really good fighting performance from our side. At the end of the day, it was a fight and we had to win the fight without the ball”.
A Dominant Home Debut for San Diego
The hosts had 72% of the possession, 14 of the 16 shots in the match, all nine of the corners taken and barely let City get into the game. Mellberg credited that to San Diego head coach Mikey Varas. “They are good on the ball and they’re dropping down with a lot of players,” he said. “Their striker; it was obviously their game plan to drop down with him and to overload the midfield and then to make runs in behind us.”
The heavy imbalance in possession meant City were having to defend for long stretches of the game, something Mellberg felt was self inflicted. “If you lose the ball easily and unnecessarily eight, nine, ten, eleven times in the first half; you end up defending basically the whole half,” he continued. “I thought we could have been much more confident on the ball; driving up the ball forward more often from our build up. We made it too easy; ended up with Roman too many times playing backwards when we had possibilities of taking the ball forward and there were spaces to find and we didn’t really exploit them.”
While Bürki felt City played better over the course of the second half, the team was only able to generate a single shot on goal after the break. The St. Louis captain isn’t worried about the offense, despite the lack of goals. “I think we played a really good team today,” he said. “We can always say we should have a little bit higher, try to press higher but the quality that I saw from San Diego; there would have been maybe too much of a risk. So, I think with the way the game was going; we’re happy with a point on the road.”
Looking ahead to Los Angeles
City are back on the road next week against the Los Angeles Galaxy. Los Angeles dropped their opener to San Diego last weekend and face off against Vancouver on Sunday afternoon. As the team prepares to face the defending MLS Cup winners, Bürki doesn’t think it’s time to overanalyze the opening pair of matches. “I said to the team now, we should try not to think too much,” he said. “To turn every stone like where’s the problem; there is no problem. We played really good with the ball against Colorado, which we should have won,” he continued.” “Now we played really good against the ball. So we can do both.”
St. Louis will look for the clubs’ first win of the 2025 campaign when they face the Galaxy on Sunday in Carson, California.
Taking his passion for soccer and St. Louis to the next level, Jeremy aims to provide analytical coverage of all this St. Louis City SC.
