St. Louis CITY SC stretched its unbeaten run to 11 matches across all competitions Wednesday night, settling for a 1-1 draw with Sporting Kansas City at Sporting Park.
Eduard Löwen gave CITY the lead in first-half stoppage time, curling a right-footed free kick from just outside the box into the middle-right of the net in the 45th minute plus two. It was Löwen’s third goal of the season and the 20th of his MLS career. The visitors carried the 1-0 advantage into the break.
Sporting KC equalized in the 56th minute when Calvin Harris finished a left-footed shot from the center of the box into the top-left corner, assisted by Taylor Calheira and Dejan Joveljić.
The result left CITY with a 10-match unbeaten streak in league play, matching the longest such run in MLS this season, previously set by Nashville SC.
Head coach Yoann Damet was measured afterward. “I don’t know if it was a classic derby game, but no, it was a game with a lot of challenges for us tonight, where we came out maybe a little bit flat in terms of energy and what we wanted to do,” Damet said. “So, in the end, we’re walking away with a point. That’s probably the only thing we remember tonight.”
Damet pointed to execution issues rather than structure. “I think there was a lot of space in the middle that we didn’t do a good job at exploiting. … I think it was more of a general execution and recognition of those moments where there was space to play.” He added that recent travel from the West Coast contributed to the fatigue but refused to use it as an excuse: “These are games where we need to improve, and we can do a lot better.”
Goalkeeper Roman Bürki, who captained the side, was similarly direct. “I think ourselves, definitely not them, because we just didn’t play well enough,” Bürki said. “We had a lot of sloppy moments with the ball, easy mistakes with the ball. We defended pretty well, but because we lost the ball way too early, we couldn’t really press them, and it was just overall not a good performance from us.”
Bürki noted the scheduling grind of weekend-midweek-weekend play with two away matches. “We are not robots. We just came back from a travel from West Side, and we had maybe two days to do a little bit of something. … These are all factors that come into play, and I think today it just was a little bit too flat from us.”
CITY managed only seven shots (two on target) compared to Sporting KC’s 18 (two on target). Both keepers recorded one save. CITY committed 11 fouls and one offside; Sporting KC had 12 fouls and nine corners.
Yellow cards went to Sporting KC’s Zorhan Bassong (15’) and Jansen Miller (45’), plus CITY’s Conrad Wallem (61’).
St. Louis returns home Saturday to face Houston Dynamo at Energizer Park. Kickoff is 7:30 p.m. CT.
