This week, the Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire show heads to the Gateway City, as a struggling St. Louis CITY side – very new team; very old, proud and currently not super content soccer town! – host the kicking-it-into-fourth-gear Columbus Crew (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).
Columbus made some huge news this week in taking advantage of the cash transfer system, splashing out beaucoup bucks to bring in the DP attacker they’ve been looking for since selling Cucho Hernández over the winter. St. Louis, meanwhile, still really haven’t gotten out of first gear – they’ve been shut out three straight games, and it’s been 345 minutes since they scored a goal.
These two teams are pointed in very different directions at the moment. Let’s set the scene:
St. Louis CITY SC
- Henry Kessler has quietly been one of the best center backs in the league this year. Now, part of that is his team absorbing a lot of pressure, so he’s been busy. But more of it is that he looks back to his 2021-era best.
- After arriving in last summer’s transfer window, Marcel Hartel was one of the best playmakers in the league. This year he, uh, hasn’t been. It's not entirely his fault – he’s having to wear a lot of hats out there – but CITY need the 2024 version to show up.
- I’m trying to talk a Mykhi Joyner season debut into existence. He’s an 18-year-old, super high-upside attacking winger/wingback, and my god St. Louis have needed some attacking danger from out wide in recent weeks. Let’s hope he gets out there.
Columbus Crew
- I can’t wait to see how new DP attacker Dániel Gazdag fits into Wilfried Nancy’s system. He’s a space interpreter first and foremost, and that understanding of space – when to drop in and combine, when to playmake, when to push forward and be goal-dangerous – is what the Crew’s attack is built upon.
- With Darlington Nagbe on the mend (his recovery was described as day-to-day), Dylan Chambost has taken a more central role in Columbus’ build-up play, as well as more defensive work. And he’s been excellent.
- Last season’s Defender of the Year, Steven Moreira, is back healthy again and has almost instantly found the best version of himself. No other defender in the league has as much freedom to step off the backline and go find the game.
The fan discontent has gotten pretty loud pretty quickly under new head coach Olof Mellberg. The lineups have been ultra-defensive and have skewed older, and neither of those facts are sitting well with a fanbase that prides itself on its understanding of the game (St. Louis has a longer and deeper soccer history than any other place in America) and the local talent it produces.
- Why is this team playing such defense-minded soccer?
- Why are none of the academy kids getting minutes?
Every single game, these questions get louder. That means each subsequent game is a precious chance for Mellberg and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel to provide an adequate answer.
A spotlight home game against the team that plays the most attractive soccer in the league, though? Couldn’t find a more ideal time to make a statement (other than, you know, maybe last week against a rival that had just mutually parted ways with their coach).
The season’s nearly two months old and the Crew are still unbeaten, one of two teams that can claim that honor. They’re atop the Eastern Conference on points and just behind Inter Miami (and Western Conference leaders Vancouver) on points per game.
They are, in short, officially among the favorites to win the Supporters' Shield. And hell, with the way they’re playing and the addition of Gazdag, maybe we’re not just talking about winning the Shield; maybe we’re talking about breaking the single-season points record that Miami set just last year.
We’ve entered “every point matters – a lot!” days for Columbus. This team, even after selling MVP finalist Cucho Hernández and trading goalscorer Christian Ramírez this past winter, is always in the hunt for trophies. This year’s no different.
St. Louis CITY SC: Who can pick up the pace?
I watched back last week's 2-1 loss at Sporting Kansas City … and the rhythm from St. Louis when they have the ball is often downright ponderous. Pass. Pause. Pass. Pause. Predictable pass. Pause. Pass backward. Kick it long under pressure. It was too easy for Sporting KC to stay in a good defensive shape and get men around the ball without extending themselves.
At some point, CITY have to speed up play in possession to create some imbalance in their opponent. That’s going to be a huge challenge against a Crew team that’s truly a menace both with and without the ball.
Columbus Crew: Is this the year Jacen Russell-Rowe makes the “leap?”
Wilfried Nancy told the Sunday Night Soccer broadcast crew this week that the best finisher on the team is the 22-year-old Canadian. Oh, and that includes this year AND last year, which means Nancy rates Russell-Rowe’s ability to put the ball in the back of the net in a variety of ways OVER the likes of Cucho Hernández and Christian Ramírez. Huge praise, indeed.
The huge CHALLENGE for Russell-Rowe is to take that raw talent and translate it into every-game impact. He made 14 starts last season… 11 were in March, April and May before he lost the starting job to Ramírez. I want to see his talent shine through on Sunday (and check out that finishing ability in person) and consistently as the season progresses. This is a big year in Russell-Rowe’s career.
St. Louis CITY SC
So far, it’s been about getting numbers behind the ball and just kind of keeping them there, limiting risk as much as possible. St. Louis are currently in the bottom six of essentially all the “do they want the ball and do they know what to do with it?” stats:
- Possession: 28th
- Touches: 26th
- Passing attempts: 25th
- Passing accuracy: 25th
- Field Tilt: 30th (dead last)
- Passes in the opponent’s half: 30th (dead last)
- Passes in the attacking third: 30th (dead last)
In other words, they don’t really know how to get into the attacking phase of the game, and in the rare times they do, they don’t really seem to know how they want to try to create chances. So they settle for crosses way too often – they’re 10th in the league in open-play crosses, which isn’t grotesque. But only New England have a higher percentage of final-third entries that end up in open-play crosses, which kind of is.
To be clear: Injuries have played a big hand in this and will again this weekend as CITY are expected to be without Eduard Löwen, Chris Durkin and Jannes Horn (to name just three). And a bunch of other guys have been dinged up all year.
That includes both Hartel and Cedric Teuchert (who will hopefully be good to go from the start in this one), who are game-changing players when healthy and in their best spots. I don’t think this early-season stretch should have us thinking otherwise about them.
I am less convinced about the other attackers, and the need to have a wide threat has been glaring all season. Well, that’s why I mentioned Joyner way at the top, isn’t it?
Point is, this team has been shut out five times in seven games this season. It’s time to take a chance on some attacking play and some attackers.
On the other side of the ball…
As the season rolls on, teams get more comfortable – sharper and more incisive in possession. Which means you need more than just numbers behind the ball; you need organized pressure to it and you need to keep attackers in cover shadows off the ball. There’s not really much of either happening in the above sequence.
Columbus Crew
Nancy pretty famously doesn’t gameplan specifically for each opponent. Instead, he focuses on his team’s plan with the understanding that if they execute, they can crack open virtually any opponent, no matter what their defensive shape is (it’ll be a 5-4-1 for St. Louis) or where they draw their line of confrontation. It feels almost solipsistic, with the focus all on oneself, but there’s a real argument for that approach.
Think about it. Soccer players – athletes in general – thrive on confidence, and I can’t imagine a message more galvanizing than “we’re going to go out there, we’re going to own the ball, we’re going to control the game with it, and we’re going to win because of that.” Crew players hear that every week and are absolutely fearless because of it, and while that does make for the occasional WPIOOTBGW boo-boo, they never look shook. They just get on the ball and do it all over again, no matter if they’re facing Montréal, Miami or anyone in between.
They build from a 3-4-2-1 that becomes either a 2-3-5 or a 3-2-5 in the attacking third, and my god, this video from Ben Wright is so great that I’m begging you to take 90 seconds of your life and watch it all with the sound up. You will not regret it!
It covers basically everything that makes the Crew the Crew – the courage on the ball, the build-out structure, the freedom to swap positions within that structure, the counter-press, the refusal to settle for low-percentage crosses and the determination to craft chances via possession. It looks perfectly free-flowing and improvisational, and in some ways, it is. Counter-intuitively, though, that’s because it’s so ruthlessly and relentlessly drilled. Talk to anyone who’s played under Nancy, and they will rave about how involved and detail-oriented he is both in training and film sessions.
This type of soccer doesn’t just happen. It has to be downloaded and installed by every single player on the field.
I suspect that Gazdag will be a quick study, even after coming from a Philadelphia Union system that was much more about vertical running than about positional play. The note to make here, though, is each of the Crew’s three dedicated attackers has to be ready to toggle from playmaker to winger to goalscorer, and that’s how you end up with touch maps showing Jacen Russell-Rowe (the only actual No. 9 on the roster) getting on the ball more in the right half-space than in the box, while Diego Rossi (the star attacker who’s playing at a Best XI clip and man, it’s an oversight that I haven’t mentioned him in this column until now!) attacking space behind the opposing backline like a modern-day Pippo Inzaghi.
You can probably tell I really, really love watching this team.
Defensively, the Crew’s whole thing is “get the ball back quickly and keep it.” They want to avoid defending in their own box, where they are only adequate. They’re an excellent defensive team everywhere else on the field, and the data shows it.
I want to do some wishcasting, but Joyner hasn’t even made the first-team bench this year. So I’m just hoping for a debut, not a start. Expect the usual 3-4-2-1 that shells into a 5-4-1 when they’re playing against the ball.
It’ll be the usual 3-4-2-1, just with veterans Nagbe and Rudy Camacho still battling injuries. Also, I expect Gazdag to walk straight into the XI alongside Rossi.
EDIT: We adjusted our projected starting lineup now that the Gazdag trade is official.
