The league's newest team seemed destined to fail, but a ragtag group of journeymen and rejects has come together to produce something truly special
Roman Burki is willing to let us in on a little secret, one that he doesn't necessarily want his team-mates to hear. But, to understand the meaning behind it, you have to get what St. Louis City SC are all about.
Burki is, of course, the star goalkeeper of MLS' newest team. He's almost certainly the team's most recognizable face – a former starter at Borussia Dortmund who played at the top level for many years.
That was in the past, though. In the here and now, Burki is the No.1 for MLS' most absurd collection of misfits, a group of unheralded and previously-unrecognizable stars who have taken the league by storm. This is St. Louis City's first season of existence, and virtually everyone with an opinion about MLS saw disaster in their future. Rightfully so, perhaps. In a league that has seen so many expansion teams fall flat on their face, St. Louis looked destined to be the next to stumble.
They had no recognizable stars, having instead spent big money on a goalkeeper, Burki, in a move that has always been MLS' cardinal sin. Their other big moves? A pair of signings from Germany that no one in the U.S. had ever heard of. Their roster was filled with MLS journeyman, other team's rejects and young stars that never got a chance wherever they were before.
"We have players that were not used anymore by the previous clubs, players that were not really wanted," Burki tells GOAL. "We collected them, basically."
And yet here they are, top of the Western Conference. St. Louis was the best team in the conference from wire to wire, starting off with a series of incredible wins and never looking back.
Somehow, this group of misfits and cast-offs turned into something much more: a team. And, as that team prepares for their biggest challenge yet, we can go back to Burki's secret.
"I would not say this in front of the team," he begins, "but, to me, it doesn't matter how it's going to end now in the playoffs. Of course, you want to go as far as possible, but when you look back after this season, I think everyone can be really proud of what we have achieved.
"Like everyone has played a part in that, and that is very important. We always stick together and nobody was ever blaming the other one. This team just has a great mentality and so many really good guys. I really am so proud to be a part of this team."
So how did they get here? How did a group of outcasts turn into arguably the biggest surprise in MLS history? Let's start at the beginning…
- St. Louis City SC
A fresh start in a soccer city
That beginning predates MLS. It also predates just about anyone who watches the league. To understand St. Louis City SC, you must first understand St. Louis.
There are few cities in American soccer that have the history of St. Louis. It could be argued that no city has had a bigger impact on the U.S. men's national team, but, despite that, St. Louis had no real modern history on the club level.
A total of 76 players from the area have played for the USMNT, including five in the starting XI that upset England at the 1950 World Cup. St. Louis has had a player on 11 World Cup teams.
It's a city that has always had love for the game. There had been pro teams, none really catching hold in modern times. The St. Louis Stars played in the old NASL, while other clubs rose and fell in the lower leagues in the years since.
So, when St. Louis City City SC arrived ahead of the 2023 MLS season, a soccer city was finally given it's due.
"St. Louis has such a soccer history," defender Tim Parker tells GOAL. "There are so many soccer people here, but there's also just a lot of soccer fans. I think the city is still just so happy that there's a club here."
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The building process
As an MLS veteran, Parker had seen plenty of expansion teams. Some, like LAFC and Atlanta United, immediately vaulted to the top of MLS. Others, most others, were somewhere between somewhat okay and absolutely awful.
So where would St. Louis fall? At the start of it all, you can never be too sure.
"I've definitely seen a couple of successful ones, but not too many, and then I've definitely seen some bad ones," Parker said. "I think it's just about an overall buy-in. I think it's developing a clear identity early on in terms of how you want to play because I feel like a lot of teams that come into this league don't necessarily have that right away. They don't have the buy-in from the players."
That was step one: finding players willing and able to buy in. That job fell to Lutz Pfannenstiel, a German former goalkeeper that played for a whopping 25 clubs during his career. In the years since, he rose to prominence in Germany, spending years in Hoffenheim's sporting department before serving as Fortuna Dusseldorf's managing director.
In 2020, Pfannenstielwas hired as St. Louis' sporting director and given a three-year runway to figure out what this club could and should look like. In January 2022, the club hired Bradley Carnell as its first-ever head coach, handing the reigns over to a man that was formerly a key figure with the New York Red Bulls.
Parker credits those two for laying the foundation: Pfannenstiel for finding the players and Carnell for giving them all something to believe in.
"It obviously comes down to the sporting director and head coach to get the right guys in and then obviously implementing the gameplan and the tactical side," he said. "On the player side, it all required a lot of buy-in and trust."
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Similar mindsets
Preseason, as expected, was a bit awkward. Several players, like Burki, had joined the club early to get some sort of head start leading up to the expansion season. Most, though, were meeting each other for the first time and had no idea what to expect.
"I think there were a lot of [awkward moments]," Parker admitted. "It's an expansion team, in general, and then a lot of it is that we had guys that are so new to the league. Those guys have to get used to how this league operates, which can kind of be chaotic at times."
It didn't take long, though, for players to realize that they all had something in common. There were MLS veterans like Parker and Jacob Nerwinski next to European imports Burki, Joao Klauss and Eduard Lowen. Former USMNT prospects Nicholas Gioacchini and Indiana Vassilev were just meeting their new team-mates, too, fresh off of stints in Europe.
All of them quickly realized that they all had something in common: before St. Louis, they felt unwanted. Parker had felt it, having bounced around several MLS teams despite being a solid starter. Burki felt it, too, as Dortmund were all too content to move on from him after years of service. Vassilev was never quite given a chance at Aston Villa, while Lowen and Klauss were loaned out multiple times by Bundesliga clubs before St. Louis committed to them.
"A lot of us came here with that vision and some of us could say, 'I've been in the league a while and maybe not have had as much success'," Parker said. "I think this felt like it was our opportunity, a fresh start, to try something new."
He added: "There's a little bit of that underdog mentality and we've thrived on being that underdog and having that second-chance mentality. This was the kind of chance for you to revive your career, or launch your career in some instances for some of the younger guys. I think a lot of guys took that and have done really well playing with that freedom."
So here they were, a group of misfits that felt unwanted and uncared for. Many of them had struck out as individuals at some point but, as a group, they began to wonder: what can we do together?
"I think the good thing when you have guys who are realistic and don't live in a world full of dreams is that there are basically no egos," Burki said. "We all said: 'Okay, I have one more chance now here in St. Louis and I'm gonna try my best and give it everything'. Everyone had the same ambitions, like they wanted to make this chance and to be to show all the other people who didn't trust in them that they are better than what they thought."
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Hot start…
From the outside, it was impossible to see that mindset. What the outside world saw was a group largely made up of cast-offs, playing in front of the league's highest-paid goalkeeper. There was no Carlos Vela or Miguel Almiron in this team, no real stars, present or future, that you could look at and go 'Ah, there's their match-winner'.
Because of that, St. Louis was largely expected to be a big ol' mess in year one. It's a familiar story: team builds roster, team struggles, team slowly fixes roster over two or three years. At that point, they can compete. At that point, they're a team.
So, when St. Louis won their opener against Austin FC, it seemed like a feel-good moment. When then took down Charlotte FC – a second-year team very much in the aforementioned scenario – in their home opener, it felt like a storybook opening for the club.
That storybook, though, didn't have an ending, at least not for a while. Portland Timbers, San Jose Earthquakes, Real Salt Lake – all of them fell victim to the newcomers, who grabbed all 15 of their first 15 available points before the streak ended in April with a 1-0 loss to Minnesota United.
It was over those first five games that the outside world started to take notice. St. Louis' style of play had flustered teams, as the club focused on aggressive pressing to overwhelm their opponents.
"There's a lot of teams that really like the ball," Parker says, "and we have kind of had an against-the-ball mentality. I think we thrived in that as well."
The rest of the league would surely figure it out at some point, right?
As for those in the locker room, those first five weeks justified what many of them were already feeling: this team had something to it.
"I had a feeling in preseason already," Burki said. "We didn't win one game in preseason, or maybe one, I don't know, but still, you know how just sometimes you can tell how the players are reacting when you have a good games? Or how you react when you lose, how that next training is? After a loss, you can see a lot with the reaction, and it was always positive. We never stopped working. We never really complained about anything. That was, for me, a sign that this team, we can go far."