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Sounders FC - St Louis preview
64 Plays5 months ago
The suddenly surging Seattle Sounders will host St. Louis City on Wednesday, an opponent very much going in the opposite direction. St. Louis have gone just 1-8-3 in their past 12 games, which includes a 2-1 loss at home to the Sounders in their previous meeting. Since then, St. Louis has fired their head coach and doesn’t appear to be much closer to getting out of their injury woes that have dogged them for much of this season.
To help us get a better understanding of the opponent, we welcome back Matt Baker of the podcast Flyover Footy. Jeremiah also appeared on their podcast if you’re interested in listening to that.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to NOS Arietes. This episode of NOS Arietes is sponsored by Full Pull Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of NOS Arietes since 2011. Full Pull was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime Sounders supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:33
Speaker
The Seattle Sounders have done it!
Guest Introduction: Matt Baker
00:01:34
Speaker
Fucking awesome. This is a tiny fucking dog.
00:01:34
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of NOS Audiotis, sponsored by Full Pull Wines. I am Jeremiah O'Shan. Joining me today is Matt Baker of Flyover Footy, one of our recurring guests. This is like the third or fourth time you've been on the show now, Matt. It's great to talk to you again. It's fun to look at this every single time we match up because it always seems like we have something interesting and different to talk about
St. Louis City Struggles
00:01:56
Speaker
each time.
00:01:56
Speaker
These are two teams that seem to be all over the place in various ways or another. And right now, St. Louis is not in a great place. This is probably the low point of the relatively brief MLS existence, I would guess. Bradley Carnell recently let go. The team is in the midst of a 1-8-3 run over the last 12. I guess let's just start
00:02:23
Speaker
Does it feel like this has unraveled all of a sudden or has it been slower than it might look from the outside?
00:02:31
Speaker
I would say it's been a slow burn and it's been one of those where you have enough positives to take away from each of these individual games, dating back to around the time that we played the first go round in 2024, where at the time we had a slew of draws. We had racked up three wins at that time. You were our third loss in a row that would eventually stretch to just about till now.
00:02:54
Speaker
And you had enough positives either on the offensive side or defensively. A majority of the positives were defensive. We had, we were putting up good performances. There were very minute individual spots of games where we would just let our guard down and we had to play the full 90. You could talk through all of these. We had injury concerns, Louven, Klaus, our DPs have been hurt at various times. And then it just became all of the sudden this Vancouver white caps game here a few weeks ago, not the one this past weekend, but three, two or three weeks ago.
00:03:24
Speaker
It just escalated so quickly at that point because we had leads. We couldn't protect leads. We gave things up. We eventually gave the game away. And all of a sudden, a day and a half later, Bradley Carnell was fired.
Impact of Bradley Carnell's Firing
00:03:39
Speaker
It was a shock to the fan base. By and large, I'd say 90, 95% of the fan base.
00:03:43
Speaker
uh, was not of the carnal out mindset, just knowing how many injuries, how many unavailability had been occurring. You had so many built-in excuses for Bradley Carnell in what he had available and the roster that had been built around him that it was, it was a shock to have that happen, but it was also come to find out a shock to the players.
00:04:03
Speaker
Indiana Vasilev, one of our key players in the attack, told us right after that happened that he found out when he showed up to training. And it was the first time that he had ever lost a head coach as a player. And so the team now, at that point, when things escalated quickly, over the past few weeks, yeah, there was a bounce-back game against San Jose, but who doesn't have a bounce-back game against San Jose, right? Right. You have this... Well, us. That's one team that doesn't, but anyway. Fair. Even Kansas City beat them just recently, but...
00:04:31
Speaker
Unfortunately, it wasn't a team that we could build anything off of, because the past couple of games have just amplified and magnified the issues that we had had. I would say at this point in time, heading to Seattle, not to give up too much of what I have to say tonight, but we are at the absolute lowest point. We could be simply listening to the players and our interim head coach, John Hackworth, talk postgame after Vancouver most recently, talking about how it was an embarrassment of a game at home, losing 4-1,
00:04:59
Speaker
How the team had no cohesion. Players were pointing fingers. The locker room was fragmented. I mean, you had everything you do not want to hear being said out loud by the players after they were embarrassed on their home turf.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. So you go, you know, from the outside, the whole Bradley Cornell thing is, is fascinating because from, you know, where I'm sitting here, you have a coach who was considered one of the thing, you know, I think a lot of people, a lot of people's pick to win coach of the year last year.
Injury Woes and Performance Decline
00:05:29
Speaker
I think there was a very good case to be made that he was coach of the year. And frankly, if this was the season that you guys were having last year, which is the season that
00:05:38
Speaker
It may have even been an improvement over what a lot of people were predicting for your first season and to go from like, and then not a lot changed in the off season. And, you know, Carnell had been hired a year ahead of time. He, you know, clearly the identity of the team was sort of built around his coaching philosophy, or at least at the very least his coaching philosophy seemed to fit seamlessly into the the framework of what the organization saw.
00:06:08
Speaker
And it just felt like all the, like he wasn't even on my list as a player. I was a coach who was on the hot seat. Are you learning anything else as to was something else going on behind the scenes that sort of led to all this?
00:06:22
Speaker
Well, looking back at this entire season, it's been just an amalgamation of issues. I mentioned the injuries. I mean, you're talking about at least at this point in time, still we're without our designated player, Klaus, we're without Rasmus, all salio Pompeo, Thomas, all struck. All four of them had been key in our attack earlier this season.
00:06:41
Speaker
Eddie Louvin has had bouts where he's been out for extended periods of time. You'll keep Nielsen. One of our starting center backs has been here and there, and he's currently out recovering from an injury. So Carnell has been hamstrung in the players available, and that's taking going back to the offseason. Like you mentioned, we made one key trade sending out Jared Stroud and Lucas Bartlett for Chris Durkin and Chris Durkin has been an impact player, a difference maker for Saint Louis City in the midfield. Absolutely, but Jared Stroud with him went 10 goal contributions.
00:07:09
Speaker
You also sent out Nico Joakini, sold him to Como. There's another 10 goals lost and you never replaced any of it. Salio Pompeo is the only reason that the loss of Jared Stroud was not as big of a deal because he took that left midfield role and he ran with it legitimately ran with it. One of the hardest working players, fastest players on our team. But then he was lost to the season with an ankle injury, blew out his ankle.
00:07:32
Speaker
And so now that contribution that was supposed to replace Jared Stroud is lost, you still sitting here in mid July have not replaced or had available a replacement for Nico Joakini. So for the past, I would say three, four or five weeks, it's been, we've got to limp into this transfer window when we can bring on
00:07:51
Speaker
Potential difference makers in Cedric Toyhert from Hanover, Marcel Hartle from, uh, St. Pauli and Jake Girdwood-Reich from Sydney FC. Guys who are, we spent a good amount of cash to get these guys, but this team seems to be falling apart before they can even take the field.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, and then on top of the players you've already mentioned, Sam and Denerin apparently today wasn't in training because it looks like a deal is getting close to being made to ship him out either within the league or outside of the league. And then you also traded to Ziel Jackson, who was another player who was a big contributor last year. And neither Jackson nor Denerin had been able to come close to replicating what they did last year, in part because they were having trouble just getting on the field, right?
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, these are the two players where you have to say, okay, Bradley Carnell was hamstrung with the injuries, but these are two players that should be contributors, should be difference makers to a depleted
Team Conflicts and Missed Opportunities
00:08:45
Speaker
roster. If you're saying we're willing to send AZ Jackson away to another MLS team in the midst of this depth issue, and we're willing to sit Sam Adenerine, a healthy Sam Adenerine, we're taking him out of training because we're
00:09:00
Speaker
We're having a budding of heads between him and Carnell. He's got trade transfer rumors going around. We're voluntarily sitting him knowing we have these depth issues. That to me speaks more of something is going on behind the scenes between players and coach, players and staff, players in front office, coaching staff in front office. I don't know.
00:09:19
Speaker
But you can't go through these injuries and say that you're hamstrung because of depth when you have two healthy players that you're moving or sitting. And that's where I come to. Bradley Carnell had something else going on, whether it was a lack of trust in his ability to right the ship when the healthy players did come. Just a continuing loot, Sven and Steele in his press conference after a carnal was let go, seemed very clear that
00:09:44
Speaker
He had no intention of wasting away the season. It was, we're making the playoffs this season. That was his statement. And he had lost the confidence that Carnell could bring the team from the brink in order to still have a chance when the new guys came. And now we're seeing that that wasn't necessarily the case because even John Hackworth, who himself has been with St. Louis city since two years before they took the field in 2023.
00:10:09
Speaker
He developed our system right alongside Lutz, originally the director of coaching, then the technical director, now interim coach. He was the head coach for city two back in 2022, implementing all of these same systems and styles. And he's not able to get this out of the players. He's not able to take what they did in San Jose and replicate it against Colorado and Vancouver. And so now we're at the point where a lot of us are arguing that the brink has passed. We've fallen off of this ledge to be able to come back now with just 11 games left.
00:10:39
Speaker
Right. And so you sort of alluded to this back. You had a sort of a dead cat bounce game maybe against the San Jose earthquakes, but then back-to-back 4-1 losses, first on the road to rapids, which, you know, it happens, but 4-1 loss at home to the Whitecaps, a team who, until relatively recent, was having struggles of their own,
00:11:01
Speaker
But going into this game, you alluded to a lengthy injury list. What is the update on a guy like Zhao Klaus? Is he going to be back for this game? What are any other injury updates that we need to know? Honestly, if you look at the player availability from Vancouver this past weekend, I would expect a very similar list of players out. Klaus is going to remain out. Rasmussen is still going to remain out.
00:11:31
Speaker
He was on the game day roster last weekend, but he didn't play. And they're being very cautious with him because he has a history of knee injuries and he's a difference maker at center back. He's one of those players right alongside Tim Parker. That if they're both healthy and if they're both in form, that's the difference maker at center back. That's the difference maker at center back. That's the difference maker at center back.
00:11:45
Speaker
I would argue they have the potential to be a top center back duo in the entire league, but unfortunately we haven't been able to see that for an extended period of time. And with Nielsen still recovering, I think there's a little more of a penchant for let's not rush him, especially on turf, I would say. And, and so you're likely to see Tim Parker and maybe Kyle Hebert, who's returning from Copa America with Canada or Tim Parker and Josh Yarrow on that back line.
00:12:09
Speaker
Other than that, I don't, we haven't picked up any new injuries. Thankfully, Sam and Denerin's not going to be available because he wasn't training on Monday. So it's still a depleted roster. It wouldn't surprise me if we go in with a total of 19 guys, unless we have another short-term loan. And that's been the hallmark of St. Louis over these past few weeks is we've used a lot of our short-term loans from city too. And we've been signing a lot of players from city too.
00:12:31
Speaker
In addition to the three that I mentioned who are incoming of the transfer window, we've signed Jaden Reed, a left back, Johnny Klein, an attacking midfielder, and Michael Vensel, a center back, all from City 2, who, yeah, they've definitely reached the pinnacle of City 2 and proven their worth, but now we're counting on them to be starters. And in an ideal world, even a relatively ideal world,
00:12:54
Speaker
At least two of those, Johnny Cline and Michael Ventsil, are depth pieces now. You do not want to have to rely on them, but that's what we're taking into Seattle. And I don't see much of a difference. And even John Hackworth said in his press conference on Monday that he's not expecting to change too much from the lineup and the roster from what we had against Vancouver. So obviously this is MLS. Results can go any number of ways, even with as depleted as St. Louis, maybe the gap between them and the Sounders is still
00:13:24
Speaker
not uh not unbridgeable let's just say results can happen but and so i don't but i don't necessarily i'm sure you're you're not super high on on st louis's chances in this game we don't need to get too deep into that but i'm what i am going to ask is that you sort of take a broader view and i'm just
00:13:44
Speaker
curious, if you take these two seasons as the start, and you sort of remove the recency bias from them, and you sort of take them as a collective, and you try to project it forward, would you say that, I guess, A, do you think St. Louis is broadly where they sort of envision themselves being right now? And more importantly, how close they are to getting to where they want to be?
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah.
Future Prospects and Team Strategy
00:14:10
Speaker
And I keep going back to the injuries because if you remove the injuries, even half of the injuries we've been going through, I think this team is markedly different. The, even just a couple of depth pieces in the attack would make all of the difference in the world. It would have probably netted us an additional five points in the stretch, which would put us in the fight for a playoff spot more seriously.
00:14:30
Speaker
So if you look at overall last year, which I do agree last year, we, we overshot our marks significantly. Uh, I think if you had reversed the seasons, like you were talking about, and you had this season first, basically in line bottom feeder, you would have built in excuses of saying,
00:14:47
Speaker
If you didn't have these injuries, imagine where we could be. Just wait till next year. And then the next year comes when everybody's healthy and you win the conference type of a thing. That's that's kind of the story. And in reverse, it's just tragic more than anything else. But once you get these guys healthy, Salio Pompeo is going to come back, even if he comes back at 80 percent. That's still pretty good for his development. Thomas Ostrok is going to come back. You're going to have Klaus Nielsen is still under contract for a few more years, and he's getting to be on the other side of 30, but
00:15:17
Speaker
He's still that high level Swedish national team type player, former national team type player. And now you bring in some of these potential difference makers. Cedric Toyhert was the first one that we brought in and he was projected to be, uh, not a Klaus replacement, but I would say a Klaus compliment. We talked about him way back in February as an eco Joachini replacement.
00:15:36
Speaker
That's where I see him a second striker, potentially a winger, somebody who can compliment Klaus. That's what we've needed this entire season. And so now you have that player to build off of going forward. Marcel Hartle is our third designated player who's, I think we're going to be buying down Roman Berkey is the likely option, but now having a legitimate designated player, number 10, attacking midfielder.
00:15:55
Speaker
who has 30 plus goal contributions to his name over a single season. That's the kind of player who can compliment a healthy roster, adding the depth and giving you a lot of confidence going forward to the next season that this is going to return to form for what we had last year. And I think this is going to be a, such a big wake up call and a learning point for Lutz Fenning, dealer, sporting director.
00:16:18
Speaker
In that you do need to bolster your depth more intentionally for if these things kind of happen, you can't play on a razor's edge of your starting 11 can beat any other starting 11. But once you get back past that and into one or two depth, then you have massive problems. I think this is his wake up call to shore that up. So all these things together, I do have confidence that taken as a whole, these two seasons, we're going to bounce back to top four contention next year.
00:16:47
Speaker
You know, and a lot of people made a lot of hay out of Lutz's statement before the season started last year about how we don't have a designated player. We have a designated team and that, and that sort of has been the roster build philosophy up until now where it seems to be maybe that's starting to change. Do you think that was sort of always the plan though, is to see how things go and then get an injection of money into the second year? I guess it was to be the fourth transfer window they've had access to.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, I've always been of the opinion that this is an organization and an ownership group that wants to see their sporting department be self-sufficient. I don't see massive injections of money coming from the ownership group in and of itself. I see this as you built a foundation. You were fairly frugal in how you did it. You were smart in how you did it, obviously, with their first season.
00:17:33
Speaker
but you have, I don't think it's a correlation without causation that you sell Nikko Joakini for two plus million dollars. You sell AZ Jackson for a little bit and now you're suddenly able to splash in cash and bring in another designated player in Hartle. And so I want to see that continue. And so while we worry about the results on the field, while we worry about bringing in new players,
00:17:55
Speaker
I'm looking at who we're developing as potential sell-ons as the first indicator of future buying and how much money we're going to have at our disposal in the future. That's why, and A.Z. Jackson with all these performance bonuses, I'm going to be watching him very closely in Columbus. Seeing how much we get for Sam, that's going to be vitally important to what we can replace him with eventually.
00:18:14
Speaker
And then who knows what other options we might be having in potential sales going forward, but that's going to be a key driver in how much St. Louis
Transfer Rumors: Ed Denneran
00:18:23
Speaker
can spend. So you look at how when the athletic comes out with these articles of salary spend, St. Louis is going to show incremental growth, but I think we're an organization whose growth in spend is going to be directly attributable to how much we sell. Fair enough. And on that same token, what's your expectation on where Ed Denneran is going at this point?
00:18:44
Speaker
The last rumored place was Lask with Austria. And that rumor came out around the time Bradley Carnell was dismissed a few weeks ago. Prior to that, there had been rumors dating back to the end of last season for a seven figure interest from Europe.
00:19:00
Speaker
And I think that's where originally with all the promise the salmon dinner and had before this season's issues with the staff issues with playing time and honestly issues on the defensive side became magnified. That's where we were at hoping to get the seven figures worth from Sam.
00:19:16
Speaker
And now with the sale of Nico Joe Keeney, I think we realized we needed him a little bit more. It hasn't worked out. We have the issues with the staff and it sounds like because he was held out of training, a move is going to happen extremely quickly. Though John Hackworth did say nothing's been decided. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like a mid six figure deal and he does go to Europe.
00:19:38
Speaker
Well, that's good news for Sam, I suppose. And I suppose in a roundabout way some good news for the Sounders, because I guess I still have a sell-on fee attached to a Denerin. But anyway, Matt, thank you for joining us. It's always fascinating to see what's going on in St. Louis. You do a great job covering them over there.
Follow Matt Baker and Flyover Footy
00:19:58
Speaker
I am Jeremiah O'Shan. Oh, wait, you know, before we do that, where can people find you? Where can they listen to you? Where can they read you?
00:20:05
Speaker
X Instagram anywhere on social media at Matt Baker STL and then on my podcast at Flyer footy. We do three episodes a week. So if you're ever interested in St. Louis coverage or just what's going on in Flyer country, give us a check. Absolutely. All right, with that, I am Jeremiah O'Shan. This is Nosad Yetis and we will catch you next time.
00:21:23
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!