St. Louis City SC manager, Bradley Carnell, says nothing was wrong with his team when they suffered a slight dip in form after a blistering start to life in Major League Soccer this season.
The MLS’ latest franchise have been a house on fire, winning their opening five games and scoring an average of three goals, with the talk of being potential MLS Cup champions springing up.
St. Louis were brought down to earth when they suffered back-to-back defeats against Minnesota United and Seattle Sounders. The Missouri state capital outfit however bounced back with a 5-1 victory over FC Cincinnati at CityPark over the weekend, bringing back some confidence into the team.
Carnell stated the most important factor was for his team to remain competitive and serious.
“We never really wanted to speak about anything being broken. We’re the creators of our own destiny,” the former New York Red Bull’s coach said on the MLS website.
“We knew nothing was broken, nothing structural despite the recent dip in results.
“We’ve got out of the blocks really quickly with the five wins, so we as a group set out standards really high. So how do we bounce back? Just try to keep it competitive, try and keep things jovial, fun, loose but still serious… There’s always this ebb and flow, and we’ve got to balance between the chaos and the intensity that we bring.”
Carnell – who was capped 42 times for South Africa as a player and featured for clubs such as Kiazer Chiefs, VfB Stuttgart and Borussia Monchengladbach, acknowledges that expectations of St. Louis are increasingly growing but asserts his team are not paying attention to that, rather on what the team has internally set to achieve.
“If external expectations are growing after eight matchdays, we know where those expectations were before matchday one,” Carnell continued.
“We’ll leave the outside chatter as that: outside chatter. What we discuss internally, what we want to achieve internally, stays with us and drives us every single day.
“We’re not playing that game. We’re playing the game that we want to control and dictate.”
Eight games in, here's where @stlCITYsc stand across the league.
Seems to be a pattern here… ???? pic.twitter.com/sW1ZbYc42S
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 17, 2023
St. Louis sit in first place in the MLS Western Conference after eight games ahead of reigning MLS Cup champions Los Angeles FC. They also lead in the race for the Supporters Shield ahead of LAFC, New England Revolution and FC Cincinnati.
