St. Louis CITY SC complete Nashville upset

David Critchley wants you to know that the playoff chase is back on.

St. Louis CITY SC finally found the complete, well… almost complete, match that they have been looking for over the past month. It has long been a talking point with the 2025 version of these boys in CITY Red, periods of genuinely good play followed by catastrophic collapse over the final thirty minutes of the match.

Yet, Saturday night reversed that trend when Sangbin clinched the win as he rose to redirect Simon Becher’s ball past Joe Willis. Up 3-0, Nashville would grab one back after Hany Mukhtar earned a penalty in the 82nd minute, after Roman Bürki left his line to save an initial Mukhtar attempt.

Talkin Soccer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Caretaker manager David Critchley was incredibly proud of the performance.

“Too often I've sat in this chair and we've started a game well, we've scored a goal, and we've had a little bit of passive behavior, and today wasn't the case.” Critchley reflected afterwards, “So that shows massive growth in the team. Just to go in and get a goal and build on that momentum, build on the aggressiveness, what favored us to get goals. So to go up three, I thought was fantastic.”

After months of underscoring their xG, it was refreshing to see the CITY SC attack benefit from a few fortuitous bounces off of Joe Willis’s near post. Jaziel Orozco scored his first in MLS from a ridiculously tight angle, only to be outdone by João Klauss’s quick, powerful shot after Edu Löwen played a perfect ball into his overlapping run.

“The goal was something like an adrenaline pump for myself in my career. Something that I'll never forget, and with the fans, with everyone, with a huge crowd, it's always so nice to do that.” Orozco gleamed afterwards.

The young defender laced up on the right side of the backline with Critchley trusting him and fellow young FB Devin Padelford in important minutes on their natural sides. The pair’s play has all but cemented Tomas Totland to the bench, with their defensive capabilities preferred over the natural wingback.

This performance was the best of the season from the backline – even if they left were shaky at times defensively. Critchley will take that trade-off as long as Timo Baumgartl and Fallou Fall continue to be this dynamic in their ability to play out of danger.

Fallou Fall’s first MLS touch was a backheel out of danger, and while he is not yet a finished product, Fall scored an A+ on the eye test.

Fall won three tackles, made nine defensive actions, and won four of his seven duels… he’ll only improve from here.

“Against the ball, he was brilliant.” Critchlet reflected. “On the ball, we've asked him to be brave and try to play out. I think he had maybe one or two stray passes, but that's okay. That's going to happen, especially as you adjust and adapt to the League and the style that I'm asking for.”

It was fun… but is it sustainable?

That’s the important question.

St. Louis will need to be perfect from here on out if they are to make a historic run into the playoffs. The teams they’re chasing aren’t firing on all cylinders either, but a run would still require everything to go in their favor… and there's just no reason to believe that it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out. St. Louis trails RSL by ten points ahead of the latter’s trip to RBNY Sunday evening.

Still, there are reasons to be optimistic about the club’s future.

The squad’s youth was impactful.

Mykhi Joyner successfully dribbled Joe Willis in the closing stages – even if it took him out of scoring range – and everyone appears to be rowing in the same direction.

“We are very hard on us.” Klauss reflected afterwards. “We try to push each other to the limit, always. We know that we have to do more. I think we are doing more. We push each other in training. We have been training very, very well. I think it's just the results were not there, but the performance was there as well. Today was a complete package.”

St. Louis travels to Chicago next weekend and needs to grab three points off a team that is also fighting for their playoff future. Seatgeek should see a nice traveling contingent of St. Louis fans, but it’s another reminder of how nice away days would be with an MLS central division. Nashville traveled well to St. Louis on Saturday, and one can’t help but daydream about a schedule full of drivable away days.

Until then, St. Louis will need a repeat of this performance as they travel to their cross-conference rivals.

David Critchley believes:

“​​I use the word ‘momentum’ a lot, and this is a momentum hopefully shift in our direction. Every game, when we look at performances, when we look at how we just control the game and take away almost the final result, we've had a lot of really good performances. Like our XG tonight was 2.6, 2.7 — we've had higher this year and lost games. It just shows that it's starting to shift in our favor, let's just say that.”

Talkin Soccer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Some odds and ends.

Edu Löwen became the first CITY SC player to make 20 assists in MLS play, a fitting place in the club’s history books for the player who drives their success.

Orozco’s goal came with a promise of Toasted Ravs after an appearance on the STL Santos podcast earlier this week.

Joyner’s sixth appearance was his last unless he is pulled up to the supplemental roster before the roster freeze. Sources seem to indicate that he will stay with CITY 2 for the rest of the season, but that could have changed in recent weeks. The club doesn’t want to rush him before he is ready, but young players have to sink or swim on their own eventually.

On that same note, it would be worth keeping an eye on Miggy Perez. The MAC Hometown Hero recipient has been very good across multiple roles in the CITY 2 midfield this season but competition in the midfield is tough between Alfredo Morales, Tomáš Ostrák, Chris Durkin, and Conrad Wallem.