Inside St. Louis City SC and their ‘MAGIC’ pressing ahead of their MLS debut this weekend

When Roman Burki came closest to leaving Borussia Dortmund last year, it wouldn’t have been crazy to expect a battle for his signature.

The goalkeeper had spent seven years (mostly as a starter) at the German powerhouse, making 210 Bundesliga appearances and starring in the Champions League.

He officially found a new home in March 2022. But when he signed with MLS expansion team St. Louis City SC, it wasn’t exactly a bidding war by his own account.

‘Believe [Lutz Pfannenstiel] he was the only sporting director who actually asked about me,’ he told DailyMail.com.

“And I could envision myself playing in MLS for a new team, and the whole project, the whole new club from scratch basically was really appealing to me to help build the club.”

He’s not the only one in St. Louis with something to prove.

Roughly half of the club’s roster have no MLS experience (either have played abroad or have yet to rise to MLS domestically), and some, like former Koln midfielder Tomas Ostrak, bounced off deals. on loan at his previous clubs.

“For me it was a good feeling because it’s like, ‘Okay, they really love me,'” he said.

The team’s head coach, Bradley Carnell, will also be eager to repay the club’s faith in him when he takes his first permanent head coaching job and leads a “largely inexperienced” staff in St. Louis.

There will be learning for Carnell and his assistants, and also for his players.

But St. Louis, making its MLS debut this Saturday against FC Austin, sees the coming challenge as a rallying cry, not a burden on its shoulders.

‘We almost want to take that label [being an expansion team] and it almost makes us stronger,’ Carnell told DailyMail.com.

‘Our unity, our bond, our union. If there are so many of these dangers just around the corner from an expansion team or warning signs or it’s really tough, forget first year, I want to use this to energize us. I want to use this to empower us. I want to use these messages to build a team and I almost want the team to play with a chip on its shoulder.

While 12 players on the current roster, including Burki, Ostrak and the team’s two designated players, Klauss and Eduard Lowen, met last year playing second-team St. Louis, there’s still a lot of work for Carnell to do. to bring this group up to date.

A disciple of the Red Bull system, having served as an assistant (and briefly interim head coach) for four years in New York, Carnell aims to bring a similarly aggressive and compelling style to the Midwest. Initially, it was not so easy to deepen his ideas at home.

“The first week was like a shock to the system,” he said.

“It was almost a brainwashing, just focus and mark the guys [on] what we are trying to do. And sometimes it’s really uncomfortable doing the things that we want to do, and when we tell defenders to step in in certain areas.”

The players, however, seem to have adapted to the high-octane style.

“I love it,” said forward and Missouri native Nicholas Gioacchini. ‘It’s hard at first. Once you get into the rhythm, it’s magical, it’s amazing.

It’s football, it’s being aggressive, it’s being able to put teams in difficult situations and capitalize on it. And I would say we have the equipment for it. We have the mentality for it, we have the physique for it. And we are ready to continue their tactics.

The new head coach’s vision for his team: He wants the team to thrive on the ball, too. has been shaped with the fledgling club’s supporters in mind.

“I think it goes beyond the team,” Carnell said. ‘I think it’s about what kind of brand and style of football appeals to a certain audience. Just thinking about the city of St. Louis and the community, just to play an energetic brand of football.

‘We know it’s going to be, yeah, we’re the new kids on the block, so what does that mean? And how can we mitigate that? And we feel that the best way to mitigate that is to be a collective, to work as a team.’

While St. Louis has yet to kick a ball in a competitive game, the area comes with soccer fans and a history that predates the club.

Considered the ‘soccer capital’ of the US, the city has produced 76 members of the US men’s and women’s national teams (including Tim Ream and Josh Sargent from the last men’s World Cup), and the sport has been played there since at least the late 1800s.

Carnell, who has referred to the MLB Cardinals and NHL Blues as the team’s ‘brothers’, is fully aware of St. Louis’ storied sports heritage.

“There’s a lot of history and we keep it with us every day,” he said. ‘This guides us, shapes us, molds us.’

More recently, St. Louis’s love of soccer has translated into an organized fan group.

Formed in 2010, the ‘St. The Louligans have been supporting local teams like AC St. Louis in the NASL and Saint Louis FC in the USL Championship (both now defunct) for over a decade.

And with a team to root for now in the country’s top flight, the local response has been massive.

Tickets for the club’s first home game (against Charlotte FC on March 5) went on sale earlier this month and sold out in five minutes. Last November, fans packed the club’s new 22,500-capacity CITYPARK in freezing temperatures as the second The team played Bayer Leverkusen in the first stadium event.

“Without fans, there is no football,” Gioacchini said. ‘So the more present they are, the better. The fans really put pressure on the players, sometimes it’s underestimated, but it’s a big part of the game. And I’m very excited, the team is very excited, everyone is excited to see how explosive our fans will be.”

‘Street. Louis supports all sports,’ team president and CEO Carolyn Kindle added Wednesday at an MLS press event in Manhattan.

“So whether it’s NCAA, professional sports, I think St. Louis was excited to have that professional football team because it’s been talked about for so many years.”

About three months after that display against Leverkusen, St. Louis is gearing up for the actual games, and the expansion clubs have seen a wide range of results in recent debut seasons.

LAFC quickly established themselves as one of the league’s best teams in 2018 and won the MLS Cup last year, while FC Cincinnati didn’t make the playoffs until their fourth season (last year) after debuting in 2019.

Others like Inter Miami and Nashville SC fell in between those extremes.

With seasoned MLS defenders like Tim Parker and Jake Nerwinski on the team, plus Burki in goal and former Arminia Bielefeld center back Joakim Nilsson, St. Louis can reasonably expect to be at least stingy on defense in its first season.

Getting early results could prove to be a difficult task. However, Ostrak and his teammates view that pressure as a privilege.

“The energy is pretty good,” he said. ‘Everyone wants to be part of history.’