On Sunday night at CITYPARK, everything went wrong for St. Louis CITY SC. Now, the club finds itself on the ropes of a first-round exit in the MLS Cup Playoffs.
Although CITY’s form has slipped over the past month, the club can take solace knowing that it has experienced players who have been in similar positions before. As CITY prepares to head west for Sunday’s Game 2 at Sporting Kansas CITY, it will rely on captains Roman Bürki and Tim Parker to lead the way.
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“It’s an important position that Tim and I have,” Bürki said. “We’re just going to try to do our best.”
Bürki may not have playoff experience, but he has felt the scrutiny that comes with playing in a Champions League knockout stage while with Borussia Dortmund. Reflecting on the moments in Sunday’s game that put CITY in this position, Bürki was frank in his assessments. He diagnosed defensive problems—no pressure on the ball, letting SKC shoot at will, failing to block shots up front—while also identifying potential solutions for the rematch. Among the keys? Bürki wants his teammates to focus on the details, while staying loose in the face of enormous pressure.
“We’re trying our best to prepare the guys’ heads, that they’re now not overthinking things,” Bürki said.
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Parker agrees. After digesting the takeaways from Sunday’s 4-1 loss to Sporting Kansas City, the best thing for everyone to do is to flush that loss and move on. The best news, Parker says, is that the aggregate score doesn’t factor into the best-of-3 series’ ultimate result. Right now, the key is getting everyone on the same page, ready to move forward together.
“You have to try to encourage everyone through the process,” Parker said.
Parker, too, knows that these are games where he’s expected to step up and deliver. He seemed up for the challenge last weekend, heading home the first-half equalizer mere moments after SKC opened the scoring. Still, Parker knows it will take more than just a couple of individual contributors to propel CITY deeper in the playoffs.
“As a group, we have to really reset,” Parker says. “I think the good thing about this is now it’s a two-game series for us. I mean, now we have to look at it as two games that we still have to win…I think we really need to have a hard look at how we want to play together as a team going into this next game.”
For CITY, part of the challenge is making sure the younger guys are up to the task. With young players, especially, Bürki recognizes that it’s hard to simulate playoff situations in practice. The best teachers are the in-game moments, themselves. AZ Jackson, Célio Pompeu, and Kyle Hiebert were all MLS Next Pro regulars last season, while Anthony Markanich and Sam Adeniran haven’t experienced anything close to this level of scrutiny throughout their young careers.
Bürki says he hopes one of the lessons from Sunday’s letdown was the need to practice with intensity and a relentless attention to detail.
“I was young, too,” Bürki said. “Sometimes you think, ‘Yeah, today I don’t feel really good, but it doesn’t matter because the game is on Sunday and we still have time.’ And then, after a game like [Sunday], you ask yourself what’s the reason [you didn’t play well]. Sometimes that happens. That happened last week in preparation for this game. But I’m sure that the guys now will understand that how you train, that’s how you’re going to play. The game is the reward for the work you put in during the week to prepare yourself.”
That’s surely the message at CITY’s training sessions this week. The environment at Children’s Mercy Park will be explosive on Sunday afternoon, and in the tense moments that are sure to come, CITY will count on its captains to set the example and help extend the season for at least one more week.
