Good morning! ☀

CITY closed the Pre-Messi Era with an emphatic Absolutely Not.

But before we get to that, now feels like a good time to reflect on how impactful this team has been for me personally and for our amazing city generally. And I guess “team” really isn’t the right word—I don’t just mean the organization or the specific individuals on the pitch. It’s more of a movement, or at least a community, that I am so happy to be part of.

So I’m about to go off. Feel free to skip my digression. The usual stuff is below⤵

Anyway, I’ve never really been a sports guy. Prior to 2011, aside from the World Cup and the occasional tennis grand slam, I knew almost nothing about professional sports. And to be honest, outside of soccer, that hasn’t really changed. But around that time, during my stint in Southern California, I developed an MLS addiction. I was hooked after attending my first Galaxy game. And that atmosphere was nothing compared to CITYPARK, even during the Beckham-Keane-Donovan era. Something about MLS makes me weird. You wouldn’t believe the looks I got when I screamed, “BRING IT HOME BOYS! DADDY’S HUNGRY!” as the Galaxy defeated San Jose. Nobody bats an eye here.

Since moving to this wonderful city in 2014, daddy has remained hungry. I remember exactly where I was when I learned in April of 2017 that Proposition 2 had failed and we wouldn’t be getting a team. I was gutted. The frustration had very little to do with soccer for me. It was about growth and pride. It was about creating a community for everyone, especially younger folks who never really “got” the traditional sports scene.

Here we are, six years later. Look at the development around Downtown West. Look at our attendance record—we sell out every game. People who never cared about soccer are sliding into my DMs hoping to snag a spare ticket. They want to feel the euphoria of CITYPARK.

Sure, it helps that we’re very good at soccer. But St. Louis would’ve shown up regardless. CITY fans aren’t just CITY fans—they are fans of the City. And by City, I mean the entire metro, so settle down County folk. I am one of you.

We know what we have here, and CITY has given us a way to show the world that St. Louis is a vibe.

The team has had a massive impact on my life. It’s such a privilege to have something incredible to look forward to every single week. My wife and I are watching highlights throughout the week. My little girl is chanting “FOG MACHINE! FOG MACHINE!” when the players come out. I’m going broke buying scarves and patches. I’M WRITING A NEWSLETTER EVERY WEEK. It’s truly a sickness.

I’m glad you’re sick, too. Thanks for giving me a platform to get weird with it.

Now back to sports. We only have five regular-season home games left.

Let’s discuss.

🦩 Miami

We’re still number 1️⃣ in the West. No team—not LAFC, not Seattle, not RSL—are within three points at the moment.

And it was another clean sheet for Roman Bürki! His seventh of the season. They don’t call him Brick Wall Bürki for nothin’. (Nobody calls him that. We can workshop it).

Once again, we didn’t GAF about possession. Miami held the ball 63.1% of the time. I sound like a broken record, but we thrive against teams who want the ball. That makes sense with our style of play. It doesn’t hurt that we are really good at set-pieces. Of our 43 goals this season, 18 have come from set-pieces. CITY now leads the league in set-piece goals. No other team comes close. Atlanta is next with 12.

Some other fun facts:

• Löwen got Goal of the Matchday!

• Tim Parker is now tied for second-most headed goals in MLS.

• Adeniran got his fourth goal contribution in just five games.

• Löwen is now up to 12 contributions.

• Aziel got an honorable mention for Young Players of the Matchday.

• Inter Miami deleted it’s tweets about losing to STL before announcing Messi 🤣

• Jake Nerwinski saw a UFO 🛸

And then there’s this 👇

There was some drama off the pitch as well. In a message to traveling fans before Saturday’s match, CITY explained that opposing team gear is not allowed in the Supporters’ Section. The statement specifically mentioned Messi gear. Predictably, the “just shoot it!” fans (JSIFs) lost their minds, despite this being an absolutely normal thing for teams to do. This policy has existed from day one and is the norm across the league. Somehow, though, it made national and international news.

Listen JSIFs, we know you think you should run this team because you’ve watched baseball and football for decades. I’m sure your 2005 Hummer H2 is very cool. But kindly show yourselves out.

🟡 The Crew (Sunday @ 6:30pm)

We don’t have another MLS game until August 20! But don’t despair. We have Leagues Cup starting this week. WTF is Leagues Cup, you ask? I’ll touch on that below. But for now, let’s focus on the matchup.

CITY heads to Columbus this Sunday to take on the Crew. Only one team has scored more goals in MLS this season and it’s these dudes.

We don’t have any Leagues Cup data at this point, so I’m going to pretend this is an MLS game for analysis purposes. CITY remains top of the West and third in the Shield standings. The Crew are sixth in the East and ninth in the Shield race. While that looks like a big gap, it really isn’t. First, I think it’s fair to say that the East is the harder conference this season. Second, Columbus is only five points behind CITY with 36. Do not expect this to be easy, especially since we’re traveling to Lower.com Field, a known fortress.

That said, we have the second most away wins and our form is great at the moment. We’ve won four of our last five games. Only one other team (Chicago) can say the same. Columbus is 2-2-1 (W-D-L) in the their last five.

But back to my possession obsession 👇

🚨 FUN FACT ALERT 🚨 → According to FBref.com, the Crew have the highest average possession in MLS at 56.9%. We are last with 43.5%. This makes me giddy.

🥅 Miami vs. Atlanta (Friday @ 7:00pm)

I know, I know. This isn’t a CITY game (or an MLS game for that matter), but it’s got some pretty amazing story lines:

• Martino/Messi Reunion → Tata Martino, Inter’s new coach, lead the Argentine national team from August 2014 to July 2016. Tata coached Messi during that time and both are from Rosario, Argentina.

• Martino/Atlanta Reunion → Martino also served as Atlanta’s head coach from September 2016 to December 2018.

• Martino/Martinez Reunion → One of Tata’s most successful players at Atlanta was Josef Martinez, who now plays for Miami.

• Almada/Messi Reunion → Atlanta’s Thiago Almada won the World Cup with Messi just last year.

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📰 Other CITY Stuff

WTF is Leagues Cup? 🥤

I touched on this a bit last month, but wtf is Leagues Cup? Well, we’re all about to find out together.

The World Cup-style tournament starts this Friday. See Miami vs. Atlanta, above. All teams from MLS and Liga MX compete for a trophy and three spots in the Concacaf Champions Cup. MLS will pause for the tournament.

What makes it a World Cup-style tournament? It starts with a group stage before entering knockout rounds. CITY is in Central 1 with Club América and the Columbus Crew. The top two teams from each group move on to the knockout phase.

I cannot stress enough how wild it is that we are hosting Club América. The Mexico City-based team is the most storied soccer team in North America. They are coming to St. Louis to play the newest top-flight team on the continent. They will be under immense pressure to beat us. Having consumed a concerning amount of MLS content over the last few weeks, I can confidently say this is one of the most anticipated matchups of the tournament and perhaps the entire year.

I’ll talk more specifics about the game next week, but just know that you should be excited.

To learn a bit more about the tournament, check out Justin Horneker’s article for St. Louis Magazine. And if you want to go full nerd-mode, be sure to fill out your bracket here!

All-Star Week ⭐

Bürki is truly unbelievable. As Taylor Twellman said during Tuesday night’s broadcast of the All-Star Skills Challenge, Roman should be MVP. That won’t happen because goalies never get the MVP, and that’s dumb.

If you missed the Skills Challenge, you might be wondering what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Bürki breaking another record—he became the first goalie to keep a clean sheet during the Cross & Volley Challenge. He blocked every single ball at point-blank range from one of the best players in the world.

We’d still be good without Bürki, but we wouldn’t be number one in the West. Thank the lort he’s on our team.

People are obsessed with us 🕶

This article talks about how we’re the greatest team on earth. My favorite part is when the author acknowledges that we might’ve had four All-Stars had Löwen and Klauss been healthy.

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↪ CITY-Adjacent News

World Cup 🌎

The Women’s World Cup starts this week and I’m jazzed. The USWNT are favorites again, but not as favority as they’ve been in the past. Their first game is Friday against Vietnam. Expect our team to go far.

That’s all for this week. Thanks as always for reading!

Salutations,