Good morning! ☀

Writing is much more fun when we win.

Let’s discuss.

💾 San Jose

I’m a pessimist. I thought we were going to lose this game HARD. San Jose came into Saturday undefeated at home. We stood no chance.

I love being wrong.

The announcement of our starting 11 didn’t quell my fears. We knew we wouldn’t have our DPs, but I didn’t expect to see Vassilev, Gioacchini, Nerwinski, and Bartlett on the bench.

Alas, I know nothing. The team made a smart decision by recalling Big Sam Adeniran from San Antonio FC, where he had been on loan since April. And guess what—

SAM👏 SHOWED 👏 UP 👏

Sam caught a plane from San Antonio to San Jose the day before the match. His two goals—his first two ever in MLS—helped us break our 4-game winless streak and put us back on top of the Western Conference. He became CITY’s 12th scorer of the season.

And the 24-year-old wasn’t the only new face on the starting lineup. Aziel Jackson and Josh Yaro also traveled to PayPal Park and got their first starts with the team, giving us our 18th different lineup in 19 games.

Square > PayPal

The stats suggest that the Quakes outplayed our heavily-rotated squad in several aspects. We only had the ball 37% of the time. They out-shot us, out-passed us, and out-cornered us. But only one stat matters, and that’s the scoreline. (Oh, and Bürki’s 8 saves).

Sam seems like such a good dude. I hope to we see more of him.

🗻 Colorado

Next up, Colorado. The Rapids come to CITYPARK on Saturday for the second meet-up of the season. We eked out a draw against them back in April. It wasn’t pretty and we were lucky to get out with the point.

But both teams are in a very different place now. Our availability has changed a lot since April and Colorado hasn’t won an MLS game since May 6. The Mountain Boyz are dead last in the league at the moment with just two wins. That said, if I know anything about MLS, it’s that weird s#*t happens. Even at home, this isn’t a slam-dunk for CITY. Oddly enough, Colorado’s only two wins were away games. But yes, I'd much rather be playing Colorado than Cincinnati right now thank yeewwwww.

Ostrak will be out for yellow-card accumulation and Miggy is questionable due to an ankle injury. It’s getting comical at this point.

CITY is 1-1-3 (W-D-L) in its last 5 matches. Colorado is 0-2-3.

Odds: CITY -110 (58%) ⬆ / ⬇Colorado +300 (20%)

📰 Other CITY Stuff

MLS All-Star Team ⭐

Bürki and Parker are headed to the MLS All-Star Game in DC! Parker was hand-picked by Coach Wayne Rooney. Bürki was voted in by a mix of fans, members of the media, and other players. Only one club—FC Cincinnati—is sending more players to Audi Field on July 19th. Not bad for an expansion side!

You have to think Löwen would’ve made the cut absent injury.

Power rankings 7️⃣

We took a bit of a hit in the power rankings this week. MLSsoccer.com and ESPN have us at 7. Broadway Sports Media has us at 6.

Carnell has good taste 🍴

Emily Standlee at Feast sat down with Coach Carnell to discuss the STL culinary scene. It’s a fun read. So read it.

Academy 🎓

Marcus Chai, founder of U.S. Soccer Collective, released a ranking of MLS academies based on talent identification, player recruiting, player retainment, and player development/pathway opportunity.

CITY comes in at 13:

↪ CITY-Adjacent News

The standings are TIGHT 🥇

I tweeted about this on Saturday but Sam Jones summed it up nicely in Monday’s Daily Kickoff:

Jones acknowledges what we all know: FC Cincinnati, Nashville, and Philly are objectively good. But things are a bit less certain in the West. As for CITY, Jones writes that we showed resilience without our DPs but “it’s still not entirely clear if [CITY is] good or just a middle-of-the-pack team that’s been more opportunistic so far.”

The folks at MLS have been saying this since day one. We might not win MLS Cup (or we might), but it’s time to stop hedging and acknowledge that we are good. We are halfway through the season and we’re sitting at the top of the standings. Every 👏 single 👏 analyst 👏 at 👏 MLS 👏 soccer 👏 dot 👏 com 👏 said 👏 we 👏 would 👏 finish 👏 dead 👏 last 👏. (← I find that the last clap is key. Do it out loud. You’ll get it. The small things matter. This is a quality publication).  We’re not Cincinnati but we’re not middle-of-the-pack. Get a snack a move on, Jones.

Club World Cup coming stateside 🌎🏆

This is rad. The U.S. will host the newly-expanded Club World Cup in 2025. We already know that Real Madrid, Manchester City, and Chelsea will make the trip. The Seattle Sounders will rep the U.S.

CITYPARK is the newest soccer-specific stadium in the country. If we don’t land a match, daddy is gonna be mad.*

Learn about CITY’s training philosophy 🏋️‍♀️

The fine people at Ball Watching released a great interview with Jarryd Phillips this week. The South African is CITY’s Director of Sports Performance. I highly recommend you check out the episode. It’s remarkable how much data goes into getting the best performance from each player. Sports science aside, it was really cool to hear about the team’s schedule. For example, the boys almost always get Mondays off. If the gents are at home on Saturday, then Sunday will be a recovery day for those who saw minutes but a training day for everyone else. If the boys are traveling, they usually get Sunday off because they land in STL anywhere between 1:00 and 6:00am Sunday morning. These are fun details I wouldn’t know otherwise. Do a listen:

More 🦅

• Toronto has fired their head coach and sporting director Bob Bradley.

• The organizers of the All-Star Game borrowed from CITY’s playbook by bringing in DJ Pee Wee (aka Anderson .Paak) to serenade the fans.

• Speaking of All-Star Week, here’s the schedule of events. I’m particularly excited to see if Messi will show up and how many times he will ask Bürki for an autograph.

• These shirts 🤔

Warmest regards,

An individual

*quality publication