St. Louis City remains unbeaten after drawn out draw with DC

I have never seen so many people mad at a man named “Bono” since iPhone users received a free U2 album 10 years ago.

Of the four St. Louis City (1-0-4) matches that ended in a draw so far this MLS season, Saturday’s 2-2 tie with DC United (1-1-3) at CITYPARK was the longest, lasting 105 minutes.

“It frustrates me a little bit when fans pay hard-earned cash to get some tickets and watch a soccer game and there's no rhythm to the game and there's no real action,” St. Louis head coach Bradley Carnell said. “We pride ourselves on action.”

Fans voicing their frustration towards the officials using their whistle to stop the flow of the game periodically is commonplace but that was compounded by DC United goalie Alex Bono taking as much time possible to control the ball and kick it back to the City SC side of the pitch.

The CITYPARK crowd caught wind of Bono’s strategy to kill the clock after DC United took a 2-1 lead. They periodically booed Bono and counted the seconds it took to kick the ball and get the game going.

“I've never seen a team wasting time so much and the referee not doing anything,” St. Louis goalkeeper and captain Roman Burki said. “I thought the goalkeeper lost a leg but then all of a sudden he was still able to kick the ball almost to my box. So I told the ref ‘Is it not obvious?’ and then he asked me, ‘Yeah, what can I do?’ And I felt like ‘Yeah, you have two cards in your pocket. Use them if you have to.’ I mean, control the game. Don't let the game control you or the other team control you or control the game. It's unfortunate, but I'm pretty sure DC is not the only team doing that. I think we will try to when we are winning, not when we are in a draw.”

City SC secured their fourth draw after João Klauss scored on a penalty kick in the 70th minute for his first goal of the season. Before Saturday, Klauss hasn’t found the net since scoring his ninth and 10th goals of the 2023 season on Sept. 30 in a 4-1 win over rival Sporting Kansas City.

“Good feeling,” Klauss said. “First of the season, I have been working very hard during the past games. Of course, as a striker, everybody expects that they score goals every single game. It's not possible. But yeah, I'm happy to score my first one.”

St. Louis City took a 1-0 lead in the 19th minute when Joshua Yaro headed in a shot with an assist from Indiana Vassilev off a corner kick. Before the public announcer could even finish stating the goal and assists, DC scores the instant equalizer on an unassisted goal by Ted Ku-Dipietro.

“I'm proud that we go a goal up,” Carnell said. “Not so proud that we concede straight away. (That’s) two games where we give away these moments from the kickoff. So it's something to reflect on, something we're going to have to get better at, and something we have to look at a little bit more intensely.”

DC United took a 2-1 lead on a Christian Benteke goal in the 38th minute assisted by Jared Stroud, who played 31 games for City SC last year. It took a penalty kick on a handball penalty for St. Louis to be able to secure the point.

“I'm disappointed about the draw,” Burki said, “but at the same time, I look at the game and I think if we don't score the goals with the chances we have if we can’t score from open play, we don't deserve to win the game. And today it was difficult to play, but we didn't do enough to win this game.”

St. Louis City became the first MLS expansion team to not lose a match through the first five games in back-to-back seasons. The league record in draws in a single season is shared by the 2014 Chicago Fire and 2021 Nashville SC (18). While it’s too early to think City SC is gunning for the record, their four draws currently lead the league.

Gaining a point in each of the five matches to start the season has St. Louis sitting at eighth in the Western Conference.

“These ties might look terrible now,” said Yaro, “but I promise you at the end of the season, that could be the difference between getting a higher seed or a lower seed and we celebrate every point. Not that we’re not disappointed with some ties, but these are ties that we're earning and yeah, that could be a difference down the line. And so yeah, we get disappointed a little bit, but we also know that the point is always better than a loss. And so we'll take it.”