St. Louis CITY SC announced the sacking of head coach Olof Mellberg, who had guided the first team only in 15 games, on Tuesday night. The team is 14th in the MLS Western Conference with 11 points in a campaign during which it has registered only two wins, eight losses, and five draws. The move followed a series of poor performances and results which had not lived up to expectations.
St. Louis CITY2 interim coach will be David Critchley. The team will then proceed to seek a new coach. Though a brief tenure as a coach, Mellberg could not weather the storm of poor form, poor scoring, and inconsistency at the back. The team had mustered only 11 goals from 15 matches, the division's joint third worst so far.
The auspicious start and the turning point
Mellberg was brought in last November following a coaching job with IF Brommapojkarna, a first-division club in his home country of Sweden. The appointment was a gamble since, while he had played the game, his coaching experience was somewhat limited outside of countries other than Europe. St. Louis, in its third year in the Major League Soccer league, took a chance on a different profile from the one which had taken the team to the Western Conference peaks in 2023.
The defensive performances under Mellberg started brightly, with four straight clean sheets. Solidity, however, soon disappeared. The side then lost their shape, couldn't find replacements, and were conceding points with monotonous regularity. The ten-point deficit from the play-off positions caused alarm at the club.
The decision did not hinge only on results
The decision to part with Mellberg wasn't only a decision based on results. "The decision to part with Olof goes beyond results" sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel told a press conference. The success of the team was measured through a number of parameters including the challenge to play the type of football which had made the team successful over the past four years.
The announcement reaffirms that the club understands what it wishes to play and that this template hadn't been employed as predicted. The message is also kept internal, and the message here is that the new coach will have to be aligned with the current philosophy.
The history of the transformation
Mellberg's departure means that there have been three different head coaches in three seasons. Bradley Carnell, the first coach of the club, stepped down in the summer of 2023. John Hackworth assumed the caretaker job and guided the team until the end of the previous season. Mellberg's appointment was supposed to mark the beginning of a new era, only for a spell of instability to derail that. In 2023, the group had racked up 56 points and had a season that was declared historic for an MLS expansion team.
In 2024, up until the dismissal of Mellberg, St. Louis had racked up 11 points in 15 rounds and had underachieved both in the creation of chances and converting them. The eight points now behind the mark for the play-offs make the challenge still possible though needs an immediate response.