‘No one wanted us!’ - How first-year St. Louis City SC took a group of misfits and turned them into MLS Cup contenders

That beginning predates MLS. It also predates just about anyone who watches the league. To understand St. Louis City SC, you must first understand St. Louis.

There are few cities in American soccer that have the history of St. Louis. It could be argued that no city has had a bigger impact on the U.S. men's national team, but, despite that, St. Louis had no real modern history on the club level.

A total of 76 players from the area have played for the USMNT, including five in the starting XI that upset England at the 1950 World Cup. St. Louis has had a player on 11 World Cup teams.

It's a city that has always had love for the game. There had been pro teams, none really catching hold in modern times. The St. Louis Stars played in the old NASL, while other clubs rose and fell in the lower leagues in the years since.

So, when St. Louis City City SC arrived ahead of the 2023 MLS season, a soccer city was finally given it's due.

"St. Louis has such a soccer history," defender Tim Parker tells GOAL. "There are so many soccer people here, but there's also just a lot of soccer fans. I think the city is still just so happy that there's a club here."

As an MLS veteran, Parker had seen plenty of expansion teams. Some, like LAFC and Atlanta United, immediately vaulted to the top of MLS. Others, most others, were somewhere between somewhat okay and absolutely awful.

So where would St. Louis fall? At the start of it all, you can never be too sure.

"I've definitely seen a couple of successful ones, but not too many, and then I've definitely seen some bad ones," Parker said. "I think it's just about an overall buy-in. I think it's developing a clear identity early on in terms of how you want to play because I feel like a lot of teams that come into this league don't necessarily have that right away. They don't have the buy-in from the players."

That was step one: finding players willing and able to buy in. That job fell to Lutz Pfannenstiel, a German former goalkeeper that played for a whopping 25 clubs during his career. In the years since, he rose to prominence in Germany, spending years in Hoffenheim's sporting department before serving as Fortuna Dusseldorf's managing director.

In 2020, Pfannenstielwas hired as St. Louis' sporting director and given a three-year runway to figure out what this club could and should look like. In January 2022, the club hired Bradley Carnell as its first-ever head coach, handing the reigns over to a man that was formerly a key figure with the New York Red Bulls.

Parker credits those two for laying the foundation: Pfannenstiel for finding the players and Carnell for giving them all something to believe in.

"It obviously comes down to the sporting director and head coach to get the right guys in and then obviously implementing the gameplan and the tactical side," he said. "On the player side, it all required a lot of buy-in and trust."

Preseason, as expected, was a bit awkward. Several players, like Burki, had joined the club early to get some sort of head start leading up to the expansion season. Most, though, were meeting each other for the first time and had no idea what to expect.

"I think there were a lot of [awkward moments]," Parker admitted. "It's an expansion team, in general, and then a lot of it is that we had guys that are so new to the league. Those guys have to get used to how this league operates, which can kind of be chaotic at times."

It didn't take long, though, for players to realize that they all had something in common. There were MLS veterans like Parker and Jacob Nerwinski next to European imports Burki, Joao Klauss and Eduard Lowen. Former USMNT prospects Nicholas Gioacchini and Indiana Vassilev were just meeting their new team-mates, too, fresh off of stints in Europe.

All of them quickly realized that they all had something in common: before St. Louis, they felt unwanted. Parker had felt it, having bounced around several MLS teams despite being a solid starter. Burki felt it, too, as Dortmund were all too content to move on from him after years of service. Vassilev was never quite given a chance at Aston Villa, while Lowen and Klauss were loaned out multiple times by Bundesliga clubs before St. Louis committed to them.

"A lot of us came here with that vision and some of us could say, 'I've been in the league a while and maybe not have had as much success'," Parker said. "I think this felt like it was our opportunity, a fresh start, to try something new."

He added: "There's a little bit of that underdog mentality and we've thrived on being that underdog and having that second-chance mentality. This was the kind of chance for you to revive your career, or launch your career in some instances for some of the younger guys. I think a lot of guys took that and have done really well playing with that freedom."

So here they were, a group of misfits that felt unwanted and uncared for. Many of them had struck out as individuals at some point but, as a group, they began to wonder: what can we do together?

"I think the good thing when you have guys who are realistic and don't live in a world full of dreams is that there are basically no egos," Burki said. "We all said: 'Okay, I have one more chance now here in St. Louis and I'm gonna try my best and give it everything'. Everyone had the same ambitions, like they wanted to make this chance and to be to show all the other people who didn't trust in them that they are better than what they thought."

From the outside, it was impossible to see that mindset. What the outside world saw was a group largely made up of cast-offs, playing in front of the league's highest-paid goalkeeper. There was no Carlos Vela or Miguel Almiron in this team, no real stars, present or future, that you could look at and go 'Ah, there's their match-winner'.

Because of that, St. Louis was largely expected to be a big ol' mess in year one. It's a familiar story: team builds roster, team struggles, team slowly fixes roster over two or three years. At that point, they can compete. At that point, they're a team.

So, when St. Louis won their opener against Austin FC, it seemed like a feel-good moment. When then took down Charlotte FC - a second-year team very much in the aforementioned scenario - in their home opener, it felt like a storybook opening for the club.

That storybook, though, didn't have an ending, at least not for a while. Portland Timbers, San Jose Earthquakes, Real Salt Lake - all of them fell victim to the newcomers, who grabbed all 15 of their first 15 available points before the streak ended in April with a 1-0 loss to Minnesota United.

It was over those first five games that the outside world started to take notice. St. Louis' style of play had flustered teams, as the club focused on aggressive pressing to overwhelm their opponents.

"There's a lot of teams that really like the ball," Parker says, "and we have kind of had an against-the-ball mentality. I think we thrived in that as well."

The rest of the league would surely figure it out at some point, right?

As for those in the locker room, those first five weeks justified what many of them were already feeling: this team had something to it.

"I had a feeling in preseason already," Burki said. "We didn't win one game in preseason, or maybe one, I don't know, but still, you know how just sometimes you can tell how the players are reacting when you have a good games? Or how you react when you lose, how that next training is? After a loss, you can see a lot with the reaction, and it was always positive. We never stopped working. We never really complained about anything. That was, for me, a sign that this team, we can go far."

It's one thing to have a hot start. Anyone who follows MLS would describe the regular season in one way: a grind. It's a lot of travel and dips and ebbs and flows. The teams that are there the end aren't necessarily the ones that thrive in it, but rather those that survive it.

Parker watched his side navigate those ups and downs, and those are what made him believe.

"Obviously, we got off to a hot start, but that wasn't necessarily when I knew right away that we were gonna be pretty good," he said. "I think it was when we started to take little dips of form, and then were able to have good responses. I think that was kind of the key thing for me."

By the end of it all, despite some dips towards the end of the season in particular, St. Louis had history in their back pocket. They became the quickest expansion team to ever reach 25 points, doing so in just 13 games. They became the first expansion team to win 17 games. And, most importantly, they became the first expansion team to finish atop their conference in the regular season.

You can't get this far without a hero, and even a group of misfits needs a leader.

That, as it turns out, was Burki, who turned in one of the best goalkeeping seasons MLS has ever seen. He had the best post-shot xG minus goals allowed ratio (the most reliable metric for measuring shot-stopping ability) in the league, while making the second most saves with 123. He had three matches with at least eight saves, including one game that saw him stop 12 shots against the Colorado Rapids. There were times where St. Louis needed a Superman, and Burki had no problem putting on the cape.

Burki was St. Louis' hero, but the Swiss star is quick to admit that the club has helped him plenty as well. He tells a story about his first week with the team when he was bedridden, sick in a foreign country surrounded by new faces.

"I had people from the club going to the grocery store for me," he says. "They were buying stuff to bring into the hotel room and just taking care of everything basically. They made my life pretty easy. That's just the whole club and the whole team."

On the field, St. Louis was also a welcome change of pace for Burki. He admitted he had to make some changes, most notably losing the habit of getting so frustrated after every loss. This league is different, he learned. Losing is going to happen. It isn't the end of the world.

Burki also found a place where he could play more freely, having spent several years feeling like something of a scapegoat at times with Dortmund.

"I think the biggest thing in Dortmund, or if you play with huge clubs, is that they have the ball," he says. "Most likely the other team is sitting back and waiting for opportunities and transition and you don't have a lot of saves. Sometimes you look bad as a goalkeeper because they have two chances and they score one goal and you have one save. It's just way more, I would say, difficult, more difficult to play for a big team because, the goalkeeper position, it's just like your head. You know you have to be ready in your head and I'm not getting tired physically in a game; I'm really tired in my head because I have to be focused."

MLS had seen its fair share of high-paid goalkeeping messes. The name Rais M'Bolhi still sends shivers down the spine of every Philadelphia Union fan. Burki, though , was worth every penny in a position that he thinks is often overlooked even at the highest of levels.

"Not only here in America," he begins, "but the goalkeeping position, I would say, is worth more than people think... it doesn't matter if you score goals, every player can score goals, but how many players can make saves? It's just way more special than people think just because it's not like in focus because you don't score goals. It's not that attractive, maybe, for people but I mean without a goalkeeper, you can do nothing.

"If you have an actual good goalkeeper who matches a play style for the team, it can be worth a lot and I just tried to win."

He continued: "I thought that it was just the perfect fit and for me personally and I'm proud that I can help the team. That was basically my main goal: help the team in difficult situations when the game is on the line. Don't break under pressure, do your job, don't do too much and stay cool. I want to give the players a feeling that they can trust. If a pass gets through, I want them to be like 'Okay, we still have a goalkeeper behind us who can save some balls.'"

Burki will almost certainly win MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, but he's far from the only player that stepped up this season.

Lowen may very well wn MLS Newcomer of the Year, having contributed to 20 goals in league play. The club went 13-0-0 in games where Lowen scored or assisted, showing his importance to the team.

Klauss had 10 goals. Gioacchini had 10 more. Sam Adeniran - a player who, prior to this season, hadn't really broken through above the USL level - scored eight as St. Louis spread the wealth in the attack with 16 players scoring goals, 10 of whom scored multiple.

Parker, a centerback, is one of those players, having scored a career-high four. He's also nominated for MLS Defender of the Year, having helped marshal eight clean sheets.

"A big part of it is definitely building the team through the spine," Parker says, "but it's also that the way we play is different with all of our other guys. We don't really operate very well if we're not all doing it together. I think that's something we've stressed all year long. Our most successful moments come with that."

And now they're here, waiting for the postseason to start. It begins on Sunday against Sporting KC, their first taste of playoff soccer after successfully navigating their first 34 games.

They all know, though, that those 34 will be forgotten if they don't win two of their next three, especially considering the fact that those matches come against a local rival, Sporting KC. The club has tasted victory twice at home against SKC, winning by a combined 8-1 scoreline at CITYPARK, but fell 2-1 just last month in Kansas City.

"Drawing them in the playoffs is just a huge, huge building block to that kind of rivalry," Parker said. "I think it was kind of embedded in when we got the club. I think Kansas City turned out to be a rivalry and so it's something that we definitely have taken pride in this year when we played them at home and even on the road when we didn't get the result, but we thought that we had a much better second half than what the scoreline showed.

"I think when we look at Kansas City, obviously, that's something where we want to take pride in those games, so it's an important one for us."

Parker has been down this road before with both the Vancouver Whitecaps and New York Red Bulls. Burki hasn't. For him, and many others, this is something new.

The way Burki sees it, this is simply Matchday 35, a chance to build on all of the good things the club did this season. They can win this series, he says. He knows they can. They've been doing things like this all year long.

"I'm 100 percent sure that I said before the year, before the preseason or during the preseason, that my goal is to go into the playoffs with this team," he said. "So it's for me it's not a surprise that we made the playoffs. It's more of a surprise that the guys are even better guys than I thought they would be, because we are so successful now and still everyone wants to play, everyone wants to work hard on themselves. That's something special."

That's one way to describe this first season: special. How special can it be? We'll find out over the next few weeks.