St. Louis City are hoping a run to the quarterfinals of the Leagues Cup could give them a boost when they resume Major League Soccer play Saturday night at the Portland Timbers.
St. Louis (4-10-11, 23 points), which finished first in the Western Conference as an expansion team last season, sits 13th among 14 teams in the standings and is 10 points below the cutoff line for the playoffs. They went 1-9-4 in MLS play entering the international tournament.
“There are little details that slip, and we let guys have too much time on the ball, don’t get matched up in the box, don’t recover in the right way,” interim coach John Hackworth said. “Those are things that teams can learn to do for sure. We can create really great chances and have lots of positives to take away from games.”
St. Louis defeated visiting Portland 3-1 in the round of 16 in the Leagues Cup, with Cedric Teuchert, Marcel Hartel and Simon Becher scoring goals and Eduard Lowen contributing two assists.
The Timbers (10-9-6, 36 points), who are in eighth place in the conference, have been idle since that Aug. 9 defeat in St. Louis.
Portland coach Phil Neville said he hopes the Leagues Cup exit serves as a “wake-up call” for his club.
“In life, sometimes you get a jolt or a little reminder of the work that needs to be done, and we got that,” Neville said. “We’ve had a lot of plaudits and people saying good things about us, but our last result was a wake-up call to the work we still need to do to be successful in this league.
“We’ve got nine games left in the season, and we need the mentality to win these games.”
The Timbers won five of their last seven MLS matches before the Leagues Cup, with Evander either scoring or contributing an assist in each of his past six appearances. That’s three shy of the franchise record set by Diego Valeri in 2017.
Portland and host St. Louis played to a scoreless draw June 8 in their last league matchup.
–Field Level Media