With the top seed in the Western Conference wrapped up, St. Louis City will host the Seattle Sounders in Saturday’s season finale and try to carry momentum into their inaugural postseason appearance.
St. Louis (17-11-5, 56 points) enters the final weekend of its expansion season with a five-point cushion atop the West and will face the winner of the play-in game in a first-round playoff series.
Through it all, St. Louis has been exceptional at home, winning 11 of its first 16 in front of the home fans while scoring a league-best 41 home goals.
They’re also one of a handful of teams with two double-digit goal scorers; Nicholas Gioacchini and Joao Klauss each have 10 after Klauss scored twice in St. Louis’ last home match, a 4-1 win over Sporting Kansas City.
And after 17 days off following a bye two weekends ago and the international break last weekend, it would benefit coach Bradley Carnell’s side to get back to what they’ve done all season.
“Matchday (38) should pose no differences to our mentality on the day, and sticking to what we believe in and our principles,” Carnell said. “We just want to be the best version of ourselves come Matchday (38), because that sets us up going into the playoffs.”
The Sounders (13-9-11, 50 points) are still playing for seeding in their final game. They’ll enter the match third in the West, with the top four finishers guaranteed home-field advantage in the best-of-three first-round series.
Veteran goalkeeper Stefan Frei is also playing for club history, with the chance to post a new club record for clean sheets if he can keep his 14th on the road.
That would break the mark Frei set with Seattle back in 2017, a season that ultimately ended with a loss to Toronto FC in the MLS Cup final.
This season, 10 of those clean sheets have come in either a 0-0 draw or a 1-0 Sounders victory.
“Frei’s has been awesome (this season),” defender Jackson Ragen said. “He’s bailed us out of a lot of games when maybe we didn’t deserve to get a shutout, and he’s made some big stops to help us hold on to wins.”
–Field Level Media
