MLS debutants are supposed to struggle. Don’t tell red-hot St Louis City

N o expansion team in Major League Soccer history has been where St Louis City are right now. Never before has a newbie to the league taken 18 points from their first eight fixtures. The sight of Bradley Carnell’s team atop the Western Conference as MLS’s top scorers – they average 2.5 goals a game – is unprecedented.

Nobody saw this coming. Most expected St Louis City, who were largely assembled in the space of just 12 months and have few recognisable names, to struggle. Instead, they are early-season frontrunners.

So what have St Louis City got right that so many expansion teams have got wrong? Why did it take FC Cincinnati three straight seasons of winning the league’s ‘Wooden Spoon’ to become competitive? Why are Charlotte FC still struggling in their sophomore MLS season while St Louis are top of the class?

Much of it is due to a clear and coherent vision. They may not boast the biggest budget, with their two Designated Players arriving from unfashionable Bundesliga clubs, but Carnell and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel knew from an early stage what they wanted their team to stand for and built around that.

Pfannenstiel is an energetic character who has set the tone for an energetic franchise. The former goalkeeper is the only person to have played professionally in every Fifa confederation. His playing career spanned 21 years and 25 clubs. Pfannenstiel spent time in a Singaporean prison on a match-fixing charge. He also came close to death when his lungs collapsed after a collision during an English non-league match in 2002. He played for Vinnie Jones’s Wimbledon ‘Crazy Gang.’ The German has stories to tell and if you spend enough time in his company, he will tell them.

Carnell was hired from the New York Red