With Heavy Hearts, City Falls 2-0 In Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES - St. Louis City SC went back to the West Coast over the weekend to take on Los Angeles FC. The two teams have had very different starts to their respective 2026 MLS campaigns.

St. Louis City came into Saturday’s matchup searching for their first win of the season. LAFC entered the contest unbeaten, and hadn’t given up a goal yet this season. Both of those trends would continue Saturday, as two late LAFC goals gave the hosts a 2-0 victory.

Yoann Damet made no changes to the formation or starting lineup that fell 1-0 to the Seattle Sounders at Energizer Park a week prior. It was a 3-4-3 or 3-4-2-1, if you want to get particular.

Dante Polvara, Timo Baumgartl, and Jaziel Orozco manned the back three, with Rafael Santos and Conrad Wallem serving as left and right wingbacks either side of Chris Durkin and Daniel Edelman in midfield. The attacking three were Marcel Hartel, Simon Becher, and Cedric Teuchert. Per usual, Roman Bürki started in goal and wore the captain’s armband.

Absent from the matchday squad again was City’s No. 10, Eduard Löwen. The past week was a very difficult one for the St. Louis City family, as Löwen’s wife, Ilona, lost her ongoing battle with cancer.

As fans who follow the team closely will already know, Löwen has had to spend a lot of time away from City and the soccer field to be by his wife’s side over the past few seasons. There’s been an outpouring of support for Löwen, his family and friends from across the soccer landscape.

Last Wednesday, the LA Galaxy wore black armbands and held a moment of silence for Ilona Löwen before their CONCACAF Champions Cup game. Notably, former St. Louis City striker Joao Klauss started for the Galaxy that night, and spoke after the match on supporting Löwen.

“Everyone knows what my former teammate Eduard Löwen went through. I appreciate the club accepting the idea to support him and give him some love. It wasn’t easy for him over the last two years, what he went through, what [Ilona Löwen] went through. And I was there with him this whole time. It’s really tough for me to be here and not support him at this moment.

“I really appreciate the Galaxy family for allowing us to do this and show this support, from the club, from the players. It’s been tough for me these last two or three days. I can’t imagine how much pain he’s going through right now. I just wanted to support him from afar.”

Major League Soccer shared a message of support on social media, and LAFC held a moment of silence before taking on City Saturday evening. After the game, in lieu of a typical press conference, LAFC head coach Marc Dos Santos made a heartfelt message to Löwen and his family.

“Today I decided that I won’t answer questions on the game,” said Dos Santos to start off the usually scheduled presser. “It’s a personal decision, it’s related to Eduard [Löwen] and his family. I wanted to make sure in this press conference that I honor him, what he went through, and I wanted to dedicate this time to him.

“I want to honor him, honor his family, I’ve known him, and [moments like these] always puts things in perspective. I wanted to make sure I used this press conference to honor Edu and his family, regardless of the result.”

“I already had this written,” Dos Santos continued, as he held up a small notecard. “Eduard, your testimony blessed me, my kids, and I think many people in the soccer community. What happened in your family, and how you can see good in it, is so encouraging. You are a warrior. You inspired us, and I know that God will use you in incredible ways. In a world where everything goes 100 miles per hour, and we can be so selfish in our own little world, we have to be reminded how God is enough. Thank you so much for your testimony.”

Though not in the matchday squad, Eduard Löwen’s presence was felt at BMO Stadium Saturday night. St. Louis City, like the LA Galaxy before them on Wednesday, wore black armbands in tribute and honor of Löwen.

As trivial as sports may seem in these moments, there was still a soccer game to be played. To their credit, City was up for the challenge against one of the best teams in all of Major League Soccer.

Less than 15 minutes into the game, St. Louis City had the ball in the Los Angeles goal, but a potential opener was waived off by referee Rosendo Mendoza. Marcel Hartel swung a free kick into the LAFC box that beat everyone and landed in the back of LA keeper Hugo Lloris’s net.

What Rosendo Mendoza saw was LA defender Ryan Porteous fall to the ground, but on replay, it didn’t seem like there was much contact between him and any City player. Perhaps Porteous had his legs briefly tangled in the box which led to him falling over, but there wasn’t as much as a shove from any of the gold-clad City players around him.

“By my understanding, the goal could have stood,” said City head coach Yoann Damet following the game. “That’s even more frustrating, because those opportunities change the course of a game. If you go into the locker room at halftime a goal up, it’s a different game… These are the moments in the game, right now they’re not going in our favor.”

Defensively, City did a good job of frustrating a dangerous LAFC attack in the first half, which had just one shot on target in that time, a 36th minute Denis Bouanga shot that was comfortably parried by Roman Bürki.

The teams went into halftime goalless, but like other City matches this MLS season, they had more passes, more possession, and didn’t play like they went into the game as massive underdogs.

As has been a common theme for the club in 2026, the effort, the process, the ideas are all there. You can visually see a team that is better on the ball than their predecessors, but the process isn’t turning into goals. That continued to be a struggle in the second half.

Marcel Hartel had what was likely City’s best chance at a goal through the match in the 60th minute. Loan striker Sergio Cordova came into the game at halftime, and forced a loose pass from Los Angeles defender Nkosi Tafari that Hartel intercepted in the attacking third. Hartel burst forward into open space inside the LAFC 18-yard box, but blazed his right-footed shot over the top of Hugo Lloris’s goal.

Minutes later, Sergio Cordova nearly had City on the board with a bullet header at the end of a looping Marcel Hartel corner kick, but his attempt was just a few feet wide of the target. Hugo Lloris let out a sigh of relief.

As the second half wore on, the hosts’ quality, especially on the counter-attack, was becoming more apparent. As City pressed for a goal of their own, that opened up play more, which has been a notorious strong suit of LA’s play over recent years.

In the 73rd minute, Daniel Edelman, in his 100th MLS game, misplayed a pass into space that was picked off by LAFC’s Mathieu Choiniere, who looked up and saw a ton of space to dribble into. Choiniere dribbled all the way to the edge of the “D” at the top of the City 18-yard box before hitting a right-footed shot along the ground and beyond the outstretched Roman Bürki.

Eight minutes later, Choiniere doubled his tally with another shot from outside the 18-yard box. This time, capitalizing on some chaos in the box following a corner, Choiniere just decided to smash a shot back towards goal and hope for the best. His effort made it through a discombobulated City defense and into the back of the net.

For the second time in less than 10 minutes, Choiniere beat Roman Bürki with a low and hard shot to the Swiss shot-stopper’s right that Bürki could not reach. After 70-plus minutes of battling, City were suddenly two goals down and the game was all but over. Denis Bouanga almost added a third for the hosts in the 85th minute, but dragged a soft shot well wide of the St. Louis goal.

Nevertheless, City pressed onward, and had some of their brightest moments in attack in second half stoppage time after Mykhi Joyner was brought on as a very late substitution. In just seven minutes of game time, Joyner created the most dangerous cross the City team had played all night, and looked lively around the LAFC box in his very short time on the field.

Referee Rosendo Mendoza blew for full time in the 97th minute, and condemned St. Louis City to their third straight defeat, their third straight game without a goal, and with Sporting Kansas City winning over the LA Galaxy at the same time, condemned City to last place in the MLS Western Conference.

Asked by STL Mag and Talkin Soccer’s Justin Horneker on his feelings of the result, Yoann Damet admitted he felt like he was repeating himself.

“The same mixed feelings, on one side, the performance, and the other side, the result,” said Damet on the postgame press conference Zoom call. “Frustrated with the general outcome of the game, but again, when I look at the performance, I’m proud, I’m happy, I think there are a lot of good things that we will keep building on. I feel like I’ve given the same answer the past four weeks.”

When the goals and results aren’t coming, it can be hard for any team to stay motivated, even if the statistics say they played a good game against strong competition. Damet believes that’s part of his job.

“It would be easier to go back into the locker room and scream and be angry and tell the team we need to do this better and that better and we need to change this,” Damet elaborated. “But right now, there are a lot of positives with the performance. I hope the players are feeling it in the way they play, and I hope they feel that pride as well in doing the job, even if the results are not coming.

“The feeling we get from this performance, these performances, we need to keep feeling it, because the outcome will change. If we keep controlling the play the way we do, the outcome will change, 100%. But now we need to keep feeling that feeling of ‘Okay we’re playing well, we’re good on the ball, good on the press, we’re winning the ball back, we’re creating some chances in transition, on set pieces, in open play, now we just need to see the game out for a different outcome’.

“So again, it’s not an easy task, because we’re all human. We all want to win, we all want to get results. But at the same time, I think we have to be focused on the performance. There are a lot of things that show that, in terms of data from the past few games. But does it speak to the players? I don’t know that. But we’re trying to enforce what we’re doing well. The season is long, we knew that we were up against some of the top teams at the start of the season. So I’m not looking too much at the results right now… The way we look collectively is a big positive, and I want to build on that.”

Yoann Damet and St. Louis City SC will look to find their first win of the season when they return home to Energizer Park on Saturday to face the New England Revolution, with kickoff set for just after 7:30 pm.

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