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������Ƶ City SC midfielder Celio Pompeu’s two favorite things as a soccer player are taking on an opponent one on one and scoring a goal, not necessarily in that order. But it’s even better when you can combine them into one play. That’s why Pompeu’s goal March 2 against New York City FC is his favorite.

He pounced on a loose ball in the NYCFC end and, unfazed by four defenders plus a goalkeeper in front of him, charged at them, dribbling through two before shooting from the top of the box to score and unleash that unmistakable Celio Pompeu smile.

Plays like that have endeared Pompeu to City SC’s fan base, not to mention its coaching staff. On Friday, the team announced Pompeu’s reward: A two-year contract extension that runs through the 2026 season, with a club option for 2027. It’s a big step for a player who started with the club with City2, signing as a free agent after playing two seasons at Virginia Commonwealth. He did well enough with City2 to earn a first-team contract for the team’s inaugural season and then did well enough there to have his option picked up for the second season. Now the team is committing to him for at least two more seasons.

“Looking at Celio,” said City SC sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel, speaking by phone from Germany, “the fun factor is one thing, but the way he plays, direct, not scared of anybody. He’s in people’s face. He has a good mentality on and off the field.”

Pompeu, 24, is tied for the team lead in goals with three and leads the team in passes into the penalty area with 18 (tied for 13th in the league) and in key passes (passes that lead directly to a shot) with 17, per , which is tied for 15th in Major League Soccer. He’s started seven of nine MLS games this season after starting 10 last season.

“Hard work, good work gets rewarded,” said City SC coach Bradley Carnell after practice Friday. “Three goals and three contributions in the short space of nine games. It shows progression, it shows development. It shows what we stand for as well. We see success at this club in many different aspects, not just on the field, but also what we’re doing with our talent that we have at our disposal and making sure the pathway is trending in the right direction. So credit to him. He’s worked his socks off and he’s been rewarded with more minutes this year. I think we’re all better with him showing what he can do best and yes, he’s getting rewarded as well. So it’s good.”

“Now, keep going,” Pompeu said. “Be solid, keep scoring goals, keep getting assists, and don’t stop. I don’t want to go down; I always like to go up, even if it’s a little step. I always want to take little steps higher and higher.”

Pompeu wouldn’t have gotten where he is had he not taken big steps in another part of his game: defense. As a native of Brazil, he has all the offensive flash and pizzazz associated with players from that country, but Carnell’s system is one that emphasizes defensive pressure. Pompeu had to add that to his game in order to make it.

“Soccer has changed a lot over the years,” he said. “Now 11 players attack, 11 players defend. So if you want to succeed in life, you’ve just got to adapt for some things, even if it’s a thing you don’t like too much. So I think the way we play, we play very collectively attacking and defense-wise. So it was very important for me that coaching staff here challenge me to be a better defensive player.”

“That’s a critical moment of ours,” Carnell said. “We’re on him, for sure. It’s a work in progress and he’s shown good growth with that and acknowledgement of what needs to be done. ... He’s shown some good tendencies to get back in the game, to be gritty to defend and recovery runs and doing everything at all costs for the team. So again, really happy with his pathway.”

Pompeu is one of four players from that inaugural City2 team in 2022 still with the club. Josh Yaro, Kyle Hiebert and Akil Watts are the others.

“The story speaks for itself, coming through the university, joining City2 and becoming a pro at this level, it’s what you’re looking for,” Pfannenstiel said. “That’s another one of our underdog stories, the player who came, took his chance, who works for it and made the right development within our philosophy. It’s a great story for us, a great story for the kid himself.

“Then on top of that, in the changing room, he’s an absolute rock star because he’s a good person, he’s very good with the other boys, but he also brings that happy Brazilian mood and light-heartedness into the changing room, which is very important for our team. So he really deserves that new deal. He works hard for it in training and I’m very happy that we have him for another few years.”

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A fresh canvas for City SC with a changing of the grass at CityPark

• Tom Timmermann

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Notebook: City SC's late goals have changed results and earned it points this season

• Tom Timmermann

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Tomas Totland comes to the rescue with a stoppage time goal as City SC ties Sporting KC 3-3

• Tom Timmermann

On Tuesday morning, Josh McPherson, director of stadium grounds for ������Ƶ City SC, stood along the sidelines at CityPark and watched as a specially designed tractor with some of the biggest tires you’ve ever seen drove along the playing surface and shaved the top inch and a half off the field, shooting the cuttings into another truck driving alongside it, eventually to be composted.

He admitted to a little nostalgia.

“This is the original field,” he said. “But also it’s exciting.”

Sure enough, two days later, on Thursday morning, McPherson stood like a proud parent as he watched a team from Bush Sports Turf install a new field.

“This is fun,” he said.

When City SC plays its next home game May 11 against Chicago, the team, like McPherson, will have a new plaything. Taking advantage of a gap in both City SC and City2’s playing schedule, the team is replacing its playing surface, a little less than two years after it was installed.

The new field should be, if everyone has done their job, exactly the same as the old one. It’s the same type of grass — Northbridge Bermudagrass — being installed, though it will look a little different at the start, which is part of the tale of why all this is happening.

Work started on laying the new sod around 6 a.m. Thursday and should be done by Friday afternoon. In all, 83,000 square feet of sod will be used to cover the sand base of the field. (McPherson ordered 88,000 square feet, just to be safe.) The sod was harvested from its farm in North Carolina last week, rolled in strips 50 feet long, 42 inches wide and 1½ to 1¾ inches deep. Each roll weighs about a ton, depending on how much moisture it’s holding, and 28 refrigerated trucks were used to transport the sod to ������Ƶ. The company has two devices of its own creation: a sod layer that allows workers to line up where the sod should be, and then a sod pusher, which uses a spiked hydraulic arm to shove the newly laid sod snug against what already has been put down.

While the field looked great this season and no one had any complaints about how it was playing, McPherson’s experience said that might not last.

“We don’t want the pitch to become a problem,” he said. “When they start having issues, it’s very fast. And so based on experience, based on other people having these, based on things we’ve tested for, we knew that’s going to probably happen this summer. ... None of us want to have a problem. We want to be at the top level all the time.”

So when McPherson saw a suitable gap in the schedule, he got the OK from his bosses and put the switch into motion.

One of the reasons the grass looked so good now is because that wasn’t the Bermudagrass you were seeing. While the base of the surface is Bermudagrass, which thrives in the heat of the summer, the field is overseeded with ryegrass at either end of the season. But the ryegrass will die out as the weather gets warmer, then the field won’t look as good.

“You have to start making the change when you look great,” McPherson said. “That’s the hardest part is that you have to convince people you need to be proactive to make the change, because you know if you wait, that’s when you get in trouble. And that’s the hardest part about doing it is that we love the way the field looks right now. And we know that, but it’s not going to be great. So we need to make that change. That’s the hardest part about it. ‘Yep, it looks good. Now let’s do something to change it so we can make it through the whole season.’

“Generally in ������Ƶ in April, everyone’s lawns looks great. And then we know in the next six weeks we’re not going to be sitting outside as much in the afternoon. It turns very quickly here, and so when the sod comes in, it’ll be 100% Bermudagrass. We don’t have to worry about the ryegrass, and then in those areas where we don’t have a Bermudagrass base, we’re going to keep our footing.”

The changing of the grass will be a regular but not annual event at CityPark. The team got almost two years out of this field and would have gotten a bit more, but the team was at the mercy of the MLS schedule for when it could make the change. McPherson hopes the team can get three years or more out of this new field because now that they have been in the stadium for more than a year, they’ve learned things about the shade patterns and the drainage and what they need to do to keep the field looking and playing its best.

When the MLS and MLS Next Pro schedules came out, McPherson immediately looked for a long gap where he could do field maintenance, and this was it, between a City2 game April 19 and a City SC game May 11.

“I may never see a break like this in my career here,” he said.

One difference you may notice the next time you see a game from CityPark is the color. Bermudagrass is a lighter shade of green than ryegrass, and because it has differently shaped blade than ryegrass, the stripes cut into the field won’t be as pronounced.

So this is one instance where the grass is not always greener.

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Samuel Adeniran back in practice with ������Ƶ City SC as team resumes training

• Tom Timmermann

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Notebook: City SC's late goals have changed results and earned it points this season

• Tom Timmermann

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Tomas Totland comes to the rescue with a stoppage time goal as City SC ties Sporting KC 3-3

• Tom Timmermann

Photos: Blanket of fresh sod for CityPark stadium

Samuel Adeniran was back on the practice field Wednesday with ������Ƶ City SC as the team resumed training.

Adeniran had been kept out of the past two games as coach Bradley Carnell expressed displeasure with the forward’s work rate.

“Right now, we’re focusing on the guys who bring a certain standard, intensity, work ethic in training, and those players will get rewarded,” Carnell said last week. “Sam, until further notice, will be training on his own.”

Carnell didn’t have much to say about the situation Wednesday.

“Sam’s back on the field training,” he said.

City SC doesn’t play this weekend, so players had an extra day off after a 3-3 tie with Sporting Kansas City on Saturday.

Adeniran scored goals in each of City SC’s first two MLS games this season and even got the nod to start ahead of Klauss in the first meeting with Austin. He was left off the game-day roster for the second Austin game, even though the team had an available spot for him and played the game with eight players on the bench instead of nine. The team did that again Saturday against Sporting Kansas City.

Adeniran took part in all of training and was on the field after practice working on shooting with teammate Aziel Jackson and members of the coaching staff.

Eduard Lowen, who has missed six games with a combination of a hamstring injury and a family illness, jogged during training, and midfielder Njabulo Blom and defender Josh Yaro have begun to step up their rehab work.

“Edu we treat totally different from the rest of the group right now,” Carnell said. “If his body’s feeling up to it, he can progress as needed. But it’s up to Edu.

“Josh is starting some on-field work and integration back into running and getting used to a little mobility on the field. Some straight-line stuff, but he’s progressing and in a good way. He’s feeling alright, but we don’t want to rush him. Jabs (Blom) has started on-field work. I think probably Jabs is the closest one at the moment.”

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Notebook: City SC's late goals have changed results and earned it points this season

• Tom Timmermann

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Yet another tie, this time against rival Sporting Kansas City: STL Soccer Talk

• Tom Timmermann ,  Beth O'Malley

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Tomas Totland comes to the rescue with a stoppage time goal as City SC ties Sporting KC 3-3

• Tom Timmermann

A year ago, ������Ƶ City SC scored three goals in second-half stoppage time, after the game had passed the 90-minute mark.

The goals were largely incidental: a 93rd-minute goal by Miguel Perez that made the final score of City SC’s Open Cup loss to Chicago 2-1; a 94th-minute goal by Perez against Vancouver that secured a 3-1 win; and a 95th-minute goal by Samuel Adeniran against Austin in a 6-3 win.

This season, City SC has scored three goals after the 90th minute, and all of them have changed the outcome of the game: Hosei Kijima’s goal in the 91st minute in the CONCACAF Champions Cup gave City SC a 2-1 win; a goal by Celio Pompeu in the 93rd minute against Austin got City SC a 2-2 tie; and Tomas Totland’s 92nd-minute goal against Sporting Kansas City on Saturday earned City SC a 3-3 tie.

That’s two points saved by City SC in the closing minutes, plus the Champions Cup goal that improved their position in a total-goals series but not enough.

“I think we just never stopped fighting, we never gave up,” said Pompeu after the Sporting Kansas City game. “That’s what I love about this team. We don’t quit. We always keep going. We can be losing, but we never put our heads down. We always keep fighting, and that’s what happened.”

“Credit to the boys for not giving up,” Carnell said, “and it’s something that this team continues to show — a never-say-die attitude.”

City SC has allowed only two goals after the 90th minute, both on the road, and only one has changed the outcome of the game. It allowed one goal against the Los Angeles Galaxy in the 95th minute to turn a potential City SC win into a tie and another by Real Salt Lake turned a one-goal loss by City SC into a two-goal loss. So because Houston’s goal didn’t earn it any points because it wasn’t in MLS play, that’s two points lost to late goals, leaving the team even for the season.

A breather

With no game this weekend for City SC, Carnell let the team off until Wednesday. Normally, the team would have done regeneration work Sunday and practiced on Tuesday. This is the first weekend off for the team since the season began Feb. 20.

“We have to keep working on the things that we have to get better,” Klauss said. “I think we have to use this time, now the first days to rest because the beginning of the season was really tough with CONCACAF and MLS starting at the same time. So use the first days to rest to calm down a little bit. And then the next week used to get better physically, mentally and also the things that we have to improve.”

“A game like (Sporting KC) takes up a lot of energy,” Carnell said after the game. “It takes up a lot of physical and mental energy. So yeah, we’re going to get the guys out of town for a few days who wants to go out of town for two to three days, and we’ll be back on Wednesday.”

With City2 also off this weekend, the teams will scrimmage on Saturday, then City will get back on a normal practice schedule for the game at Houston on May 4.

Anything for you

A week after scoring a goal after promising his wife he would score on her birthday, Klauss had a goal and an assist on Saturday vs. Kansas City, but there were no promises this time.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I cannot promise her every week, but every week, she asked me to score a goal for her.”

Every week?

“Yeah, every week,” he said. “So maybe I got one week free then. Just kidding. I don’t want that week free. I want to keep scoring and helping my teammates.”

Notes

• Tomas Totland’s goal earned him a spot on the MLS team of the matchday, and Klauss made the bench, a week after making the first XI.
• Tim Parker got a yellow card against SKC, giving him four on the season. That makes three City SC players — Parker, Totland and Chris Durkin — who have four yellow cards and would get a one-game suspension with their fifth. Players get a yellow card removed from their total if they go five games without another. Totland has gone two games, and Durkin one toward that.
• City2 has signed defender Oscar Benitez to a Next Pro contract for the remainder of the season. Benitez is from Colombia but spent his youth career in Brazil with RB Bragantino II. He turns 20 in June.

Since losing its opening game, City2 has gone undefeated in its past five games, with two regulation wins and three ties to move into first place in the Western Conference of MLS Next Pro.

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In his third season in ������Ƶ, Tomas Ostrak's game has emerged for City SC

• Tom Timmermann

������Ƶ City SC beat writer Tom Timmermann and co-host Beth O'Malley talk about the team's sixth tie of the season, this time against Sporting Kansas City. The rivalry between the teams continues (and City SC won the shoulder battles, certainly), but City SC's struggles with tie games also continue.

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