As ºüÀêÊÓƵ City SC does its dance with the climax of its season, teetering on the brink of playoff elimination, there is one thing that has given hope to both team members and fans that there is a solution, a path to a happy ending.
It’s called Saturday.
Saturday is when City SC, eight points out of the last playoff spot in the Western Conference with six games to play, plays the first of two games with the team in that last playoff spot, Minnesota United (7:30 p.m., Apple TV Season Pass), at CityPark. Win those two games and that’s six points made up just like that, no help required. After that, there would be just a two-point difference, which seems simple enough to deal with.
All of those hopes and dreams start with one thing: a win on Saturday. A loss would be fatal, a tie would most likely just prolong the agony.
“There’s no denying,†said interim coach John Hackworth. “If we want to give ourselves a chance to be still in the playoff hunt, this is, from our perspective, a must win. There’s no sense in sugarcoating it. There’s no sense in trying to BS anybody about it. If we want to have any chance of getting into the playoffs, you can’t lose a six-pointer to the team that’s currently eight in front. That dictates it. That’s where we are.â€
“We need wins,†said center back Kyle Hiebert.
But in an example of the hurdles that wait ahead, a win by City SC does not assure that it will go from eight points out of a playoff spot to five. If Austin were to beat Toronto on Saturday and City SC wins, Austin would jump over Minnesota into ninth and then City SC would be six points back instead of five, and City SC doesn’t play Austin again. And then Minnesota, Austin and Dallas all play again Wednesday while City SC is off, giving those teams a chance to rebuild someone’s lead to eight or nine points before City SC puts on its gear again.
But winning both meetings with Minnesota — the other is on the final day of the season — is merely a subset of a bigger concern: the team’s next loss to anybody could end it.
“We have two games with (Minnesota) now,†said right back Tomas Totland, who is hoping to break back into the starting lineup this week, “and yeah, we basically have to win both of them and probably the rest of the games this year. We can’t afford to tie anymore. I think we showed at New England that we’ve come a long way offensively, and that we create a lot of chances. We just have to score goals and not let in those easy ones.â€
With the importance of the game clear, Hackworth upped the intensity of practice this week. The team wanted to improve its defense after allowing seven goals in the past three games, but some of that was work on holding on to possession, to play defense by keeping the ball away from the opponent.
“Klauss came in for treatment on Monday,†Hackworth said, “and I said, ‘Klauss, I’m gonna run the (crap) out of you in training.’ And he was like, ‘Oh man, no.’ And then after training, he’s like, ‘You weren’t lying, were you?’ And I said, ‘No, I told you what was gonna happen.’ So it’s a credit to the work ethic that these guys have, and it’s nice as a coach when you can push guys and joke around with them in the training room about what is coming up and the expectation that I have on them and on the training field.â€
“Oh, my God, he wasn’t lying,†Klauss said. “It was very hard, but very good and very important for us.â€
City SC is unbeaten in its past four MLS games and, if you include Leagues Cup, has three wins and three ties in its past six games against MLS opponents. So City SC has gotten its game together. Now it needs wins.
Facing a must-win game changes the way Hackworth and the team have to approach the game. City SC has to score at least one goal, but also has to boost its defense. City SC hasn’t posted a shutout since July 3.
“There’s a lot of different things that that come into it when you’re in this situation,†Hackworth said. “There’s a lot of different scenarios that you go through in your mind, that you think could happen in the game. If you just look at us and our past performances, we need to get better defensively. We need to make sure that we limit a very dangerous Minnesota team with their attacking players, and contain them as much as we possibly can, to put ourselves in a position where we can be successful in this game. And then as the game goes on, there’s a lot of situations that could arise and possibilities that we would have to change tactically, because we know that we have to go for the win. That’s going to open us up, that we’re going to have to take some risk if that’s the case late in the game, because there’s no point for us to play safe and play for a draw on this one.â€
Minnesota is not exactly a team on a tear. After starting the season 8-3-5 (W-L-T), it has gone 2-8-1, with both of the wins coming over league-worst San Jose. While it has won two of its past three games, prior to running into San Jose on its schedule Minnesota had gone 0-7-1.
As for City SC, it needs to translate its improved play into wins and stop adding to its total of 13 ties so far.
“I think the team is in a good way right now,†said Klauss, who could be returning to the starting lineup. “We are very confident. We know that the most important game in the season for us is right now. So we will need everybody. We will need all the players. We need our fans to be very loud in the stadium. Bring the same energy, everybody on the same page. And yeah, it’s a game that we have to win.â€