St. Louis CITY SC heads out west to face San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday at 9:30 p.m. CT at PayPal Park. The match will be streamed on MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app and heard by our radio partners on KYKY Y98.1 FM (English) and KXOK 102.9 FM (Spanish).
St. Louis CITY SC fell 3-1 against Real Salt Lake in the second meeting between the two clubs this season. Diego Luna gave Real Salt Lake the lead before Niko Gioacchini tied the game heading into halftime. Real Salt Lake’s Damir Kreilach responded with a brace in the second half to secure all three points for the away team. CITY SC has a 1-1-0 record against Real Salt Lake after beating them 4-0 when the teams met earlier this season. Gioacchini scored in both matches against Real Salt Lake.
With his goal in the 21st minute, Gioacchini has now scored in four consecutive matches dating back to June 3rd against Houston Dynamo. Gioacchini’s four-game goalscoring streak ties Alan Pulido, Cristian Espinoza, Amine Bassi, Denis Bouanga and Luciano Acosta for the second-longest goal streak by a player in MLS this season. Gioacchini’s goal tally is up to eight this season.
After delivering the cross that led to CITY SC’s goal in the last game, Jake Nerwinski recorded his first assist for the club. The defender has started in all 18 of CITY SC’s MLS games this season and only trails Roman Bürki (1620) for minutes played with 1503. Nerwinski is tied for second on the team in interceptions with 25, one behind Tim Parker.
Njabulo Blom had a game-high four interceptions against Real Salt Lake, taking his total to 25 on the season. Blom has an 84% accurate pass percentage, which leads the team. The midfielder has won 58.8% of his duels in his six starts this season, the third most on the team behind defenders Tim Parker (59%) and Kyle Hiebert (58.9%) who have both started at least 15 games this season.
CITY SC will travel to PayPal Park for the first time in its history on Saturday. St. Louis secured a dominant 3-0 win against San Jose when the two teams played each other at CITYPARK earlier this season. João Klauss, Gioacchini and Tomáš Ostrák all found the net in that match. Defender Lucas Bartlett started his first match for the club in that match.
St. Louis CITY SC are 3-4-1 in road matches this season, scoring 11 goals and recording one clean sheet in eight games. CITY SC has seen six different goal scorers on the road this season – Klauss, Gioacchini, Jared Stroud, Rasmus Alm, Tim Parker and Kyle Hiebert.
San Jose Earthquakes come into the match unbeaten in six of their last nine matches and unbeaten in all 10 home matches this season at PayPal Park. San Jose are 1-1-2 in the month of June with their only win coming at home against Philadelphia Union. In their last match, San Jose fell 4-1 to Houston Dynamo at Shell Energy Stadium. Carlos Akapo found the lone goal for San Jose on an assist from Cristian Espinoza. Espinoza leads San Jose with eight goals this season in MLS.
San Jose sits in fifth place in the MLS Western Conference standings with 27 points – two points behind CITY SC, who are in second place. Across their last ten matches against expansion teams playing in their inaugural seasons, San Jose Earthquakes are 5-4-1 overall. In the home matches over that span, the team is 3-1-0 with a plus-five goal differential.
