ST. LOUIS - Tuesday evening, at precisely 6:51 pm Central Time, St. Louis City SC officially made the decision to relieve head coach Olof Mellberg of his duties with the club.
Mellberg was hired on November 26, following a “global, data-driven search” for a head coach and a voice that would lead City into the future. Six months and a day later, he departs with the club in far worse shape than it was when he arrived.
The team has struggled mightily in 2025 under Mellberg. City has won just two out of 15 games in MLS competition. Outside of MLS competition, the team was just knocked out of the US Open Cup last Wednesday, following a 3-2 defeat against Minnesota United, a game that City led 2-1 after 80 minutes.
When the team started the season with two cagey wins and two goalless draws, Mellberg’s defense-first approach was commended, a breath of fresh air compared to the team that spent much of 2024 giving up too many goals to stay in games.
Two and a half months without a win later, “defense-first” has become “stagnant.”
Beyond the results on the field, City’s brand of soccer became “boring,” which was the opposite of what Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel and General Manager Diego Gigliani set out for the club before the team had ever kicked a ball in anger.
“The decision to part ways with [Mellberg] goes beyond results,” said Pfannenstiel in a statement released by the team Tuesday night.
“We’ve analyzed the team’s performance across a number of factors, including the need to execute against a style of play that led to the team’s initial success and has been a part of our DNA for four years. As a club, we have certain standards we need to meet, and we believe a coaching change was necessary to improve our overall performance and return to a winning culture. Our fans deserve a better-performing team, and we intend to give them one.”
As of Tuesday morning, Mellberg was leading training and speaking to the media, preparing for Saturday’s home game against the San Jose Earthquakes. Notably, Mellberg’s top assistant, Azrudin Valentic, who joined City alongside Mellberg, was not present for Tuesday’s training session. St. Louis Post-Dispatch City beat writer Tom Timmermann was told Valentic “was no longer with the club for personal reasons.”
With the team struggling so mightily for so long, doubters and fans alike speculated on a potential firing. On May 19, Sportbladet, the same Swedish outlet that broke that Mellberg had taken the City job back in November, reported that Mellberg “was very close to being fired by the MLS club.”
Since that report, City has lost three games. They weren’t the worst three games of Mellberg’s tenure in St. Louis, but the lack of a visible turnaround and an increasingly frustrated fan base forced the hand of the City front office.
“We understood it would take time for [Mellberg] to become acclimated to Major League Soccer, and we certainly acknowledge that injuries made his job difficult, but we simply could not continue down this path,” said City GM Diego Gigliani.
“We are disappointed that we were not able to find success under Olof. He moved over here from Sweden and worked tirelessly on behalf of the club during his tenure. We wish him nothing but success in his future endeavors.”
Now taking over the reins of the first team is David Critchley, who has been in the City organization since 2021. Critchley coached the U16 and U17 teams of City’s academy before being named the head coach of the reserve team CITY2 for the 2025 season.
Critchley brings familiarity with the City group, especially those who’ve graduated from the CITY2 ranks to the first team. Importantly, Critchley’s style is closer to the City house style, where Mellberg’s more pragmatic “City 2.0” never took off in earnest.
Joining the first team staff alongside Critchley is Baggio Hušidic, who was one of Critchley’s assistants with CITY2 this season. John Hackworth, the team’s technical director who served as an interim head coach for City after Bradley Carnell’s firing last July, will now fill in the CITY2 job, serving as a head coach in Critchley’s absence.
Critchley’s first test as caretaker manager will be Saturday afternoon, when St. Louis City hosts the San Jose Earthquakes.
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