PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida — St. Louis City SC was third in Major League Soccer with 62 goals last season. The team said goodbye to a big chunk of them.
The transfer of Niko Gioacchini, who was tied for the team lead with 10 goals last season, was finalized on Wednesday, with the young striker moving on to Como 1907, a club in second place in the Italian second division making a big push to get to the first division. City SC will receive a reported $2 million transfer fee, with the possibility of up to another $2 million in incentives. Gioacchini is the first player to leave City SC on a transfer in its brief existence.
“Losing Niko, he’s a great striker, great friend as well, great person and I wish him all the best,” said forward Samuel Adeniran after the team’s Wednesday camp session on Florida's Treasure Coast. “So yeah, obviously it changes a little bit of things here. But we're up for the challenge. We're up to keep scoring goals and doing what we can.”
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In the short term, and maybe in a longer term depending how long it takes sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel to acquire a forward, Adeniran may be the player affected the most by Gioacchini’s move. Klauss, who also scored 10 goals, will continue to get his lion’s share of the time, but Adeniran, who played just 950 minutes, less than half of what Gioacchini played, and scored eight goals, figures to see more time. Unless City SC acquires a player already in MLS, the new player is unlikely to be ready when City SC starts play on Feb. 20.
“When we signed players a year ago that had little to no prior impact and then to create impact, it's amazing right?” said City SC coach Bradley Carnell. “So this is for us now the next objective, the next bit of homework we need to do. The next work stands right in front of us. We have to get Sam going out of the blocks, get Klauss going up the block straight away. Supported now by Nokkvi (Thorisson) and AZ (Jackson) and, and, and. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, we just continue what we're doing and what we do is develop players.”
City SC had success with a two-striker formation last season and Carnell wants to use it again, which will call on other players to provide depth at the position.
“I still think it's possible,” he said. “Does Celio (Pompeu) maintain his position out wide? Does he double up as a second striker? Does Rasmus (Alm) double up as the second striker? So we've got different options. We're just waiting on the statuses of each of these guys and then we get going. We just have to manipulate how and when we see fit and the opponent will dictate how we go about it.”
(Alm had offseason surgery for a sports hernia and is at camp with the team but not taking part in drills yet.)
Among the team’s three strikers last season, Gioacchini saw the most action, playing in 32 of 34 games. Klauss missed 15 games with a quad injury and Adeniran missed eight games when the team loaned him to San Antonio in the USL Championship. Because of that time missed, Klauss and Adeniran were both among the league leaders in goals per 90 minutes. Klauss was fifth among players with at least 1,000 minutes at 0.68; Adeniran just missed that threshold but his 0.76 would have put him fourth.
“As a player, taking your opportunities and taking your chances is the biggest thing in professional sports” Adeniran said. “So, when you get the opportunity you got to take it. So when I look at getting more minutes I just look at that's more responsibility. So as a player I just gotta focus up, do what I did last year, come in and make a difference.”
Losing players like Gioacchini is part of the process for City SC and MLS, which wants, at this point in its existence, to be a sellers’ league, developing young players and moving them to European clubs to bring in revenue. Pfannenstiel has made no secret about wanting his young players to aspire to play in Europe.
“I said it in front of the group,” Carnell said. “When Niko arrived here, based off his experiences similarly to AZ, Sam, a lot of guys have ambitions to play their best soccer right now. And if that result is their getting an opportunity, whether it's here or somewhere else, then I'm doing my job as a coach. We're doing our job as a team and we are succeeding at the same time. Getting results, developing players. Is it now selling players? That's a big deal for us as a club who's been on the map for one year to create that sort of value. We've seen the value (of City SC players) forecasted on all the marketing values all over the world and we jumped up 92 percent, but now there's actual tangibles to this. There's a figure to it, and we've created value within one year of our existence. So that's pretty impressive stuff, and we will continue to support the dreams of the players because this is about them.”
Gioacchini was born in Kansas City but spent four years of his childhood living in Italy, is fluent in the language and has an Italian passport, through his father, which made him more appealing to an Italian team. Gioacchini played in France before coming home to America and signing with Orlando City. But it didn’t click there, and the team left him exposed in the expansion draft, where City SC grabbed him. He scored six of his 10 goals while Klauss was hurt, helping the team keep winning when it seemed like it might hit a dry spot without its top scorer.
“City will always hold a special place within me,” Gioacchini posted on Instagram. “Being part of STL’s inaugural season and reaching the heights that we did will be a top memory of my life. I wish the club and fans all the best for Year 2 and beyond.”
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