Bundesliga to St. Louis CITY: Marcel Hartel makes "perfect decision" | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

Last spring, Marcel Hartel reached perhaps his greatest soccer achievement, helping FC St. Pauli secure promotion to the German Bundesliga after more than a decade of toil in the second division.

A 3-1 win over Osnabrück on May 12 clinched a long-sought breakthrough for the passionately-supported Hamburg “cult” club, Hartel scoring the third goal to spark euphoria among the punks, mavericks, leftists and other faithful who proudly embrace their identity as ‘the rebels of German football,’ en route to his best-ever season.

Having never before scored more than five times in a single campaign, Hartel finished 2023-24 with 17 goals and 13 assists, the most goal contributions in the 2. Bundesliga that year. The hard-running playmaker from Cologne had become a fan favorite at the Millerntor-Stadion and should be integral, it seemed, to St. Pauli’s hopes of surviving in the top flight among giants like Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich.

“I had the most success in my whole career, played my best season there,” Hartel explained in a recent one-on-one conversation with MLSsoccer.com. “I was a leader in the team, I was second captain in the team. I had a very good relationship to everybody in the whole club, and also to the supporters – I had a big, big relationship to the big supporters who come also to the away games, and am also in contact still with them.

“It was a hard decision.”

New ambitions across the pond

Yet he, his wife Maike and their young daughter Maliah found themselves at a crossroads in life.

Marcel had played out his St. Pauli contract and was a free agent. The ‘Kiezkicker’ sought to re-sign him for the Bundesliga voyage ahead, and he also reportedly fielded interest from UEFA Champions League clubs. But none of it quite connected with what he and Maike felt was needed for their next chapter.

“I had a three-year contract, and after two years, if St. Pauli came to me a bit earlier, I think maybe the chance will be bigger that I signed before that,” recalled Hartel. “We sat on it, we sat together, also with St. Pauli – we had a good, open conversation, and we were honest to each other. We said, we are too far away from each other.

“I spent the whole of my life, my career, in Germany, different cities in Germany,” he added. “And we made this decision together to look forward to see something new, to a new country.”

Hartel’s mind was drawn to the idea of a completely new adventure much further afield. The Columbus Crew had made a strong push for his signature, but the deal fell apart in its final stages, allowing St. Louis CITY SC and their German sporting director, Lutz Pfannenstiel, to step in with what was reportedly a bigger contract offer that made Hartel STL’s third Designated Player.

Now, Hartel wears CITY’s magenta, Maike has connected with the club’s extensive network of German families and Maliah, who turned two a few months ago, is flashing some American flavor as she grows up in the Arch City.

“I had the conversation with Lutz and it was an amazing conversation. I meet the city for a couple of days, and then makes my decision very easy,” explained Marcel. “And so far, now I'm here, I think eight or nine months, and I have to say, it was the perfect, perfect decision for me and my family.

“My daughter fits pretty well here. She started going to preschool, she's learning English – she's also coming home now with some English words, which is unbelievable. And my wife’s feeling well, so it was a very good decision.”

STL will welcome the Crew to Energizer Park for Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire this weekend (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+), and it’s tempting to ponder what the respective teams would look like if Hartel’s 2024 had played out a bit differently. Could he have been the difference-maker to enable Columbus to defend their 2023 MLS Cup crown?

Hartel himself doesn’t feel compelled to spend much time on questions like that. St. Louis is home now, and the slick-passing Crew are just another opponent to study – though he enjoyed coach Wilfried Nancy’s company when the two crossed paths at MLS Media Day in Miami over the winter.

“Columbus, it's a very good team. I saw a lot of games from them, very good ball possession team,” he said. “I also met the coach, Nancy, on MLS shooting day, he was a very good guy, and yeah, they do a very good job. But I think we face a similar opponent this season against San Diego, they also played similar [to] Columbus, and there we play 0-0 … Columbus is very good with the ball, but I think we can hurt them.”

The context around that last bit has become the defining question of CITY SC’s season to date.

Breakout offensive performance?

New head coach Olof Mellberg has emphasized defensive stability above all else in his preferred 3-4-2-1 formation, and it’s worked in one sense. Only one MLS team, Austin FC, have leaked fewer goals than the four conceded by STL across their first seven matches. But the inverse is also true: Only one team (New England) have scored less than the four goals they've totaled in that span.

The drawbacks of that cautious approach have been exposed in the three-game losing streak STL are currently riding – all of them goalless – after a 2W-0L-2D start, leaving them 11th in the Western Conference table and 21st overall.

“I think we had a lot of focus at first on our defense, defense line to [not] concede that many goals, because in the last season, if you see how many goals, you can see it was way too much,” said Hartel. “But now we have to start to change, because now we see our defense works, and now we have to go a bit for our offense line, because you can see we only shot four goals.

“We are not creating that much chances, but we will get used to it – and we train it every day. We also have very open communication here with Olof.”

Hartel looks pivotal to those hopes – not only in terms of his own productivity but his capacity to inspire those around him. He hit the ground running upon arrival last summer, scoring three goals and five assists as previously woeful STL produced a stretch-run surge that fell short of the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs but fueled optimism for 2025.

“It's difficult to come from another country at first, to a new league, to a new country, but the club and the team make it very easy for me to feel confident with my quality,” said Hartel. “Immediately, from the first game, I feel the trust from the team, and also from the club and the coaches. So far, also now Olof gives me the trust, he gives me a lot of freedom in my game. For me, it is very important.”

STL's German connection

His work rate, nose for goal, incisive passing and interpretation of space in the attacking third have been vital for CITY’s best version of themselves, particularly as he quickly struck up an understanding with some familiar faces among his new teammates.

Years ago, Hartel played with Eduard Löwen, Cedric Teuchert, Timo Baumgartl and Jannes Horn on German youth national teams, a history that’s helped them combine on the pitch, and their families support one another off it.

“These guys know each other since they’re 16, 17 years old,” Pfannenstiel told MLSsoccer.com in September. “Is there a certain chemistry immediately on the field? Sometimes, if you see us playing on one side, and there are these three guys playing in a triangle, you know there is something there.”

Having compatriots experiencing the same sort of North American adventure has been priceless for the Hartels, considering the usual support structure for those with young children – Maliah’s grandparents and extended family – is thousands of miles away in Cologne.

“It's not like we are in Germany that my parents, or the parents of my wife, say, ‘Oh, we are coming now. We drive four hours from Cologne to Hamburg’ or somewhere else. Yeah, this is tough, to be honest. It's a hard time,” said Marcel. “But I have to say, my wife is doing excellent. I think we are a good team, me and my wife, together with my daughter, and we don't complain.

“We know from the beginning that will be a hard time for us alone here. But I mean, especially here in St Louis CITY, we have a lot of players who speak German, who have also kids in the age of my daughter; the wives also speak German. So this makes it very easy for my wife and my daughter to have immediately, two, three persons where she can meet outside from our home.”

Tight-knit group

They do miss their loved ones across the Atlantic, and Marcel confesses he occasionally gets nostalgic for brötchen, the bread rolls that are a German breakfast staple. But Maliah is the star of their regular video chats with the family, and Marcel has MLS Cup on his to-do list. While playoffs qualification is job one, he believes CITY SC have the talent and chemistry required to reach that bigger goal.

“First, you need a good relationship on the field and off the field, and this we have here,” he noted. “We have a lot of different guys: We have quiet guys, we have loud guys, we have funny guys. And so the combination from all of that is brilliant, and I think this is a key. If you have a good relationship outside from the field, it makes it much, much easier on the field, because you can talk to each other, you can also sometimes be critical to each other with a lot of understanding for each other.

“After a not-so-good game, we are critical to each other. We also step up, talk to each other, and nobody is sitting there and is crying if somebody say something [about] what was not so good in this situation.”

Under Nancy’s expansive game model, the Crew have become something of a measuring stick for league opponents. With viewers from across the league able to tune in for the SNS showcase, St. Louis will hope for a more fluid, cohesive performance to lift them out of their current doldrums – with Hartel leading the way.

“My goal, before I came to the Americas, is to win one time the MLS [title],” he said. “If it's this season, next season, I will win one time MLS. But our team goal is, at first, to make the playoffs, to see where we are. And I have to say, we are in a good way.”