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ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ City SC president and general manager Diego Gigliani and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel walked into the news conference room at Energizer Park on Thursday expecting daggers aimed at them. After all, they’d fired a second coach in less than one year and have now turned the club over to the fourth coach, including those with “interimâ€� and “caretakerâ€� designations, in just their third season playing in MLS.

So they made sure to fall on their swords before knives got a chance to come out.

It was the only tack to take. They conducted a global search for a new coach starting last July that concluded with Olof Mellberg’s hiring in November. He began working with the club in January. Now, five minutes later — excuse me, five months later — they’ve already cut bait.

“Let me also make it clear that Lutz and I both take full responsibility for where we are,� Gigliani said in his opening remarks. “We are clearly frustrated to be in this position, especially so shortly after Olof’s appointment. We’re are obviously reflecting on that recruitment process and the appointment of the head coach to see what we can learn so that we can minimize the chances of this happening again.�

Well, this season now becomes a referendum on what Gigliani and Pfannenstiel have built. The philosophy, the roster, the style of play, all of that is what’s on the line the rest of this year.

It’s not about Mellberg. It’s not even really about his replacement, David Critchley. It’s now about the City SC approach to soccer.

They made the change in no small part because they want to get back to their type of soccer.

Pfannenstiel referenced the short shelf life of MLS coaches in his comments — on average two years, according to figures he had at the ready — but even he acknowledged that five months fell woefully short of their expectations after this latest hire.

If you made a move that quickly, after all of that effort, then you had to be ready to swallow a little pride.

“Results are not only the results, it’s also the performances,� Pfannenstiel said. “I think we had lots of game we could have won or we played decent enough to pick up points, but we didn’t.

“Then, of course, it comes down to how to we really want to play. It’s an on-field matter, and an on-field matter is my full responsibility. So we had a search and we decided to sign a coach, and we didn’t hit what we really wanted to get out of that. I think we also need to be clear this is not pointing the finger at Olof Mellberg. I think there can be a lot more things into it. That’s the players. That’s the staff. That’s myself as well. We need to put our heads together to find solutions.�

City SC hit “the reset button� after a stretch of 11 consecutive MLS matches without a win, a stretch that dropped the club to 14th out of 15 teams in the Western Conference.

Thursday’s news conference made it clear a disconnect existed between the style of play the City SC brain trust thought it would get under Mellberg and what actually showed up on the pitch.

Pfannenstiel also made it clear that injuries aren’t an excuse for any of what has transpired.

“When you have seven, eight starters out, then it’s very difficult to get 100% performance on the field,� Pfannenstiel said. “This is very normal. But we are not here to make excuses about injuries because injuries are happening to other teams as well, and we had to deal, last year, with injuries.

“Does it have an impact on results? Of course. Does it have to have an impact on playing style? I don’t think so.�

Now, they’re “course correcting,� in Gigliani’s words.

Critchley already alluded to a return to the club’s foundational philosophy and playing style, all the way down to saying they’d return to a four-man back line.

City SC is doubling down on the attacking, high-pressing style they rode through their first season.

There’s plenty worth romanticizing from that first season of Major League Soccer in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. The first team in club history didn’t just bring soccer back to the city, it brought an energy and reignited a fire in a place with a rich soccer history.

That team also made history as the first expansion team to win its conference, recording more wins (17) than any previous expansion team and the second-most points (56) of any expansion club.

That gave rise to many lofty dreams for a soccer-starved fan base.

However, at the risk of being accused of sports blasphemy, it’s not as though City SC built a juggernaut that has somehow been led astray by bad coaching the past two seasons.

The fact of the matter is that first team benefited from an extremely fast start and then broke even the rest of the way (12-12-5) before a disappointing playoff exit at the hands of Sporting Kansas City.

So now we’ll find out if the philosophy and style of play can really hold up. Injuries aren’t an excuse for the coach, so they’re not an excuse for the front office.

So let’s see how this goes.

Pfannenstiel rightfully pointed to the success this same group had late last season as a sign that the current roster is capable of better. Whether that’s the 6-4-4 mark in their last 14 matches of 2024 or the scoring output from Simon Becher (four goals), Marcel Hartel (three goals, seven assists) and Cedric Teuchert (five goals, four assists).

“Do you think that we, actually our players overnight — they just forgot how to play football,� Pfannenstiel said. “Or do they still have the same quality, the same talent they had last year?�

Nobody thinks they forgot how to play.

The real question is: Can a return to the previous style elevate the team’s performance and turn around the season?

We’re going to find out.