Will CITY’s Summer Stars Flourish In a New Formation?

There wasn’t a bigger story than the success of summer additions Marcel Hartel & Cedric Teuchert. Their offensive dynamism & production gave CITY hope for a late season playoff run that still came up 10 points short, but set the groundwork for optimism heading into 2025.

After getting to watch Marcel Hartel in Olaf’s system, that optimism has plenty of reasons to continue. 

His responsibilities have shifted from 2024; less time on the attacking left, more time in the central midfield. We saw Hartel play deeper at times to close out 2024 but he acknowledged at the time that a central attacking role is what he prefers. Based on the preseason positioning, that is not where we will see him positioned for large chunks of matches, but it’s an area of the field that will be open for Hartel to step up and attack through.

Or what he did in Europe for that matter. Here are Hartel’s heat maps from his final two season at St. Pauli in 2. Bundesliga.

For Cedric Tuechert, this question remains mostly unknown thanks to a preseason injury that kept the Cedi train off the tracks. Tuechert is a natural fit in the second striker role we saw from Simon Becher against RSL & Austin FC—he played that role in 2024 to great success—but CITY fans haven’t seem him play as much in the deeper midfield positioning we saw from Hartel & Vassilev to start the final match against NYC FC. Pictured below is Cedi’s heatmap from 2024 and it lines up better than you would’ve thought with the movement we saw from the midfield in Indio.