Sports · NEWS EXPLAINER
Holse's early hat trick powers St. Louis to 6–2 win and 20-match unbeaten tie
Three Holse goals by the 21st minute helped CITY tie the 2016 Red Bulls' all-competition mark. Its separate MLS regular-season run stands at 18 unbeaten matches, with 13 wins and five draws.
St. Louis CITY beat LA Galaxy 6–2 on October 11, with Carlo Holse completing a hat trick by the 21st minute. The result extended CITY's unbeaten run to 20 matches across all competitions, matching the New York Red Bulls' 2016 mark.
That headline needs a competition boundary: CITY's MLS regular-season run is 18 unbeaten matches, comprising 13 wins and five draws. Twenty describes the broader unbeaten sequence, not 20 league wins.
Three goals before the match settled
Holse scored in the second, seventh and 21st minutes. St. Louis led 3–0 before Robert Taylor pulled one back for LA in the 31st. Rafael Navarro's penalty and Lukas MacNaughton's header in first-half stoppage time then made it 5–1 at the interval.
Navarro scored again in the 53rd minute, before Joao Klauss added LA's second in the 71st. CITY's six goals came from three scorers: Holse's hat trick, Navarro's double and MacNaughton's header. LA's two replies did not reverse the early separation.
The two unbeaten counts measure different things
The club's match report and Field Level Media both distinguish 20 unbeaten across all competitions from 18 in MLS regular-season play. The latter sequence is 13 wins, no losses and five draws; a draw keeps an unbeaten run alive without becoming a victory.
CITY tied the Red Bulls' all-competition mark rather than moving beyond it. Describing the result as a new outright record, or converting the sequence into 20 successive wins, would change what the published reports establish. The useful comparison is the same competition scope and the same absence of defeats.
The points matter separately from the streak
St. Louis finished the night with a 14–6–8 regular-season record and 50 points. Field Level Media placed it one point behind Vancouver in the Western Conference. An unbeaten-run record does not itself award the conference lead: the standings depend on points, and draws contribute less than wins.
CITY is scheduled to host Vancouver on October 14 at 7:30 p.m. Central, according to the club. That makes the next meeting relevant to the reported one-point gap, without treating its outcome or a future position as settled.
What the six-goal score can and cannot tell us
The scoring sequence provides the clearest explanation of this particular result: three early Holse goals, followed by two more before halftime, left LA chasing a four-goal deficit at the break. It is stronger evidence than a general claim that the unbeaten run made a win inevitable.
The Associated Press identifies this as the second hat trick in CITY's history. Klauss, now playing for the Galaxy, had scored the club's first in a 3–3 meeting between these same teams in June 2025. Sunday's result puts the two milestones on opposite sides of a new scoreline; it does not turn the earlier draw into part of this game's scoring.
