After a longer than expected absence, Eduard Lowen has green card, is back with City SC

Eduard Lowen was back on the practice field with St. Louis City SC on Tuesday for the first time since the team’s preseason game with Nashville on Jan. 26 in Florida. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and he knows it.

He got what he was looking for: a green card.

“It was very hard for me,” he said after practice, “because I was thinking I’d be gone like six or seven days, but I ended up being gone for 13 days or something like that and missing the whole California trip. I was fighting, I was doing everything, I was calling the embassy plenty of times, hundreds of times. I was trying everything to come back earlier, but it didn’t work out. In the end, it’s for a good reason.”

That reason is one that will in the long term help the team but right now might cost it one of its elite players for the start of the season. When Lowen went through U.S. customs in Toronto on his way back from Germany, he got his temporary green card, designating him as a permanent resident of the United States. (The official green card will come in the mail shortly.) Now that Lowen has that status, he no longer counts against the team’s international player number, which means there’s one fewer international roster slot the team needs to use. That's a big help for sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel as he works to build the team's roster.

“I’m very happy to be back,” Lowen said. “I was just waiting for that moment for so long, and it kept delaying and delaying, over and over again. I was thinking, ‘Now I’m going to go back; now I’m going to go back,’ and every single day, it got delayed. So after all that, I’m very, very happy to be back, and training again felt very good.

“It’s an advantage for both, the team and also for me. Privately, it’s very good. So it’s a win-win situation.”

But Lowen didn’t have green card company on Tuesday. Joakim Nilsson, who left camp at the same time to go to Sweden and get his green card, is still there. He’s expected back Wednesday or Thursday.

The next question is how quickly Lowen can play. He missed three preseason games in which he probably would have gotten 135 or so minutes of playing time. He’ll get some playing time Thursday when City SC faces Louisville City of the USL Championship in a closed-door match at CityPark, but that may not be enough for him to start on Tuesday when City SC faces Houston in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.

Lowen said he had daily workout plans sent to him by Kelly Roderick, the team’s head of sports science, but he didn’t do any work on the field with a ball.

“I was sick of seeing the gym from outside and not touching a ball,” he said. “But I tried my best. I didn’t take a lot of days off. I was training very hard. I took like two, three days off, and other than that, I kept training and training to be in a good shape and come back in a good shape and not losing fitness and can get back at it right away.

“I have seven days left, and I’m trying to use this time as good as possible. We have another friendly on Thursday, which will be very important for me. I got two games under the belt, one half against Nashville and 60 minutes in the first scrimmage against each other, so we’ll see where I’m at. Hopefully I can get in good shape as soon as possible.”

“Edu’s lost a lot of time,” coach Bradley Carnell said. "He’s done a bunch of work on his own, but you can never replicate the game form if you’re on your own and waiting in Germany for a piece of paper. He’ll hopefully get up to speed over the next couple of days, and there’s a bit of ways to go with Edu so we’re going to work as much as we can to get him up to speed.”

The situation will be even harder for Nilsson, who like Lowen had planned on joining the team during the stint in the desert. 

“We’re progressing,” Carnell said. “Michael Wentzel (from City2, who has trained with the team throughout camp), all these guys have done really well to pick up the pieces. Everyone’s done a great job. Wherever one guy was missing, everyone jumped in. We’ve been playing guys in and out of position to fill spots, and they’ve done a great job.”

Carnell has options at center back alongside Tim Parker in Josh Yaro and Kyle Hiebert, as well as Wentzel. In some ways, the busy schedule to start the season helps out. The team will have to pretty much turn over the entire roster between its MLS opener on Feb. 24 against Real Salt Lake and its second CONCACAF Champions Cup game against Houston on Feb. 27. So if the pair miss the first two games, they could be ready for the second two.

Though when he can get in a game may be uncertain, having a green card means a lot to Lowen.

“I’ve said many times: I love the United States,” he said. “I feel so good here — I love it a lot; my wife does as well. We are very grateful that we could go through this process so quickly and hopefully get it as soon as possible. That will be great for us. We are very happy.”