St. Louis City SC coach Bradley Carnell has explained why he opted to bring on former Kaizer Chiefs star Njabulo Blom from th bench against Minnesota in the MLS on Sunday.

Bafana Bafana star Bongokuhle Hlongwane started for Minnesota while Blom was named on the bench for St. Louis after his two-week spell on the sidelined due to illness.

St. Louis came into this game with a record of five straight victories in the Major League Soccer but eventually fell to a 1-0 defeat against Minnesota for their first defeat of the campaign thanks to a penalty converted by Luis Amarilla.

Blom came on to play the final 30 minutes of the match when he came off the bench to replace Jared Stroud, while Hlongwane played the full 90 minutes to help his side walk away with the victory.

“Yeah, I thought we were a goal down, and then we started to bring a bit of energy, right,” Carnell told US publication, Our Sports Central.

“I thought that was lacking a little bit of energy. There was a little bit of something, and we got a goal down and all of a sudden Klauss gets kicked in the face and then we had a power play for a couple of minutes.

“Yeah, we just are trying to keep the fire, the burning fire was a little bit missing early in the game and yeah, maybe it starts to weigh in on the boys.

“That’s the thing, that’s the beauty or the nature of beast, right. You’re successful. The boys know at some point this thing has to change, right. It’s just human nature and these boys are not robots and yeah, we are just human beings after all.”