Monday — Labor Day — marked five months to the day that St. Louis city voters turned down a stadium financing plan for a Major League Soccer team by a slim margin of about 3,300 votes.

As the MLS creeps closer to a decision on two expansion teams, questions remain. Is this soccer thing dead in St. Louis? Alive? Or what?

This much is known:

• The league still would like to have a team in St. Louis. They love the market and its rich soccer tradition and realize there’s a vacuum on the local sports scene without a National Football League presence.

• The ownership group, headed by Paul Edgerley, is regarded as substantial by the league and has not disbanded.

• St. Louis still has an active file at league headquarters. In other words, it is still officially considered an expansion candidate.

“This was St. Louis’ to lose,” said one league source. “Look, if Dec. 7 rolled around, or whatever day we have the (expansion) meeting, and St. Louis had a commitment to a stadium, and Paul Edgerley and his group were sitting there, I would put it at 99 percent that they get it.”

So in those terms, an MLS team remains low-hanging fruit for St. Louis. The problem is — and still is — that piece of fruit will cost about $60 million — the funding gap between the $270 million the Edgerley group is willing to commit and the amount the group feels is needed to make the project viable.

The $60 million is not an insignificant amount, but it’s not nearly the kind of money (about $400 million) that was being considered to keep the NFL here with a new stadium.

Of the Edgerley group’s $270 million, $150 million would go toward the MLS expansion fee. Most of the rest would go to building a soccer stadium near Union Station.

Unlike the NFL, owning a Major League Soccer franchise is not a license to print money. Former St. Louis Rams, such as Isaac Bruce , who were approached about being potential minority investors in soccer here, were told the rate of return on their investment would only be about five percent for the first 15 to 20 years.

But there are several signs of MLS growth, particularly among younger audiences. Average attendance in the final five games of last year’s playoffs was nearly 39,000.

Last month, the Los Angeles Galaxy, which is in the midst of a terrible season, drew 25,667 for an Aug. 12 home game in the StubHub Center. The next night in the same venue, the Los Angeles Chargers drew only 21,054 for their NFL preseason opener against Seattle — the first game for the Chargers since their move from San Diego.

Less than two weeks earlier, MLS announced it had agreed to an extension of its marketing deal with sportswear manufacturer Adidas, worth a reported $700 million over six years.

With all that in mind, there are some observers who feel the MLS will surpass the National Hockey League in popularity over the next 20 years.

Locally, St. Louis FC is still drawing well despite an 8-11-7 record in Division 2 United Soccer League play. STLFC provided a glimpse of what it might be like to have Major League Soccer here in a June 14 U.S. Open Cup match against MLS’ Chicago Fire. The atmosphere was electric, and an overflow crowd of 5,786 at cozy Soccer Park in Fenton saw a well-played 1-0 loss by the home team.

But it will take a soccer-specific stadium to bring the real thing to St. Louis, and just three months remain before that MLS expansion meeting in early December. The two teams picked then would begin play in 2020. Two additional expansion teams are to be selected in 2018.

The league was disappointed in the results of the stadium financing vote in St. Louis, as obviously were Edgerley and his ownership group. Since that April setback, some members of the group have had informal low-level discussions with others trying to figure a way to make the financing work. One out-of-the-box approach was exploring nonprofit status for stadium ownership, as opposed to, for example, city ownership.

“I know a few months ago, they thought they were getting close to something,” said the source. “I believe that fell through.”

These are not the best of times for public subsidies for stadiums, particularly in St. Louis, where owner Stan Kroenke poisoned the well by pulling his Rams out of St. Louis and trashing the area in remarks to the league on his way out of town. In addition, several years remain before the construction financing of the former Edward Jones Dome are paid off.

But there are metropolitan areas across the country — Atlanta, Minnesota and Las Vegas in the NFL — willing to engage in public-private stadium partnerships. And in MLS, there’s Nashville.

The governor of Tennessee approved legislation this summer that would allow state sales tax collected at any future MLS stadium in Nashville to be used to help cover stadium expenses. And Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has $150 million in proposed revenue bonds for a soccer stadium in the city’s capital improvements budget for the upcoming year.

In St. Louis, will a mere 3,300 votes in a metro area that numbers three million people keep the MLS out of town?

It’s clear it will take a regional approach to make it happen. Despite those discussions since April 4, there has been no formal move by political leaders at the city, county or state level saying “let’s find a way to get this done.”

And December isn’t far away.