But even critics such as Ammann, who represented clients in multiple suits to block the use of public money on the NFL stadium plan, recognize that the dollars for soccer are dwarfed by its bigger brother.

NFL facilities cost more than $1 billion to build. MLS arenas? Often one-tenth of that.

Moreover, while NFL owners have asked for hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing, MLS owner requests are far more modest.

Area leaders have already begun to promise that this soccer effort — if it’s real — won’t repeat the past.

“If MLS is pursued in a serious way for St. Louis,” promised Dave Peacock, co-chairman of Gov. Jay Nixon’s football stadium task force, “it would be a very different process than the NFL stadium project.”

Nixon and his task force spent the last year cobbling together $400 million in public funding for the proposed open-air riverfront NFL stadium. They were sharply criticized for filing suit to avoid a public vote in St. Louis, maneuvering around a vote in St. Louis County and resolutely refusing to bring the issue before the state Legislature, among other things.

In January, the league’s owners approved Stan Kroenke’s request to move his Rams to Los Angeles.