The Gateway to the West has a proud tradition of soccer but the city may have to wait for a while before it gets its own soccer franchise

When the St Louis Rams announced earlier this month that they were moving to Los Angeles, the knock-on effect on soccer revolved primarily around two questions: how will this move impact the fledgling Los Angeles FC and storied LA Galaxy? (Barely, according to most reports.) And what does the move mean for the MLS prospects of St Louis – a city with one of the richest soccer heritages in the country, yet one that has never hosted a top-tier franchise in MLS’s 20-year existence?



In response to the latter question, MLS commissioner Don Garber was perhaps a little more positive than some in the city might have expected. In a recent interview, Garber announced that the departure of the Rams “gives a little more momentum” to St Louis’ chances of gaining an expansion slot. He added that the league had already held discussions with those leading the push for an MLS franchise in St Louis, and they were hopeful, too, of speaking to the city’s mayor or governor in the near future.

But momentum behind soccer has never truly been a problem for the Gateway to the West. Since 1907, when the country’s only fully professional soccer league, the St Louis Soccer League, began in the city, there have been countless entries into the US soccer history books that have held one tie or another to the City of St Louis. At the 1950 World Cup, for example, when USA upset England, 1-0, five St Louis players featured in the American starting XI. The Billikens, St Louis University’s men’s soccer team, have won an unmatched 10 national championships. The St Louis Stars, who played in the original North American Soccer League, between 1967 and 1977, featured a much higher concentration of American and local players than many other teams in the league. There are currently 29 St Louisans in the National Soccer Hall of Fame. A St Louis native has been included in every US men’s World Cup squad.

No, St Louis’ issues with building momentum for a Major League Soccer franchise has been less about local fervor and interest in the sport, and more about finding the financial backing necessary to enter one of America’s closed sporting systems.

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“The reasons remain simple – no owner and no stadium,” Jim Woodcock, a lifelong St Louisan and a senior vice-president and partner at FleishmanHillard, a public relations and marketing agency that represents numerous soccer clients, including the United States Soccer Federation, said. “Nothing has changed ... Those are fundamental building blocks for any candidate city for MLS expansion. Though, also unchanged is the fact that an owner would benefit from what is, in my mind, the most MLS-ready market in the US.”

This time last year, Woodcock, who is on the board of the St Louis Sports Commission, was part of a taskforce that was looking to secure a potential $1.1bn public-private-funded stadium for the Rams. MLS prefers downtown, soccer-specific stadiums for its teams, and in a move that would have been similar to that of the City of Atlanta – the Falcons are set to be joined by an MLS franchise, Atlanta United FC, when they move into their new home, in 2017 – the stadium-first, MLS-franchise-second approach that St Louis was looking to take eventually faded, along with football fans’ hopes of Stan Kroenke keeping his team in the city. The plans would have seen the 60,000-seat stadium reduced in capacity to around 25,000 for MLS games, and received support from St Louis mayor Francis Slay, governor Jay Nixon, and Dave Peacock, chair of the St Louis Sports Commission.

“I think MLS were impressed with the adaptability of the venue for soccer, but there is no question the preference by the league would have been for a new and more intimate soccer-specific stadium,” Woodcock said. “Everything the league liked or likes about the St Louis market is still in play.”

The St Louis market, though, has been in play for MLS and investors since 1993, when the league began looking at 26 potential cities for its inaugural 10-team season, which kicked-off in 1996. St Louis was not chosen then; nor was it selected after 2004, when MLS announced further plans to expand from 10 to 19 teams by 2012. During that time there was a failed 2007 bid to bring Real Salt Lake to the city, after Utah governor John Huntsman Jr led a last-minute push for public funding to build a soccer-specific stadium for the team. Then, in 2008, came an attempt to add a team in a nearby suburb of Collinsville, Illinois, only for the league, as has been the trend with most new expansion teams, to say that it would prefer a central venue for a new franchise. Within 12 months of the Collinsville plans, there were also rumours of intent to make St Louis one of the two teams added in 2011 - only for the efforts to fail when Portland and Vancouver were chosen as, once again, wealthy investors eluded the city.

The attempts during 2005 and 2010 were predominantly lead by Jeff Cooper, a local attorney who headed a successful law firm, and who was reported to have spent around $10m of his own money in creating the likes of stadium plans and proposals. This was a time MLS entry fees were much cheaper. But as expansion slots slipped by, Cooper would go on to create an unsuccessful USSF Division 2 club, AC St Louis, which, in 2011, folded after one season when investors pulled out, according to reports.

These lack of investment options have continued into MLS’ current round of expansion. With the league set to grow from 20 to 24 teams by 2020, St. Louis, though appealing to the league and staff at its other franchises, has missed out to the likes of Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minnesota and Miami. (Don Garber previously told the Post-Dispatch that an expansion in St. Louis would not happen before 2020.)Los Angeles, Atlanta, Minnesota and Miami. (Don Garber previously told the Post-Dispatch that an expansion in St. Louis would not happen before 2020.)

“We would definitely have loved to be in the 24,” RJ Wallace, the overseer of the Facebook group Bring the MLS to St Louis, said. “But, most realistically, we would be within teams 25 to 28 – and I think that is a very realistic goal.”

Wallace thinks that in order for St Louis to find an investor willing to fund the reported $110m entry fee into the league, the city needs to follow the lead of some franchises that joined MLS in the past decade, starting small and taking a ground-up approach to building a soccer club. In order to do this, local soccer enthusiasts, who perhaps opt to follow European leagues rather than domestic soccer, would need to get behind a lower-level team, Wallace said. This would give deep-pocketed investors a new starting point that has not been available in the past.

Option one, which has been on the table for more than 20 years, would see that investor build a brand from scratch, as was the case with New York City FC or the soon-to-be-added LAFC. Option two, though, would see the investor take a lower-tier team, its structure and fanbase, and convert that into an MLS franchise with a soccer-specific stadium. This approach proved successful for the likes of Orlando, Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.

Thanks to a local youth soccer group, the second option is becoming more likely for St Louis. In 2007, a merger between three of the area’s main soccer clubs created Saint Louis Scott Gallagher, a group that now sponsors more than 275 boys and girls teams, aged 6 to 20, in the Greater St Louis area. Five years later, the group began looking at additional ventures to promote soccer, which, at the same time, would not put their youth development model in danger. In 2014, SLSG opted to purchase a slot in the MLS-affiliated United Soccer League, America’s third tier. The club made their debut in the USL in March 2015, and boasted an average attendance of 4,885, the fourth highest in the 24-team league, while finishing ninth in the Eastern Conference. Next season, the club and its supporters are hopeful that St Louis FC will go on to sell out every home game at the club’s 5,500-seat stadium.

“For St Louis FC, we operate every day with the goal of becoming the best USL team on and off the field,” Jeremy Alumbaugh, the club’s general manager, said. “We don’t sit trying to figure out how to get to MLS. But if we do a good enough job to create a product, to create an atmosphere in a stadium that gets people excited about the opportunity of MLS, and an ownership comes here and wants to put St Louis in MLS and we can, kind of, just start it, then that’s great. But a youth club is not going to spend a $110m expansion fee and build a soccer-specific stadium.”

Alumbaugh said that there are “always rumours” about potential investors, and that he is sure there are groups out there. But one person who has counted himself out of spearheading such a venture is St Louis FC’s CEO Jim Kavanagh, who told local news outlet KSDK that he would be interested as an investor, but not leading the push. Garber, in a previous interview, has said that there will be “no shortage of people who will be interested in owning a team.” With the league still figuring out a timeline to introduce teams 25 to 28, there is also no shortage of time.

For the time being, though, St Louis’ the factors impacting MLS prospects appear unchanged. Potential investors may have lost the opportunity to build a new franchise in a state-of-the-art stadium share. But, on the other hand, the city’s mayor, governor and sports commission remain supportive, and St Louis’ soccer history has never been in question. And in the past year St Louis has become a two-sport city, also gaining a soccer club in an MLS affiliated league that is putting together a supporter culture that could entice those willing to provide the investment and a stadium that, throughout MLS’s lifetime, has continued to elude.

“Do I think there is a group out there that will come forward eventually? Yeah, I do,” Alumbaugh said.“That’s the one thing that’s different in St Louis: it can’t be a franchise; it has to be a club – because there’s so much history here and people know what to expect. MLS is 21 years old and we haven’t had a team for 21 years … It’s going to take time.”