And their record-breaking attendances from the get-go indicate that an MLS place could well be theirs in future rounds of expansion.

"We believed that if we did this the right way and ran it at a professional level we felt like people would respond," Berding told The Telegraph in an interview.

"We didn't expect we would be drawing 20,000 people in our second [home] game but we certainly felt that that potential was there."

There are now plans in place to remove some of the tarpaulin at their ground, Nippert Stadium, which is primarily the University of Cincinnati's American football stadium, to increase its soccer capacity.

"We have tarps around the stadium to reduce the capacity to 20,000 but the other night we were sold out and were selling tickets behind the tarps and to the side of them," Berding adds.

"The next thing we could consider would be to remove some of the tarps on the lower sections to sell more tickets. Is that something we've been talking about this week? Yes. Is that something we would have the ability to do in the future? Yes.

"Right now we've trying to convert a lot of ticket sales into season tickets - last week people who came the game for the first time bought season tickets. If we can go from 5,500 season tickets to 7,500 season tickets that gives us a better evaluation for opening up other sections.