Major League Soccer is set to kick off their 20th season with 20 teams. In the league’s goal to become one of the top domestic soccer leagues in the world, they look to expand to the FIFA guideline of 24 teams by 2020. An Atlanta expansion team and a second Los Angeles team will join the league in 2017. That leaves two available seats at the table for cities such as Sacramento, Minneapolis, and St. Louis among others. Newly founded Saint Louis FC looks to kick off their inaugural 2015 USL Pro season on March 28.
The possibility of St. Louis MLS Expansion
Move Quickly: Time is of the essence
With the recent announcement of the Sacramento Kings and San Francisco 49ers joining ownership at Sacramento Republic, they appear to be pushing the envelope. Meanwhile, David Beckham is rumored to have stadium news coming soon (not that many believe it). MLS has made it clear once Beckham gets a stadium deal done, Miami is in. The league also appears to be pushing a Las Vegas agenda. In short, there’s lots of competition and STL FC is coming in awfully late.
While some have pushed for the league to expand further past 24 teams, I don’t see it happening. Not anytime soon after 2020 at least. The EPL, La Liga, and Series A all have 20 teams. The Bundesliga has 18 teams. Convincing FIFA to expand is going to be difficult. Furthermore, FIFA also sets the cap on number of league games at 34. While some American soccer fans argue other leagues in the country survive with 30 teams, soccer is a different story. The NHL, NBA, and MLB have significantly more games. The NFL has only 16 games, but a much different structure for playoff qualification, that would not work in MLS.
In expanding beyond 24 teams, the league begins to constrain the schedule. At 24 teams and 34 matches (FIFA’s max for both categories), each team can have a home-and-away series with each conference rival and one match with each team in the opposite conference. Any more teams, and you have the issue of barely playing some opponents. Schedule more than 34 games, you shorten the off season. And it’s already pretty damn short:
Weeks between end of playoffs and start of preseason: NBA: 15.3 NFL: 26.6 MLB: 16.3 NHL: 16.0 MLS: 6.6
— Dan Dickinson (@GothamistDan) February 3, 2015
In an exclusive interview on Last World Soccer Club Radio on February 5, STL FC General Manager Jeremy Alumbaugh said “St. Louis has a lot of history, has a lot of tradition, but we’re late to the party. Kansas City has passed us up recently. Oklahoma City, they passed us, they had a team last year. We were sitting on the outside, we weren’t invited to the game.”
The shrewd move for any expansion-hopeful city is to assume there are only two spots left. It is critical that St. Louis move and move quickly. Time is of the essence.
Why St. Louis deserves a team: History and Talent
As a resident of the fables ‘Gateway to the West,’ I believe that St. Louis deserves an MLS expansion team (with some bias). In many ways, St. Louis is the spiritual birthplace of American soccer. As USSoccer.com archives, the city hosted the 1904 World Fair and Olympics together, with soccer as one of the events. FIFA did not get involved in soccer until four years later. In 1958, almost the entire USMNT was from St. Louis.
The following year, St. Louis University (SLU) defeated Bridgeport University 5-2 in the first ever NCAA national championship soccer tournament. SLU has gone one to win 10 national championships in Men’s soccer. They have qualified for the College Cup 13 times in the last two decades and boast alumni such as Brian McBride, Brad Davis, Jack Jewsbury, and Tim Ream.
The surrounding area has an excellent youth club soccer system, and would provide talent for an academy system that could rival anyone in MLS (save perhaps LA Galaxy, FC Dallas, and RSL). This system has produced professionals such as Brandon Barklage, Lawerence Olum, Tommy Meyer, and Will Bruin.
If a quality stadium in a good location were to built, the only two things remain: make sure the schedule makers know not to have a home game overlap with the St. Louis Cardinals and sign a Bosnian DP to make the soccer-mad Little Bosnia residents happy.
What St. Louis Must Do: Follow In The Footsteps Of Others
The one key ingredient the city has never had has been an ownership group with the financial wherewithal to make an MLS franchise happen. As demonstrated by NYCFC and LAFC, money still talks in MLS. In the absence of a big spending group, ownership groups, fans, and the city have to have a few things in place. But it has been done before.
To put it simply, follow what Orlando City did and what Sacramento Republic and San Antonio Scorpions are doing. They have a similar mold. St. Louis has a metropolitan population around 2.8 million. The other three are around 2.3 million. None had a big money ownership group to start, and thus began in USL Pro.
Orlando City was founded in 2010. They join MLS in just their fifth season of existence. Sacramento only started last season, and already have a trophy, averages 20,000 fans per home game, and have a stadium in the works. San Antonio put together a plan for Toyota Field quickly, and completed Phase I in time for their second season back in 2012.
While Orlando did not have a powerful and wealthy ownership, they had every other variable on their side: success on the field, solid attendance with a supporter culture, as well as local grassroots support from the government and community. Sacramento and San Antonio are following a similar path, and are the two best non-corporate-move expansion candidates at the moment. I exclude Minnesota for now because of the Minnesota Vikings’ interest in being majority owners.
St. Louis already has a grassroots movement. They received immediate support from the St. Louligans. “They got tired of hearing rumors. They reached out, we sat down to meet. It’s been a great relationship since then,” said Alumbaugh.
Unlike the aforementioned markets, St. Louis is a natural soccer hotbed with the interest from youth leagues, SLU, and the local Bosnian population. Alumbaugh added “A lot of people are excited. Our season tickets are really strong. We’re at a number we thought we couldn’t get to.” Whether this interest will be enough to sell out the St. Louis Soccer Park’s roughly 6,000 seats, it is not yet clear.
On the technical side, this team needs to perform. Winning two USL Pro championships in four years (Orlando) or a title in their first season (Sacramento) is probably a stretch. Qualifying for the playoffs is a must though, especially with 12 of 24 teams making it. This season and next are critical to showing MLS and the country that this infrastructure on the technical level is high quality. STL FC must have increasing levels of success each season.
Alumbaugh elaborated “We have the history and the tradition of people, but you can’t fool people. You can’t throw out a product that is so so, slap a bit name on it, slap big ticket prices on it, and expect people to come. It’s got to be real, it’s got to be legit. You have to have hard working players, you have to have guys that understand the history of St. Louis.”
With an affiliation with MLS side Chicago Fire, Alumbaugh and Head Coach Dale Schilly can gain much from observing the infrastructure of an MLS team and from an established coach like Frank Yallop. The technical staff at STL FC must demonstrate the ability to improve players. Orlando City helped develop Dom Dwyer, who was an All Star for Sporting KC last season. A Chicago Fire-loan player succeeding in the future or a roster player making a move to MLS will help reputation.
Lastly, the city of St. Louis, its governing bodies, and others must get behind the club. There was a wirlwind of support around both Orlando and Sacramento. Fan support and economic potential helped win over government support to expedite stadium deals. Saint Louis Soccer Park is sponsored by Anheuser Busch. If STL FC can get enough momentum from the general public, the government and potential investors will follow. If Anheuser Busch and the St. Louis Cardinals were to become minority owners, that would be huge.
Soccer Specific Stadium: Why the Rams Staying Doesn’t Matter
Much of the sports news in the area has been about the potential departure of the St. Louis Rams. Owner Stan Kroenke has purchased a large plot of land in Los Angeles. The city has put together a proposal for a riverfront stadium for the team that could potentially house an MLS team. This would work best if the fanbase could regularly sellout the lower bowl, or at least draw 25,000 fans. However, reports are the stadium could be completed as late as 2020.
Either the Rams are staying and getting a new stadium or they’re leaving for LA. If they stay, it could potentially work, and discussions with the Rams will begin once other prerequisites are in place. If they leave however, the Edward Jones Dome plot would be the perfect location for a SSS. It is downtown, in a major public transit hub, is right next to the Convention Center. The parking infrastructure is already in place. Tear down the dome and there’s plenty of space for a 25,000 seat stadium with all the bells and whistles and room for expansion.
Either way, there is a viable option for the MLS home of STL FC.
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