The recent rash of MLS expansion has seemingly left St. Louis in its dust. Despite being an early favorite before Vancouver and Portland jumped to the head of the pack, Jeff Cooper's bid was deemed too lacking in financial weight for the league's taste, and dropped off of future franchise radar.
That doesn't mean that the effort is dead, however, and a recent story on Stltoday.com reminds us that top-level soccer may still have a future in the Midwestern city.
While Jeff Cooper's St. Louis Soccer United group has focused their stadium-building efforts on two sites, one in Collinsville (the originally proposed home of potential MLS franchise), and the other in Fenton (site of the stadium complex recently ceded by Anheuser-Busch to the group), a third stadium possibility has come into play, with an unconnected real estate concern at the forefront of the project.
With Major League Soccer's most accomplished club, DC United, still searching for even one potential stadium site, this plethora of options in St. Louis before a team even arrives (and it's unclear if/when that will happen) is especially interesting by contrast. The league's goal of a soccer specific stadium for every team is still a ways from being completed, though only two clubs could be considered to be without a solid plan; other than United, only New England seems locked into their over-sized and inappropriate venue.
Could St. Louis be in line to receive a current franchise?
If St. Louis is unable to secure an expansion bid, the relocation of another club might be their best bet. Although moving either the Revolution or United would be a supreme travesty, Don Garber has intimated that relocating DC could be necessary if a stadium deal is not be worked out in the immediate metropolitan area. Seen as an idle threat by some, it's important to remember that MLS has already relocated one successful franchise when a stadium seemed not-forthcoming (San Jose in 2005). United is the more obvious relocation candidate of the two, as the team with the least-favorable stadium lease at the moment; it appears inconceivable that MLS would take the Revolution out of New England and away from Robert Kraft, one of the league's original investors and a man whose ownership of the New England Patriots allows his soccer club to play in Gillette Stadium free of charge.
Regardless of the inevitability, or lack thereof, of St. Louis getting an MLS franchise, they seemed committed to the effort. The emergence of a real estate group unconnected with St. Louis Soccer United proposing a stadium project only shines a negative focus on those cities unable to work out a deal for their established clubs. Without denigrating the worthiness or Portland, Vancouver, or even Montreal, it also reinforces that Cooper's inability to find enough money for his bid was truly unfortunate.
St. Louis will certainly come back up as a possibility for the league's 20th team (provided that Montreal is the slam dunk that they appear to be), so perhaps all is not lost. If Cooper is able to find a few more investors, or just one with extremely deep pockets, Chicago and Kansas City may yet have another natural rivalry to look forward to.
St. Louis has also been mentioned as a possible location for a USL-1 franchise, and with that league losing some of it's strongest markets to MLS expansion, that placement only makes sense. Running a successful ULS-1 club is also a proven path to MLS, though the cities recently added to the league also possessed a reasonably rich history that St. Louis lacks.
Clearly, St. Louis isn't dead as a professional soccer market, especially if their proclivity for finding stadium sites is any measure.
