Christos

When Christos FC takes the field against Baltimore City FC, both sides call it the Charm City Derby — the one fixture on the calendar that means something beyond league points, two amateur clubs claiming the same city's soccer weekends.

The Haislip brothers put the team together in 1997 to compete in the Maryland Major Soccer League. A 2018 merger with FC Baltimore 1729 folded another local side into the club without changing its name. Christos FC joined USL League Two in 2022, the first club from Maryland to do so.

The honours board tells an amateur story rather than a professional one. Christos won the USASA National Open Cup twice, in 2016 and 2018, and paired the first of those with the National Amateur Cup the same year. Its over-30 side took the Gerhard Mengel National Cup three years running, from 2012 to 2014, and an over-50 side added a national title of its own in 2024. Ben Bender came through the club before MLS took him with the first pick of its 2022 draft; Jonathan Bell followed a similar path into the league.

Home matches have moved around Baltimore's college and pro venues. The 2025 season split games between Retriever Soccer Park on the UMBC campus and Under Armour Stadium, known locally as The House, where the pitch is set up for around 1,000 spectators inside a ground built for 1,400. From 2026, Christos FC plans to play every home fixture at Under Armour Stadium, settling into a single ground as it continues in USL League Two.