FC Cincinnati II

Highland Heights, Kentucky, sits across the river from Cincinnati, close enough that a reserve team can share a city's colours without sharing its stadium. Scudamore Field at NKU Soccer Stadium, home to Northern Kentucky University's own programme, holds 1,000 people and became the venue where FC Cincinnati sends its young players to be tested before anyone talks about the first team.

FC Cincinnati II started in 2022, one of 21 clubs in the inaugural season of MLS Next Pro, a league built specifically for this kind of work — moving academy prospects toward senior football through real, competitive minutes rather than friendlies. The team wears the same orange and blue as the parent club, home kit orange shirt with blue shorts, and the shared nickname, The Orange and Blue, follows from that rather than from anything the reserve side has built on its own.

The results have climbed steadily. A third-place finish in the Eastern Conference in 2024 brought the club's first playoff appearance, sealed with a 2-1 win over Columbus Crew 2 on 15 September before Philadelphia Union II ended the run. In 2025, Cincinnati reached the playoffs again, finishing seventh in the East on 41 points from 9 wins, 7 draws and 12 losses — back-to-back qualifications, still without a Next Pro Cup to show for either.

Sammy Castellanos took over as head coach on 8 January 2026, only the second man to hold the job since the club's founding, following Tyrone Marshall. What actually justifies the operation, though, is the pipeline running through it: Kai Thomas, the team's captain, made his first-team debut on 21 September 2022, and forward Arquímides "Quimi" Ordonez followed him up as the academy's second Homegrown signing.

Columbus Crew 2 remains the closest thing to a rival, an in-state opponent Cincinnati met three times in the 2024 Northeast Division schedule — no borrowed name for it yet, nothing like the "Hell is Real" derby the senior clubs play. By 2026, on a stadium built for 1,000, FC Cincinnati II sat top of its table.