Nashville SC

The final of the 2025 U.S. Open Cup went to a second half at Q2 Stadium in Austin, and when it ended, Nashville SC had beaten Austin FC 2-1. It was the first major piece of silverware in the club's history, won under B.J. Callaghan on 1 October 2025.

Nashville SC was founded on 19 May 2016, not as a rebrand of an older team but as a fresh license entering the USL Championship. A lower-division club already playing under the Nashville FC name sold its identity, crest and colours to the new project for a 1% stake and a board seat, then stepped aside. The club took the field in USL in 2018 and moved up to MLS as an expansion side in 2020. A year earlier, in 2017, businessman John Ingram had taken control of the club through Nashville Holdings, a change of ownership rather than a change of origin.

The team plays in electric gold and acoustic blue, and the gold gave the club its identity: Boys in Gold, the name used on the stadium PA and in every press release. Since 2022 the home ground has been GEODIS Park, marketed by the club as the literal home of the Boys in Gold.

The rivalry that matters most travels north to Cincinnati. Nashville and FC Cincinnati have turned their meetings into one of the tighter, more tactically combustible series in MLS, often slotted into Rivalry Week. There is a second, older thread running to Atlanta United, the opponent Nashville faced in its very first MLS match in 2020 — a fixture MLS once tried to brand the I-24 Derby.