St. Louis City II

When Major League Soccer built a new development tier in 2022, St. Louis City SC needed somewhere to put the players who were not yet ready for the first team — and, at the time, no first team to be ready for. The reserves went first.

CITY2 played the opening fixture of MLS Next Pro on 25 March 2022, away to Rochester New York FC, and won 2:0. The rest of that debut season ran further than anyone had reason to expect: the side reached the final of the MLS Next Pro Cup in October, where Columbus Crew 2 beat them 4:1.

Home is CITYPARK, which opened in November 2022 and holds 22,500.

The clearest measure of what the project has produced arrived in 2025, when CITY2 finished top of the MLS Next Pro regular season. But a regular-season title is the honour that rewards a squad rather than a hot fortnight — and in a league where the roster changes with every senior call-up and every academy graduation, holding a position across a full season says something about the pipeline behind it.

The opponent the club keeps coming back to is Columbus Crew 2, and the reason is the 2022 final.