St. Louis City SC

Major League Soccer had circled St. Louis for years before the city finally got an answer. The league confirmed it on 20 August 2019, handing the region its 28th franchise, and the team arrived in the league in 2023.

The build included a ground of its own downtown, opened as CityPark and renamed Energizer Park in October 2024, with 22,423 seats. The colour scheme took longer to settle: four shades were unveiled in 2020 — City Red alongside a blue, a yellow and a grey — and three of them were dropped. Only CITY Red survived.

Roman Bürki left Borussia Dortmund in 2022 to join a team that had not yet played a match, and did so on terms that made him the highest-paid goalkeeper the league had seen to that point. He was named MLS goalkeeper of the year in 2023, and he wears the captain's armband. Behind him in the record books sits Nicolas Bouanga, the club's leading scorer, who reached 20 goals in each of the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

The rivalry with Sporting Kansas City was waiting for the club before it existed, drawn along the interstate that links the two cities and sharpened by an argument over which of them is the soccer capital of America — which is how the fixture picked up one of its more sardonic nicknames. Twelve meetings have produced four wins each and four draws.

What the trophy cabinet holds is nothing. Through the end of the 2025 season there was no MLS Cup, no Supporters' Shield, no domestic cup of any kind. The closest the club has come is the semi-final of the 2026 US Open Cup.