“It is with great pride that we welcome St Louis to Major League Soccer”, stated MLS Commissioner Don Garber in an official press release on Tuesday.
This move will see St Louis awarded with the 28th MLS team to join the league. This decision comes part of the MLS plan to expand from 24 teams to 28 teams in 2022.
In accordance with this plan, the newly-announced team is expected to start playing in spring 2022, with the construction of a new stadium estimated to begin in January, on a property just west of the landmark Union Station.
For well over a year, the MLS4TheLou campaign was waged far and wide, with hopes of bringing an MLS expansion team to the city of St Louis. While this was the most recent of the fan-driven campaigns to convince the MLS to bring a new team to their city, it certainly wasn’t the first.
St Louis has always had the reputation of being a soccer-mad city, with numerous youth leagues as well as US National Team fixtures being played in St Louis stadiums. It is for this reason that the public-supported campaign, driven by the financial backing of Carolyn Kindle-Betz, Jim Kavanaugh and the Taylor Family was so successful the final time around.
