STL City SC’s Early Success

STL+City+SCs+Early+Success

Michael Assioun '27

Newspaper headline: “STL City SC are in First Place in the MLS in their First Season!” In St. Louis City SC’s inaugural season, we managed to secure five wins in a row, with the most goals in the league so far. We are ahead of teams like LA Galaxy, LAFC, Seattle Sounders, FC Dallas, and many more. After a devastating loss on Saturday (due to bad calls by the ref), we were still in 1st place. Now, that’s a lot of information thrown out in just a couple of sentences. In this article, I’m going to break down the whole history of STL City and my experience with them.

 

In August of 2019, the dream of every soccer fan in St. Louis came true; we were going to have our own MLS team, playing across the country, competing with the likes of David Beckahm’s Inter Miami! I was so excited, and these past four years since then have been the longest. We’ve been waiting patiently for our chance to show the MLS who we are, and we clearly have! Our stadium, the famous CITYPARK, was completed in November of 2022 ahead of the 2023 season. My aunt was actually one of the engineers behind the architecture of the stadium, and she got to see it in the process of building. We also have a St. Louis City SC 2 team, and a St. Louis City Academy, where Priory’s Owen Spore plays on the U21 team. “Playing for my city at the training facility comes with great responsibility and accountability for myself and the rest of the guys. Every day we give it our all knowing that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we will remember forever. I’m proud to represent both Priory and all of STL on the pitch,” said Owen.

                                                                                                                

Next, I would like to bring up some of the players on our team. Our captain is Roman Bürki, who comes to St. Louis from the Bundesliga. The Swiss keeper formerly played for Borussia Dortmund and joined our team in 2022. Next, on defense, we have Tim Parker, who recently played for the Houston Dynamo. He scored our first MLS goal against Austin FC and does a great job in the back. Progressing to our midfield, we have Eduard Löwen and Tomas Ostrák, each with a goal. Additionally, Löwen has three assists. As forwards we have the two main men, Nicholas Gioacchini and Joao Klauss. Gioacchini has two goals and an assist while our Brazilian striker has five goals and an assist. These two are the cherry on top of our newly made team, the dynamic duo, and without them, we wouldn’t be in the place we are in right now.

I had the privilege to be at our inaugural match against Charlotte FC, which we won 3-1, and since then, I have been following and watching every one of our games. I was deeply saddened by our loss against Minnesota, but I hope we will continue to have a strong state of mind. This could be the beginning of a championship season, but only time will tell, and until then, we will take it game by game. Newspaper headline: “STL City SC has won the MLS championship in their inaugural season!”