On a week in which Major League Soccer celebrates star-studded rivalries on the pitch, Sporting Kansas City has a new neighbor that just might become its fiercest foe.
After months of growing speculation, MLS announced Tuesday that St. Louis has been awarded the league’s 28th franchise. The club is expected to begin play as an expansion side in 2022, giving Sporting Kansas City its closest MLS opponent ever.
With Tuesday’s announcement comes an exciting opportunity for Kansas City and St. Louis to fuel their long-standing sports rivalry. Separated by 250 miles on Interstate-70, these cities are no strangers to stoking flames as their professional sports teams go head-to-head.
Sporting has taken the field in St. Louis for exhibition matches during the club’s early days and later for a 2009 SuperLiga match against Mexican side Atlas. None of that will compare to the thrill of going up against a true Midwestern rival in MLS competition on a yearly basis.
In the space below, we examine the rich sporting rivalry shared by Kansas City and St. Louis.
The Soccer Rivalry
Roots in the NASL
The oldest professional soccer roots tying these cities together date back 51 years, when the Kansas City Spurs and the St. Louis Stars were two of 17 charter members in the North American Soccer League.
The Spurs and Stars first squared off on April 27, 1968, at Kansas City’s now-demolished Municipal Stadium. A national TV audience on CBS saw Kansas City prevail 4-0 behind a brace from Ernie “The Gun” Winchester and additional strikes from Willie Roy and Eric Barber. The Spurs would finish above St. Louis in the division standings each year from 1968-1970—winning the 1969 league championship in the process—before folding ahead of the 1971 campaign.
Going Indoors
The birth of the Kansas City Comets in 1981 transitioned the KC-STL soccer rivalry indoors. Throughout the 1980s, the Comets and St. Louis Steamers (later renamed the Storm) locked horns during the Major Indoor Soccer League’s pinnacle of popularity. The series moved into the 1990s with a few more rebrands as the Kansas City Attack and St. Louis Ambush competed annually until 2000.
Kansas City’s indoor team rebooted as the Comets in 2010 and in 2013 welcomed cross-state rivals St. Louis Ambush to the Major Indoor Soccer League. Together the clubs jumped to the Major Arena Soccer League one year later.
Open Cup Encounter
On June 16, 2015, the first professional outdoor soccer match between Kansas City and St. Louis in over four decades took place at sold-out Children’s Mercy Park. Sporting used a second-half Graham Zusi goal to claim a 1-0 victory over USL Championship outfit Saint Louis FC in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Round of 32, and Manager Peter Vermes’ side would go on to lift the trophy three months later in Philadelphia.
SPR vs. STL
When the Swope Park Rangers took the field for their inaugural season in 2016 as Sporting Kansas City’s USL Championship affiliate, Saint Louis FC was waiting as its biggest adversary. SPR and Saint Louis FC have met 10 times since then, with the Rangers claiming two wins and four draws.
Player Connections
Six players who have logged MLS minutes for Sporting Kansas City hail from the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Mike Sorber: The former U.S. international played at Saint Louis University and Pumas in Mexico before joining Kansas City as the Wiz’s first-ever player for the inaugural 1996 MLS season.
Matt McKeon: Another Saint Louis University standout, McKeon was selected by Kansas City with the first pick in the 1996 MLS College Draft. He went on to record 18 goals and 19 assists in 183 competitive appearances for the club across two separate stints from 1996-1998 and 2000-2002, winning MLS Cup in 2000.
Chris Klein: An integral member of the Wizards from 1998-2005, Klein amassed 43 goals and 54 assists in 235 matches for the club. Inducted as a Sporting Legend in 2015, he also earned 22 caps for the U.S. Men’s National Team.
Mark Santel: Currently an assistant coach for his alma mater, the Saint Louis University product spent his final professional season with the Wizards in 2001 after representing the Dallas Burn and U.S. MNT earlier in his career.
Brad Davis: The 2014 World Cup veteran and heralded set piece specialist ranks third on the all-time MLS assists chart. Davis spent his most prolific spell with the Houston Dynamo, but his final MLS season came as a member of Sporting Kansas City in 2016.
Wan Kuzain Wan Kamal: Sporting signed Kuzain in April 2018 as the ninth Homegrown Player in team history. This made Kuzain the club’s first homegrown signing to progress from the Sporting KC Academy to the Swope Park Rangers to the senior team.
Baseball, Football and Beyond
The I-70 Series
Few would argue which Major League Baseball team has a prouder history. The Cardinals own 11 World Series titles as one of the league’s most successful franchises. The Royals, by comparison, have two World Series championships and just as many postseason appearances over the last three decades.
Even so, Royals fans continue to wield bragging rights after what unfolded in the 1985 World Series. That fall, Kansas City overcame a 3-1 series deficit to beat the Cardinals in seven games—including a remarkable 11-0 win in Game 7 at Kauffman Stadium—for the team’s first world championship. It remains the lone postseason series ever contested between the clubs.
The Governor’s Cup
St. Louis lost the Rams to Los Angeles in 2016, putting an end to the Governor’s Cup contested by Missouri’s two National Football League teams. From 1996-2015, the Kansas City Chiefs posted a perfect 6-0 regular season record in the series.
The first iteration of the Governor’s Cup lasted from 1968-1988, when the Cardinals played in St. Louis before moving to Arizona. The Chiefs held the upper hand with three wins and a tie across five regular season meetings.
Short NHL Stint
The Kansas City Scouts spent just two NHL seasons in the Heartland, but their first-ever home win at Kemper Arena came at the expense of the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 13, 1974.
#SKCvSTL: Looking Ahead
With palpable excitement also comes tremendous anticipation. #MLS4TheLou can look back on Aug. 20, 2019 as a momentous day in St. Louis soccer history—the inception of a club that plans to compete in MLS well into the future. Some 250 miles west, Kansas City soccer fans can begin realistically dreaming about the start of an intense derby against their nearest MLS neighbors.
The SKCvSTL rivalry won’t truly ignite for another two and a half years, but make no mistake about what will happen until then: fans will take sides, banter will be exchanged and the passion surrounding the sport will burn brighter in the Heartland.
Indeed, the sports rivalry between Kansas City and St. Louis is about to reach a whole new level.
