ST. LOUIS - Real rivalries in Major League Soccer can be few and far between, sometimes even geographically. As a wave of expansion teams sees the league’s size increase seemingly every two years, new rivalries form and new hatred boils, even if some of that hatred feels a bit forced.
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St. Louis City SC found natural geographic rivals across the state of Missouri in Sporting Kansas City. It took time for the animosity on the field to grow, and the animosity in the stands was more about podcast titles and proper capitalization than a true hatred of the rival franchise from across the state line.
Then came the 2023 MLS Cup playoffs. St. Louis City SC coasted into the playoffs as a top seed that had clearly taken their foot off the gas, and their rival punished them dearly for it. SKC came into the then-named CITYPARK and shelled City 4-1, and followed that performance up with a 2-1 win at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas, to end City’s dream inaugural season.
Neither team made the playoffs in 2024 and spent the year scratching and clawing at a potential wild card spot. The games between the two became more memorable. Last April’s 3-3 draw was exactly the game that rivalries are built on.
Joao Klauss had one of his best games in a St. Louis City shirt, scoring a goal and playing the brand of bully ball that made him a favorite under previous head coach Bradley Carnell, and a fan favorite as well. Celio Pompeu scored an absolute screamer from outside the box, and Tomas Totland’s 92nd-minute equalizer made sure City took a point back down I-70 towards St. Louis.
Last July’s 1-1 draw wasn’t as frantic, but a St. Louis City team that was struggling mightily and had just fired aforementioned head coach Carnell. City were also without several key players, the since-loaned Nökkvi Thórisson scored City’s first half goal. Sporting Kansas City equalized in the 73rd minute, and a point each was probably a fair result given the run of play.
With neither team thinking about the postseason late last season, their September 28 meeting in St. Louis was purely about bragging rights, and a chance for a vastly improved City team to get one up on their cross-state challengers. They did exactly that, riding great performances from new arrivals Cedric Teuchert and Marcel Hartel to a 3-1 victory.
Heading into their first meeting in 2025, both teams would like to be in better positions, but the two teams have taken drastically different paths to their current positions in the MLS Western Conference standings.
St. Louis City started off with two draws and two wins, sitting as high as 4th in the conference at one point. But two back-to-back 1-0 losses have many fans and commentators questioning if the team is on the right path going forward, both figuratively and literally.
“It’s a balance,” said City head coach Olof Mellberg speaking to the media on Thursday afternoon. “You make those decisions for every game, and we’re trying to get what we think are the best players on the pitch. If those players are five strikers, we might find a way to put them all on the pitch at the same time.”
“I’m a believer in really good players that can play various positions, it doesn’t matter if they’re center backs or strikers. So it’s obviously a balance. For Austin, we decided on those eleven players, and looking back at the game, it gave us a lot of entries into the final third. It was probably our best game in the build up. We lacked quality and sometimes personnel in the final third.”
Sporting Kansas City, on the other hand, sits dead last in all of MLS with just a point on the season, drawing once and losing five of their six matches so far. It was a start so dire it cost longtime manager and club legend Peter Vermes his job.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for Vermes was a 2-1 loss on the road facing FC Dallas, in a game SKC took an early lead, but gave up two goals on less than stellar defensive efforts, and couldn’t claw back into the game.
Vermes became a technical director for Sporting in 2006, and assumed the head coaching spot as well in 2009. His run with Kansas City turned ugly in 2024 and this season, but over his 609 match reign across all competitions, SKC won the 2013 MLS Cup, the US Open Cup in 2012, 2015, and 2017, and 11 total MLS Cup playoff appearances.
Vermes not only oversaw a period of growth and success for the club, but the total rebrand of the formerly named Kansas City Wizards into Sporting Kansas City, and the team moved into their current home in Kansas at Children’s Mercy Park.
Tactically it might not have always been pretty, but Vermes is a big reason Kansas City became a soccer city, and now a perfect rival for St. Louis. Two cities with soccer history, both in the past and the present.
“I am thankful to everyone, especially the ownership, for giving me the opportunity of being a steward of this club for the past two decades,” said Vermes in a club statement on Monday. “I wish the club nothing but the best in the future.”
That future for Sporting Kansas City starts Saturday against their biggest rivals, with interim head coach Kerry Zavagnin taking the wheel of a sputtering Sporting side. Sporting’s winless run isn’t just limited to 2025, they haven’t won a single game since last September, a 13-game winless streak that St. Louis City would like to extend to 14 Saturday night.
City will have to do so without five regular starters this season, forcing Olof Mellberg to get a bit creative to put together a cohesive team and plug the gaps that need to be filled.
Keeper and captain Roman Bürki is still out with a fractured hand, but has been on the training fields with a brace. Tomas Totland and Rasmus Alm are still out of action.
Eduard Löwen is still not with the team, having left last week to deal with a personal matter. Löwen’s timeline is unclear, but City historically just aren’t the same without their midfield magician.
Injured in last Sunday’s 1-0 loss to Austin FC were Chris Durkin and Jannes Horn. Both were hoped to have suffered slight knocks or cramps, but both are seemingly set to miss a substantial amount of time.
Durkin came off last Sunday with an injured knee, which was described in Thursday’s press conference as an MCL “strain or slight tear”, which seemingly sidelines him for the foreseeable future. A knee injury ended Durkin’s 2024 prematurely, and it now risks his 2025 as well.
Horn looked like he went down with a cramp last Sunday, but was revealed this week to have strained a quad muscle and is now also on the mend away from the training fields. Horn has been frequently called upon since his arrival last season, an answer to St. Louis City’s left back question that plagued the team for their first season and a half.
On the positive side, Cedric Teuchert is back to full fitness and figures to make the City lineup come Saturday evening. How Mellberg shuffles the deck to both fill the voids left all over the field and create some offense against a rival and hungry Sporting Kansas City team remains to be seen.
Kickoff is set for 7:40 pm in Kansas City, Kansas on Saturday evening. The game will be streaming on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, and local radio broadcasts are available on KYKY 98.1 FM in English and KXOK 102.9 FM in Spanish.
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