Fire's burgeoning St. Louis rivalry will write a new chapter this week
St. Louis CITY SC's first season in MLS exceeded all expectations. Playing in a state-of-the-art, brand-new downtown soccer-specific stadium, Bradley Carnell's team finished atop the Western Conference and, despite a first-round playoff exit, had little to be ashamed of.
However, there was one glaring blip in their 2023 season: their meetings with the Chicago Fire.
Chicago and St. Louis are two cities that have been going at each other for nearly two centuries, dating back to the Industrial Revolution, and that naturally manifested itself into the rise of professional sports. The hotly-contested and controversial 1885 World Series between the then-Chicago White Stockings (now the Cubs) and then-St. Louis Browns (now the Cardinals) fueled one of the longest-running rivalries in North America, one that later translated into hockey and now soccer.
The entry of St. Louis CITY into Major League Soccer gave the Chicago Fire an opportunity to compete with a new local rival. Despite the league's decision to place CITY in the West, it fortunately gave the clubs a chance to play one another during last year's Rivalry Week, and they also met a few days prior in the U.S. Open Cup.
Goals from Maren Haile-Selassie and Fabian Herbers propelled the Fire to a 2-1 win in the Open Cup game, which was Frank Klopas' first game as interim head coach following the dismissal of Ezra Hendrickson. Four days later, a scrappy Rafa Czichos goal off of a Xherdan Shaqiri set piece handed the Fire an important 1-0 win after an all-around strong performance.
"I do feel that rivalry tension growing on the field," Fire goalkeeper Chris Brady told MIR97 Media on Friday. "I definitely felt it in that Open Cup game. I think the fact that we played a midday game that week for the league game was a weird one, but the fact that we got out of there with a win, it was good to stick it to them."
For the league game in particular, St. Louis' traveling contingent was particularly notable. Roughly 200 fans made the trip, staking out a section in Soldier Field's upper bowl opposite the Fire supporters' end. An estimated 250 Fire fans are expected to make up the away end at CITYPARK on Saturday, though that is the maximum number as the home team limited the number of away tickets sold.
The relatively large numbers of traveling support — at least by MLS standards given the vast distances between most teams — in matches between Chicago and St. Louis has also helped fuel the brewing animosity between the two fanbases. Online interactions between Fire and CITY fans are often not pretty, no different from the long-established Cubs-Cardinals and Blackhawks-Blues rivalries in other major sports. While the Fire faithful will represent a small percentage of the crowd at the usually-electric CITYPARK, they will be sure to make their voices heard, as they did in Columbus earlier this season.
"When you look at proximity where St. Louis is, it's an opportunity for our fans that always support the team to be there," said Fire head coach Frank Klopas. "If I go back in my time as a youngster, playing youth soccer here with the state teams and when we played St. Louis, obviously that was a rivalry because we wanted to showcase ourselves and make sure that they realize that we were the best in the Midwest. I think it's there. I think it's going to have to take some time to evolve and be what it really can be, probably a great rivalry in the future."
While the league has primarily promoted the St. Louis-Kansas City rivalry, likely due to both teams' being in the Western Conference, the emerging dislike between the Chicago and St. Louis franchises is one that hasn't gone unnoticed. Saturday's match has been included as part of the Rivalry Week promotion, featured this matchday alongside duels such as Portland-Seattle, Columbus-Cincinnati, and Dallas-Austin.
"I know the fans and the media, all that, they're doing that on their own," said Brady. "But I would really like it if we were their bitter rivals."
St. Louis CITY will host the Chicago Fire on Saturday at CITYPARK in St. Louis, with kickoff shortly after 7:30 PM Central Time.
