{"id":452708,"date":"2026-02-04T06:01:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452708\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T06:01:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:01:13","slug":"st-louis-soccer-community-excited-for-2028-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/452708\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis soccer community excited for 2028 Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) &#8211; Local soccer players are expressing excitement about St. Louis <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstalert4.com\/2026\/02\/04\/st-louis-selected-2028-olympics-soccer-venue-continuing-citys-olympic-legacy\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.firstalert4.com\/2026\/02\/04\/st-louis-selected-2028-olympics-soccer-venue-continuing-citys-olympic-legacy\/\">hosting<\/a> Olympic soccer matches in 2028, with hopes the games will elevate the city\u2019s soccer profile and boost interest in the sport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Fourteen-year-old Emry Antisdel, who plays for the St. Louis Stars Soccer Club, said he believes the Olympics will showcase the city\u2019s soccer passion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI feel like it\u2019s going to be really good for the city of St. Louis, I feel like it\u2019s overlooked and one of the best cities at soccer, if not the best, and I think playing at City Park, it would give St. Louis a better soccer system,\u201d Antisdel said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">St. Louis will host group stage and knockout matches leading up to the gold medal games in Los Angeles at the Rose Bowl Stadium in summer 2028.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Michael Woodson, the ECNL RL Director for the Stars, said St. Louis has long been a soccer city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThere\u2019s no question that it\u2019s a soccer city, it\u2019s been here since I was a kid, soccer\u2019s huge here, it\u2019s a hotbed of youth soccer,\u201d he said. \u201cGreat for the city, great for soccer itself, it\u2019s growing so fast it\u2019s only going to bring more interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Ezra Murphy, another young player, is excited to see the fanbase grow in the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt used to be that there wasn\u2019t very much soccer in the United States, and now it\u2019s getting more focused on that, and it\u2019s one of the main sports, so it\u2019s really interesting to see this will be a place where there will be Olympic soccer matches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The athletes were among those practicing at TOCA Soccer St. Louis near the Grove Tuesday. The facility provides space for teams and individuals to practice their skills.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Nick Nelson, the general manager of TOCA Soccer, said the facility hopes to benefit from increased interest in soccer during the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe drive and eyes, hopefully tourism, and businesses like us can definitely benefit from having a new soccer interest in people in town, spread the good work of TOCA and spread the good word of all the good soccer businesses in the town as well,\u201d Nelson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Antisdel said he looks forward to seeing soccer\u2019s community bonds strengthen as St. Louis prepares to welcome international competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI think the community is so special, everything about it, there\u2019s so many good clubs, we\u2019re all a family,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KMOV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) &#8211; Local soccer players are expressing excitement about St. Louis hosting Olympic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,95419,4963,561,82],"class_list":["post-452708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-excitement","tag-olympics","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}