St. Louis City may just be the story of the year in American soccer. Heading into the second half of September, the midwest club have not suffered defeat in an MLS match since May 3. That’s 15 games unbeaten (11 wins, 4 draws), the longest active streak in the league and a new club record. For a club that missed the playoffs in the last two seasons, it’s a staggering change of pace.

Everything about the club at this moment in time feels fresh. Head coach Yoann Damet is in his first season as a head coach anywhere, at any level of professional soccer. He’d never helmed his own team before St. Louis hired him in December 2025, and despite a poor start to life in the 2026 season, he’s built one of the most fluid sides in MLS almost immediately. 

To understand why this is working, it helps to know where Damet came from. He spent four years as an assistant with FC Cincinnati, including two stretches as interim head coach, then moved through LA Galaxy II and the Galaxy’s first team before landing what turned out to be the most formative job of his career: three seasons as an assistant to Wilfried Nancy at the Columbus Crew, from 2023 through 2025.

Nancy’s Columbus teams during that stretch became something like the gold standard for possession-based soccer in MLS. Playing out of a fluid back three, his sides built attacks through composed center backs and a double pivot in midfield, drawing opponents into pressing before working the ball into overloaded areas to find a free man. It was widely considered the most technically refined possession team in the league, relying on deep circulation among ball players who stayed calm under pressure. The approach reshaped how Columbus played soccer entirely and the result was fluid, attacking, winning soccer that delivered an MLS Cup and a run to the CONCACAF Champions Cup final.

Damet soaked all of that up for three years, and when St. Louis hired him, the expectation around the league was that he’d bring a version of it west. That’s exactly what happened. City now build patiently through the back line and midfield pivot, bait pressure the same way Columbus used to, and increasingly score from unexpected places. At one point this summer, a St. Louis writer pointed out that the team had more goals coming from center backs and defensive midfielders than from its actual strikers, which is about as clear a sign of the team’s all-around progressive nature than anything else.

The current unbeaten streak itself didn’t arrive all at once; however, it was built slowly. St. Louis went unbeaten in five games before the summer’s World Cup break, which Damet called proof that the team no longer needed to play direct or lean on set pieces to create chances. When the season resumed, the run kept extending. 10 games unbeaten by mid August, including a U.S. Open Cup draw. 11 after grinding past a Houston Dynamo side that had been sitting atop the Western Conference. 14 heading into a September 13 home game against Minnesota United, which St. Louis won 4-2 to push the streak to 15. Along the way, the club also reached the U.S. Open Cup semifinals for the first time in its history.

If the unbeaten run announced St. Louis as a team on the rise, their summer transfer business announced even more ambition.. On September 2, St. Louis sent Colorado $12 million plus add-ons for 26-year-old Brazilian striker Rafel Nabarro. It was the largest cash for player trade in MLS history. Navarro signed a four-year deal as a Designated Player, and Colorado kept a percentage of any future transfer fee.

The price tag makes sense once you look at what Navarro had already done in this league. Since arriving on loan from Palmeiras in 2023, he’d scored 38 goals in 97 appearances for the Rapids, including 10 in 22 games before the move. Sporting director Corey Wray said the club had targeted him specifically because of how he’d fit the system Damet was building, pointing to his pressing and link up play as much as his finishing.

Navarro hasn’t needed any time to adjust. He scored twice in his full debut, a 2-2 draw at Portland, then scored twice more, including a penalty, in the 4-2 win over Minnesota. That made him the first player in club history to score in each of his first two appearances. It’s a pairing that echoes what Colorado had going for it, a possession-heavy buildup finished off by a genuinely clinical striker, and it gives St. Louis the kind of end product that had occasionally been missing even while dominating games.

At 11 wins, 6 losses, and 8 draws, St. Louis now sit comfortably in the Western Conference’s upper tier with 10 games left, level on points with the coveted top-four. Damet isn’t getting carried away with any of it. “It’s still a long season,” he said before the Minnesota game. “A lot can happen in the next 10 games. We focus on ourselves, on our preparation, on being consistent.”

That kind of measured tone tracks with a coach who spent three years watching Nancy insist on the same principles game after game in Columbus, whether results were going well or not. St. Louis has taken that same conviction and paired it with real firepower up front now that Navarro’s in the building. Whether it ends in a trophy is still an open question. But for a club that is only just finding their footing in MLS, St. Louis City is proving their ambition with each passing week.