ST. LOUIS—As the team prepares for its final regular season road match against Vancouver Wednesday night, St. Louis City SC does so knowing it has made MLS history, becoming the league’s first expansion franchise to win a regular season conference title in its debut season. 

That became official Sunday night with LAFC’s loss to Real Salt Lake, meaning St. Louis will take the Western Conference crown and have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, which begin Oct. 25 with Wild Card matches.

If the playoffs started today, St. Louis City SC would play the winner of the Wild Card single-elimination round between San Jose and Dallas in a best of 3 series. St. Louis won both matches with San Jose and split with Dallas, including a 2–0 loss in a match that began May 6 and was scoreless before it was suspended due to weather and resumed a month later.

The regular season conference crown is the second milestone the team achieved without being on the field to celebrate. It clinched a playoff berth Sept. because of an Austin draw and a Minnesota loss.

Defender Jake Nerwinski said he was watching the LAFC-RSL match with his wife and when it went final, the team’s group text chain celebrated.

“Everybody was pretty happy sending all types of emojis, memes, gifs all that stuff, yeah we were happy,” Nerwinski told reporters Monday afternoon, while noting there was more work ahead.

“We didn’t know if we were going to get to this point going back 8 or 9 months, but after you see our body of work and what this team is about, that was an expectation for us and yeah, we’d like to celebrate on the field but we’re saving that for later,” he said. 

Head Coach Bradley Carnell said the even-keeled approach has served him well as a player and because of that, the focus would stay on the field and the next opponents. After the road trip to Vancouver, the club will hold an inter-squad scrimmage Oct. 14 before closing out the regular season at home against Seattle Oct 21.

“For us 6 points…we’re chasing points. We want to cement not just history where it’s broken the very next year, we’re gonna try and create something that lasts for a few more years hopefully,” Carnell said.