Jason Reckamp
Collinsville Herald
July 12, 2008 - 12:07PM 

The Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) season is getting ever-closer.And Lori Chalupny, a standout at Nerinx Hall High in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina, couldn't be happier. For the first time, Chalupny will be able to provide area youngsters with some things she never had growing up: excessable professional role models and a concrete goal to strive for, all in a stone's throw (or maybe a short drive) from their homes.

Pete Hayes
Alton Telegraph
June 7, 2008 - 9:28PM

EAST ALTON - It may appear frustratingly slow to soccer purists in St. Louis, but the process of landing a Major League Soccer expansion franchise is moving along.

"We're very close," said Cooper, the East Alton attorney who has been spearheading the effort to bring an MLS team to St. Louis. "There are several individuals we've been in contact with about becoming investors and there is some real promise there."

How close does Jeff Cooper think he is to bringing a Major League Soccer team to St. Louis? Close enough that he has sold his interest in the lucrative law firm he started and that bears his name to devote his attention to the potential MLS club

"It means that we are so close that I've gone full time on this project," Cooper said, "to push it across the finish line. I'm confident we'll get there. The whole time this has been a matter of passion on my part. Now, I've really put everything else aside, including the business I've built for the last seven or eight years."

Essentially, Cooper has gotten out of the law business and into the soccer business.

Tom Timmermann
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 29, 2008

CHESTER, Pa. — Major League Soccer introduced Philadelphia as its 16th team Thursday, with a gala bash in an old electrical plant on the waterfront of this city just south of Philadelphia's airport.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber said St. Louis is now at the front of the line to be team No. 17.

"I've said this many times before, and I'll say it again," Garber said. "We'd like St. Louis to be our next team. ... We want a team in St. Louis. We need teams in the Midwest."

Garber emphasized that the only impediment — "The last piece of the puzzle" — is the financial depth of Jeff Cooper's ownership group. Solve that problem, he reiterated, and St. Louis will get a team.