UPDATE: US Soccer has confirmed that the USMNT will indeed host its first home match of the 2018 World Cup qualifying cycle at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, with the Americans set to welcome the winner of the Aruba-St. Vincent & the Grenadines third-round qualifying matchup to the home of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals on Nov. 13.
The US national team will start the road to Russia 2018 with a home World Cup qualifier in St. Louis, the cradle of US soccer, according to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The newspaper reported on Sunday that the USMNT will play its first home match of the new qualifying cycle, set for Nov. 13 or 17, at Busch Stadium, home of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals. The occasion would mark the national team's first match in the city since a friendly in 1997, and their first competitive visit since the Midwestern metropolis hosted three home qualifiers during the 1990 cycle.
FIFA held the preliminary draw for the next World Cup in St. Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, placing the US in a CONCACAF fourth-round qualifying group that includes Trinidad & Tobago, and the winners of St. Vincent & the Grenadines vs. Aruba and Antigua & Barbuda vs. Guatemala third-round matchups.
With those series still to be concluded, CONCACAF has yet to confirm schedule details for the fourth round, but one of the USMNT's two November matches would take place at home. The round continues in March of next year (fixture dates are March 25 and 29) and concludes in fall 2016 (Sept. 2 and 6). The top two teams from the group will advance to the CONCACAF Hexagonal, which will begin in 2017.
One of the sport's traditional hotbeds in the United States, St. Louis provided one of the most welcoming locales for important USMNT matches during past eras. The Soccer Park in nearby Fenton, Mo. hosted World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica, Costa Rica and El Salvador in 1988 and 1989.
The last of those visits was the prelude to the dramatic 1-0 road win over Trinidad & Tobago on Nov. 19, 1989 which booked the United States' tickets to Italia 90, their first World Cup trip since 1950.
The US women’s national team visited Busch Stadium for a pre-Women’s World Cup friendly vs. New Zealand on April 4, a 4-0 win that drew a crowd of 35,817, their largest-ever gate for a USWNT home friendly.
