St. Louisan Tim Ream selected for US World Cup team for second time

Tim Ream was walking to his car Friday at the training ground for his MLS club, Charlotte FC, carrying a box of bobblehead dolls of himself from a team promotion to bring home to his kids, when his phone buzzed with a WhatsApp message that there was a video for him. That’s when Ream learned he was going back to the World Cup.

“It made me stop in my tracks, to be completely honest,” he said Tuesday, after the 26-man roster for the team was officially announced at an event in New York, “and immediately call my wife and let her know because we’ve both been anxious and excited for the announcement.”

In the first move of the summer transfer period, St. Louis City SC announced Tuesday that forward Cedric Teuchert will leave the club when his contract expires on June 30. Because the team doesn’t play again until July, he’s effectively done now; the club held an option on him for the remainder of this season.

The move comes as little surprise, considering Teuchert’s position as the club’s third-highest-paid player — with a salary of $1.542 million, he was behind only Roman Burki and Marcel Hartel — but one who seldom plays. Teuchert played in two of City SC’s final six games before the World Cup break, and in the last one, he came off the bench as a substitute in the 88th minute (and had the assist on Daniel Edelman’s goal).

As World Cup mania begins to grip North America and Major League Soccer takes a nearly two-month break, folks in St. Louis find their local soccer club showing encouraging signs that make you want to believe St. Louis City SC has turned last year’s upheaval into a stimulative shot in the arm.

It would have been hard to forecast with any certainty what City SC would look like or the level of play reasonable to expect coming out of a stretch that included a fourth coaching change in 18 months and a change atop the sporting department.

By May 3, the only thing good going for St. Louis City SC was that Major League Soccer didn’t do relegation.

That day, City SC lost to another lackluster club, Austin FC.

If you’re going to have to wait almost two months to play your next game, the game St. Louis City SC played Saturday is a good one to tide you over until then.

City SC matched its season high with three goals, posted its second shutout of the season and climbed out of 14th place in the Western Conference for the first time in almost two months with a 3-0 win over Austin at Energizer Park.