The St. Louis Soccer League was based in St. Louis, Missouri and existed from 1915 to 1938. At its founding, it was the only fully professional soccer league in the United States. The league was founded from two teams from the St. Louis Soccer Football League and two teams from the Federal Park Soccer League. History Two professional soccer organizations, the St. Louis Soccer Football League and the Federal Park Soccer League battled for dominance in St. Louis during the 1913–14 and 1914–15 seasons. Negotiations to end the warring between the leagues went on throughout the 1914–15 season until a plan was finalized near the end of March 1915. The plan called for the top two teams of the St. Louis Soccer Football league, Innisfails and Columbus Club, to be admitted to the U.S.F.A. and those teams to join the top two teams in the Federal Park League, St. Leo's and Ben Millers, to form a new, stronger organization, the St. Louis Soccer League. Winton E. Barker, president of the Federal Park League, was unanimously elected president of the league. In 1916, the newly established U.S. Football Association assembled a team of U.S. players for a Scandinavia. These games became the first in the history of the national team. Of the players on the U.S. roster, only Matt Diedrichsen from Innisfails was selected from outside the north east U.S. The entry of the United States into World War I drained all four teams by drafting players into the military, with St. Leo’s affected the most. In 1926, the SLSL briefly expanded to include Chicago Sparta, but the team did not complete the season, withdrawing on November 11, 1926. In 1935, the SLSL began a period of instability which led to its eventual dissolution four years later. In 1939, the league expanded to include teams from Chicago and Cleveland. Teams from these two cities and St. Louis had competed against each other from time to time, but this year, the SLSL decided to formalize the competition, which was called the “Inter-city Soccer Loop”. The league, which had experienced considerable internal strife including lawsuits between teams over player tampering had finally collapsed. The St. Louis Municipal League, which ran the lower St. Louis city divisions, became the only league. As such its top division became the de facto St. Louis first division until the creation of the St. Louis Major Soccer League