FC Cincinnati is a professional soccer team in the United States. FC stands for football club. Soccer is called football in much of the world. Also called FCC, the team competes in the Eastern Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the United States and Canada. The team plays its home games at TQL Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. TQL stands for Total Quality Logistics, a company that is a sponsor of the stadium.
FC Cincinnati began playing its first MLS season in 2019. The team’s inaugural roster included the veteran Nigerian forward Fanendo Adi, the midfielder Fatai Alashe from the United States, and the U.S. midfielder Frankie Amaya, the overall number one selection in the 2019 MLS SuperDraft. For a discussion of soccer positions and formations, see Soccer (Players and officials).
In 2023, Cincinnati finished first in the Eastern Conference. That same year, the club won the Supporters’ Shield as the MLS team with the best regular season record.
Cincinnati has had many soccer teams that played at the professional or semiprofessional level, beginning with the Cincinnati Comets, who played from 1972 to 1975. In 2005, the Cincinnati Kings joined the United Soccer League (USL) Second Division, or USL-2, a third-tier minor league in North America that was later dissolved. The Kings played in the fourth-tier USL Premier Development League from 2008 through 2012. In 2016, a new club, FC Cincinnati, joined the USL Championship, the second-tier minor league just below MLS. FCC was promoted to MLS after the 2018 season.
