Miguel Perez, who made his debut with St. Louis City SC last season while still a teenager and attending Pattonville High School, is being loaned by the club to the Birmingham Legion of the second-division USL Championship for the 2024 season.
The loan is for the whole season but City SC retains the right to recall him at any time, similar to the move the team made last season when it loaned forward Samuel Adeniran to San Antonio of the USL Championship.
With the team at full health as training camp in Florida enters its second week, playing time looks tough to come by for Perez, especially with the team acquiring defensive midfielder Chris Durkin. Perez played in 14 games for City SC but when the team got healthy late in the season, Perez didn’t appear in any of City SC’s final 13 games and didn’t suit up for the final 11. His last appearance with the team was in the Leagues Cup opener with Columbus on July 23. He has left City SC's camp to join Birmingham in Alabama.
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The level of play in the USL Championship, the second division, is higher than in MLS Next Pro, which is the third division of American soccer, and Perez will get a chance to play regularly against older, more experienced players, compared to the players he would face in Next Pro, where the players are often just out of the academy system.
The Legion came in seventh in the USL Championship’s Eastern Conference and was eliminated in the conference semifinals. The team is coached by Tom Soehn, who once was coach of D.C. United in MLS.
Perez was still 17 when he played in City SC’s inaugural game in Austin and was the team’s only player from St. Louis. It was an amazing rise for Perez, who went to camp with the team in Florida last season because midfielder Njabulo Blom was still waiting for his paperwork to be finalized and the team needed an extra body. Perez’s seized the opportunity, was a standout in camp, and signed a Homegrown contract with the team.
Perez scored two goals for City SC last season, one in an Open Cup match with Chicago and the other in a league game with Vancouver.
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