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Steve Conway should be the captain of the squad.

The chief of staff of Mayor Lyda Krewson knows a thing or two about root, root, rooting for the home team. the other day about the second effort in so many years to build a city-owned soccer stadium in the Downtown West neighborhood:

“You’re not going to see a proposal this good anywhere, any place in the country.�

Give me an H. Give me a Y. Give me a P. … You know where this is going:

H-Y-P-E-R-B-O-L-E.

On one hand, I get it. The city wants to don its soccer scarves and tell MLS commissioner Don Garber that this time, they really mean it, they’re going to build a stadium. This time, no pesky voters are going to get in the way. This time, they’re not going to lose out to the Cincinnatis and Sacramentos of the world.

But here’s the problem. There’s no way that what Conway said is true.

Comparing stadium deals is difficult, but Neil deMause is pretty good at it. He’s a New York-based journalist and co-author of

The book is one of many in the genre that explains that which numerous economists have determined after years of study: Public stadium deals are nearly never all they’re cracked up to be. Billionaire owners and the elected officials who hand over public tax incentives nearly always overpromise and underdeliver, with the expected economic nirvana always being just around the next corner.

The current St. Louis soccer stadium proposal is hands down better than the last one, in that the ownership group — most of them women from the Taylor family that founded Enterprise Rent-A-Car — are seeking significantly less from city taxpayers than the previous effort. DeMause agrees with that.

“The latest plan is arguably less onerous for the public than lots of other stadium projects out there — and certainly better than the previous soccer proposal for St. Louis,� deMause says. “But that’s damning with faint praise, because the median in stadium deals is ‘pretty awful.’�

After Conway issued his statement about the stadium, I sought an answer to the question: Is it really the greatest stadium deal ever? Just a month and a half ago, it turns out, deMause provided the answer. No.

, he gave four recent examples of the best of the worst, stadium deals that “don’t suck� for taxpayers. There’s one of MLS’ most recent stadiums, in Orlando, Fla., where the owner footed the bill for construction and agreed to pay property taxes. The new St. Louis ownership group has said paying property taxes is a deal killer. Conway, by the way, suggests the Orlando stadium is an MLS outlier.

Conway points out St. Louis isn’t “getting a penny� right now in tax revenue off the land where the soccer stadium would sit. “This is going to be a phenomenal opportunity.�

Then there’s the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, built with no public money, and the old Metrodome in Minneapolis, which was built entirely with public money but created a revenue stream for the city because it took all the parking revenue and much of the ad and concessions income.

Then there’s AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of Major League Baseball’s Giants, which was also built without public funds and pays property taxes. How did this happen? Voters turned the Giants down four times when they asked for public funding.

In other words, voters, as they did here a year ago, did the job that too many politicians in St. Louis seem to not want to do: negotiate.

On Friday, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen a resolution supporting tax incentives for the new stadium, including property tax and ticket tax abatement. Only a couple of aldermen were even willing to point out that the real details will matter when it comes time to approve the lease.

But if Conway’s statement — and a similar one made by his boss — are taken at face value, what is there, really, to negotiate? It’s already the best deal in the country.

St. Louisans don’t really have to have a very long memory to know that what is promised in stadium deals is rarely delivered. The arena that now bears the Enterprise name that hosts the Blues is but one example. Its original lease said the team owners were responsible for upkeep. A couple of decades later, that’s no longer the case, and taxpayers are on the hook. “We learned our lesson on the Blues arena,� Conway says.

And of course, we all remember the St. Louis Rams lease for the Edward Jones Dome, the one that put money aside into a preservation account to pay for future repairs and upkeep? That all went out the window when team owner Stan Kroenke got wandering eyes.

When he left town, sports fans quickly turned on him, naming him Public Enemy No. 1.

Now they’re making googly eyes at a different billionaire. It’s worth remembering, though, that the Taylors won’t really own a new St. Louis soccer team. In MLS, team “owners� are really investors in . The teams are all owned by the league, making the billionaire investor partners more than competitors.

One of those investors is none other than Enos Stanley Kroenke.

Welcome back to St. Louis, Stan. Three cheers for you.