Legends drive their teams to titles. Every season Stiegwardt played for the Crows in the NPSL they won the conference — and in 2021 they were the regular season NPSL champion.

Legends dominate competition. In 2018, he was the best player in the entire conference and selected as one of the best 11 players in the entire NPSL.

Legends also make history. He has made club history. The penalty he scored against Croatian Eagles, when he was just 19, was the winner of the first game the Crows ever won, back in 2016.

It was 2018 when Stiegwardt put the Crows on his back like no Minnesota player had for his team since Kirby Puckett. He was an unstoppable force, as the accolades show. The center midfielder had it all: passing range, shooting power, and willingness to get in the tackle. He was a mix of box-to-box Frank Lampard and orchestrator Andrea Pirlo. It seemed like every game he did something memorable, starting with his half-field chip of the Dakota Fusion goalkeeper in the first home game. The Crows went undefeated in the Conference that season, only losing, in the playoffs, once Stiegwardt had left the team to go back to college.

He is another player who started playing with the Crows in 2016 when he was a teenager. Over the years he has built an unbreakable bond with the club, and with the fans.

Stiegwardt was again immense in the 2021 season, when the Crows won the NPSL regular season title and advanced in the playoffs to the Midwest Region final, and hung up his boots at the season’s close, ending on a high. When “Stiggy” was in the team, City barely lost — ever. Max Stiegwardt has a fair claim to being the greatest, and certainly the most influential, midfielder in City’s history.