For travelers, it’s easy to literally look down on Kansas City, Missouri. Located in the heart of the Midwest, it represents the definition of country for those heading to more famous destinations as they cross the elevated highway.
That perspective is about to change this summer as the sports world’s attention turns to Kansas City with hundreds of thousands of football fans.
Recommended stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Arrowhead Stadium, the 76,000-capacity home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, will host six World Cup matches, including the quarterfinals between Argentina and Portugal, which is expected to be a showdown between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Kansas City overcame significant odds to become one of 11 U.S. venues for the largest World Cup in history, which spanned 39 days from Mexico City to Vancouver, Canada.
According to the 2020 Census, Kansas City is the 37th most populous city in the United States, although most of the other host cities are in the top 10 by population.
“That’s a big difference. Most of the cities in between were bid cities,” Alan Dietrich, chief operating officer of Major League Soccer (MLS) team Sporting Kansas City, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.
The initial bid list in 2017 included 37 stadiums in 34 cities, including Chicago, Detroit, Orlando, and Washington, D.C., which hosted the 1994 World Cup. All of that fell through, and when the announcement was made on June 16, 2022, Kansas City would become the World Cup host city.
How did it happen?
Back in 2013, Kansas City declared itself the “Soccer Capital of America” as a registered trademark. They invested more than $650 million in stadiums and training facilities. Although the World Cup was a long way off, the local organizing committee still did its best.
“We did some crazy things,” Dietrich said.
This included establishing a kind of Potemkin soccer village to impress visiting FIFA officials.
FIFA officials arrived late at night at the aging Kansas City Municipal Airport (after being replaced) to visit the venue, but the terminal was far from deserted.
“We had a lot of volunteers from Sporting Kansas City staff walking around and making the city look alive and vibrant,” Dietrich said. “If someone looks lost or confused, they will ask if they can help.”
On the 24 km (15 miles) journey into town, drivers made sure to show officials where the new airport was located.
Visitors were assigned hotel rooms with visible signs that read “We Want The Cup.” Outside the hotel, there happened to be a pop-up small-sided game being held on the grass field.
Jake Reid, vice-chairman of the local organizing committee and chairman of Sporting KC, told Al Jazeera: “When they see it, they will smile and nod.” “But I think it’s important that we try.”
FIFA officials extended their stay to watch the U.S. women’s national team play. They left on a 6 a.m. flight.
“I won’t say which city, but the city next door forgot their transportation and had to wait at the airport for three hours,” Dietrich said. “We tried our best to coordinate everything, but in another city, they wouldn’t even come pick us up. That kind of helped. But we still thought we only had a 50-50 chance.”
Kansas City turned a negative situation into a positive. Nowheresville became a “center” and air travel became easy. Of course it is a long road, but there is no traffic jam.
“We were at the bottom of the transportation rankings. We turned that around on every front,” Reed said.
“The reality of distance is that it takes over two hours from the airport to MetLife (New Jersey stadium) and 22 minutes from the airport to Arrowhead. We were the first city to lock up buses, and now we have over 225 buses for (public transportation).”
Cities with Designated Marketing Areas, which ranked 32nd in the U.S. at the time, translates to “small market, big region,” Reid said. Kansas City’s population is listed at 508,000, with a metro area population of 2.2 million.
Like the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals baseball teams, the World Cup is expected to draw fans from within a three-hour drive. Reed expects them to “stop in from Omaha, Springfield. Look at Kansas City on a map, we’re small. Look at our fan base, it’s pretty spread out.”
Mr Reid added:
“In New York or Boston, it’s a formality. We’re a major market and we’re told events are coming here. We didn’t expect to get this, so we had to hope for the best.”
“Magical moment” and base camp
Most cities would be happy just hosting the World Cup, but the people of Kansas City aren’t. After a draw in last year’s final, Argentina, England and the Netherlands chose Kansas City, while Algeria chose the neighboring city of Lawrence, making another successful coup through the base camp.
That meant another romance. In England, Reid said, Kansas City hosted “a huge lunch with enough barbecue to feed an army” in the Power & Light District downtown. They weren’t sure if the deal was going through until they had a dinner that included “a few glasses of wine.”
England manager Thomas Tuchel said: “I turned to Jake and said, “Guys, can you help us? Because what we’re going to do when we win the tournament is that we’re all going to get tournament-specific tattoos.”” Dietrich said.
“So Jake and I both said that’s enough. I have three kids, and they all have tattoos. And I always said, think about how they’re going to feel when they get them years later[after that]. But I want to get a tattoo. I’m definitely going to get one.”
The fact of the matter is, this is still the far-flung Midwest, and there’s potential for boredom. Wayne Rooney, who was based in Rustenburg outside Johannesburg during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, said England’s players were tired of “darts and snooker”.
Downtime is a consideration in Kansas City. Dietrich said that during the visit, “we staged what we call ‘magical moments’ to surprise and delight.”
It might just be sitting with the Argentinians at Fiorella’s Jack Stack BBQ. Argentina spoke about winning the 2022 World Cup, and Kansas City residents shared Kansas City legends, from Jesse James to the anything-goes era of jazz, the origins of barbecue and the local specialty, brisket “grilled ends.”
“We tried our best to educate them as much as we could,” Reed said. “I couldn’t tell you what they were holding.”
But it turns out there’s more to recruiting than gluttony and overkill. Kansas City also adjusted its pitch to Algeria, which preferred the calmer environment of Lawrence, 48 km (30 miles) from Kansas.
“They were drawn to the quiet environment,” Reed said. “Rolling hills, outdoor space, and lots of trees.”
The hosts also noted customs and religious practices.
“They wanted halal meat, so we worked with three different suppliers to arrange it,” Reid said. “The details meant a lot to them.”
Lawrence is an idyllic college town of approximately 100,000 people and home to the popular University of Kansas Jayhawks basketball team.
But Algerians may appreciate the era when the country was a battleground for independence. The Jayhawks’ nickname comes from the anti-slavery factions of Bleeding Kansas (a series of battles fought between pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates from 1854 to 1859) who fought to preserve the state’s freedom before the Civil War.
“America’s Soccer Capital”
And the claim to be the soccer capital of America? The history of football in this region dates back to the 1880s, when the Santa Fe Railroad opened the American West by fielding a team in Topeka, Kansas.
Soccer was ignored by other sports for decades until the 1966 World Cup, which prompted several U.S. cities to invest in professional teams. The Kansas City Spurs played Santos and Pele in front of a crowd of 19,296 at Municipal Stadium in 1968 (ending in a 4–1 loss for the host team) and played for three seasons starting in 1968.
In 1969, the Spurs won the championship of the North American Soccer League (NASL), then a five-team league, but the team disbanded in 1971 amid financial and organizational challenges.
Then came indoor football, and the Kansas City Comets (1979-1991) went on to win, beating both NBA teams (KC-Omaha Kings) and NHL teams (Kansas City Scouts) at Kemper Arena.
The Comets contributed to the city’s soccer culture.
Alan Mayer, goalkeeper for the U.S. national team and the Comets, told Al Jazeera, “Now the average person actually knows about soccer, but that wasn’t the case.” “We had to do a lot of teaching, clinics and personal appearances. One year I made 300 appearances at schools to talk about soccer.”
As the 1994 World Cup approached, Lamar Hunt wanted to use the tournament to launch MLS and suggested Arrowhead Stadium as the venue.
FIFA overtook Kansas City, but Hunt advanced to the KC Wizards, originally named the Wiz, and won the 2000 MLS Cup. The team rebranded as Sporting Kansas City, opened a soccer-specific stadium (21,000 capacity) in 2011, and won the MLS Cup title in 2013. The Kansas City Current women’s team was established in 2021 and will play at CPKC Stadium (capacity 11,500).
“I never thought the World Cup would happen. I never thought about it. It was so far from the realm of possibility,” said Mayer, who has won six USA caps and once played for Southend United’s reserve team and scored a goal from a long clearance.
“When I first came to Kansas City in the mid-1980s, MLS didn’t exist. The difference between now and then is astronomical, including how popular the game is. But I don’t think the public really understands how much of an impact this is going to have on the economy and what kind of visual impact it’s going to have on how the world views Kansas City and the United States.
“And how amazing and crazy the atmosphere is going to be created by hundreds of thousands of people of different nationalities coming to the Kansas City area.”
