One of the great things about MLS is that it’s so young as a sports league; a lot of us were around for the beginning. I was 8 years old when MLS had its inaugural season in 1996 and while I watched MLS in their infancy, I vaguely remember watching it. I rooted for DC United solely based on geography and they were closest and I remember not being able to watch many games. Doesn’t take a genius to wonder why, there weren’t many nationally televised games in the 90’s and the Internet definitely wasn’t what it was back then. Except for DC United and them winning the MLS Cup, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything else about MLS at that time but I was playing youth soccer so I had a slight interest in watching the sport on TV.
Because there wasn’t a team, or a basic soccer presence in central Pennsylvania at the time, I didn’t watch too much soccer. I still watched the World Cup every 4 years but that was about it. It wasn’t until I got into college that I started to get into pro soccer but in Europe and not the US. One of the first European games I watched was the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final between Liverpool and AC Milan, also known as the Miracle of Istanbul. Seeing the fans not giving up on Liverpool losing 3-0 at the half and helping them come back and win by singing and chanting throughout the game was something that stuck with me and caused me to become a proud Liverpool fan to this day. It also made me wish that I could see that in the United States. The kind of soccer that resulted in stadiums selling out with fans chanting and singing and a public that didn’t look at soccer as a sport that only children played.
Fast forward a few years and I began to get back into MLS. I knew about David Beckham and Thierry Henry and all and now that Philadelphia had a team, I kind of had a team that was closer and I could follow but I was mainly following Philadelphia only and being immersed with soccer in Europe being one of those diehards who would get up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. It wasn’t until I got a chance to be an intern with Sporting Kansas City that I got a real taste of MLS and what it had to offer.
To be completely honest, when I had heard about the internship, I didn’t even know the Kansas City Wizards had rebranded about 3 months before. When I went online to see that the team name was Sporting Kansas City, I had the kind of reaction a lot of people at the time had. It’s a horrible name but at least it’s better than Wizards. After reading up about the team and seeing the plans the owners had with the team and the stadium, it didn’t seem all that bad. The first 15 years consisted of the Wizards not having a home for themselves and having to play at almost empty Arrowhead Stadium and cramped Community America Ballpark so a soccer specific stadium is certainly an improvement. And then I saw Sporting Park in person.
I got to Kansas City and started as an operations intern about 10 days before the inaugural game against Chicago and seeing Sporting Park for the first time was something else. After getting a tour of the stadium and seeing all the unique intricacies of it, it was easily the best sports facility I had ever been in. It was remarkable that a stadium like this was not only in the United States, but it was for a soccer team. That to me showed that soccer had arrived in this country, that there were people here who have the ambition to do something and build something special like this in order to evolve the game. As far as the first game went, I don’t remember the game all that much (except for the cow) but I do remember all the preparation before and during the game and that it was going to be a great experience for fans there and watching on TV. Those memories just continued and everything that happened that first season was just purely awesome for everyone. Well maybe except for Houston winning the conference final in KC, that wasn’t so much fun.
During the six months I was there, the city itself transformed. People who live there already know but before the 2011 season, it was still a sport that wasn’t mainstream. In the pecking order of KC sports, it was Chiefs, Royals, Kansas basketball, other Kansas and Missouri sports and somewhere near the bottom of the list was Sporting KC. The fans themselves were vocal and proud but it wasn’t known all that much in the city. At the end of the season, things took a 180 and everyone was talking about Sporting. You saw people walking around in Sporting shirts and had bumper stickers on their cars. Sporting was being talked about in the news and the radio and being a integral piece of the Kansas City community. They came a long way from being a team that was last in just about every financial category. In case you didn’t know how bad this team was when Robb Heineman and the Cerner Group bought the team in 2006, the Wizards were worse then what Chivas USA is now (minus the discrimination allegations) and now Sporting is averaging almost 20,000 fans a game in a 18,500 seat stadium and outdrawing the Royals.
In my eyes, I became a Sporting Kansas City fan the same way I became a Liverpool fan years ago. There may not have been as many fans in the stands as Liverpool but Sporting fans before the rebrand went through tough stadium conditions, constant rumors of relocation and largely being ignored by everybody and even though things were dire, they never gave up hope and still cheered and sang and now they’re rewarded with a beautiful, world class stadium and respect by the league and the city. Teams like Sporting Kansas City and Liverpool are run in a way that if I had the money to own a soccer team, I would run it like them. A team that values fans and an ownership group who is just as upset when the team loses as the fans are.
That brings us to this week. Many of the eyes of the soccer world are fixated on Kansas City for the All Star Game. Sporting has hosted some great events since 2011 but this is the first that is a pure celebration. There have been concerts, meet and greets, fashion shows and charitable events just to name a few and we haven’t even gotten to the game yet. The great thing about the All Star Game is that there isn’t anything on the line except for pride so players, fans, the staff, the owners and the league can relax a little bit and enjoy themselves. With an Open Cup Final or World Cup Qualifier happening, the game may be more important but you can bet that the players won’t be focused on taking pictures with fans and going to concerts and fashion shows.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t a KC Wizards/Sporting KC fan until 2011 and to some, that may make me as a bandwagon fan because I wasn’t there for the tough times. I can’t turn back the clock to be a fan from the beginning when things looked grim but what I can do is learn about the former players and achievements from the team and understand what the fans experienced and know that it wasn’t always easy to root for Kansas City’s soccer team. It’s something that I recommend every Sporting fan, regardless of when they became a fan to look into, because it’s a fascinating tale. People marvel at the transformation of Sporting Kansas City from what it was to what it is now but that shouldn’t be an anomaly, it’s all about how badly you want something. If you have the ambition like the fans, the staff and the owners of Sporting Kansas City have and are willing to invest a bit and take a risk or two you can have something special. In addition to the US Soccer National Training Center, which will be built in Kansas City, the city is making a case to be the center for American soccer, which is something that not even Robb Heineman could expect when he began owning this team. The All Star Game and the festivities surrounding the game is a reward for all those who have had a hand in transforming the Kansas City Wizards into being Sporting Kansas City today. Enjoy everything and know that there will be more of these high profile events in the future at Sporting Park.
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