Can smaller soccer clubs benefit from World Cup in KC? These teams’ owners hope so
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kansas City will host World Cup matches from June 16 to July 11.
- Both Santafé and Sunflower State joined USL League Two in 2025.
- Owners hope the World Cup might boost interest but call it a coin flip.
Kansas City’s “Soccer Capital of America” moniker stems from more than just its heritage of professional teams.
KC’s soccer influence is widespread, with the area boasting ample opportunities for enthusiasts of all ages to play and watch the game.
The pros are at the forefront of the city’s soccer culture, of course. The KC Current has done a lot of winning in its six-year existence. The team won the NWSL Shield last year with the league’s best record.
Sporting KC has its own pedigree, and trophies to show for it, and is working on a return to prominence.
Both of those teams are in the first tier of the U.S. Soccer pyramid, the highest in the system, and each is heavily involved in the city’s status as a World Cup host this summer. Defending champion Argentina and evergreen title-contender England will be based at two SKC facilities, while the Current will play host to The Netherlands at its own training complex.
But Kansas City has several other teams, semi-pro clubs, that are also hoping to benefit from the quadrennial festival of soccer.
The grassroots soccer scene in KC
Santafé Wanderers FC and Sunflower State FC compete in USL League Two (USL2), the fourth division in the U.S. Soccer pyramid. Each was formed from local amateur leagues that played on Sundays around the metro.
Both joined USL2 in 2025, but their roots go back much further. Santafé was founded as Chihuahua Club de Futbol in 1995 by the members of the Cadena family in east Kansas City, Kansas.
The family had immigrated to KC from Mexico and their club became a part of a KCK tradition: attending church service and then spending the rest of the day with family and friends, watching and playing in the Kansas City Kansas Adult Soccer League.
The team was passed to the next generation in 2017, and Lorenzo Cadena Jr. formally renamed it Santafé, paying homage to Hispanic settlers who used the Santa Fe Trail to reach Missouri.
Santafé was successful in the KCK league, which made Cadena push for higher-level regional and national competitions. The club ended up in USL League Two, where it’s currently in its second season. Home games are played at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe.
Cadena credits Sunflower president/owner Joey Lipoff for networking and helping Santafé get into USL2. The United Soccer League wanted two teams in KC, Cadena said. When one folded, Lipoff recommended Santafé be invited to join.
Coincidentally, the owners of the two clubs had played against each other unknowingly for years in Kansas City’s local soccer leagues. Eventually, running in the same circles brought them together.
“Last year and this year is really learning the operation side, the business side, and learning to survive,” Cadena told The Star. “Hopefully in the coming years, we can work off this experience and really push it forward.”
Sunflower State FC began as Queso Blanco. A bunch of Rockhurst University men’s soccer alumni took their run of three straight NCAA Division II semifinal appearances from 2015-17 to the local amateur leagues, winning trophy after trophy.
In 2020, they founded Sunflower State FC. They played in an indoor developmental league and other amateur leagues and in 2022 merged with Ozark FC (Northwest Arkansas).
Sunflower also started its women’s team in 2023. The women’s squad competes in the amateur Women’s Premier Soccer League. And they also have an indoor women’s team, Kansas City Astras, that competes in Major Arena Soccer League Women.
Sunflower’s steady rise paved its way to USL League Two. Today, home games are played at the Pembroke Hill School.
With the World Cup in town, both men — and USL2 teams — hope soccer fever will truly sweep through Kansas City this summer. Such added interest could mean increased attendance for their matches.
And now comes the World Cup
To become a host city, KC worked for years to showcase its love for sports, especially soccer.
The payoff is nearly at hand. Soccer balls will be all over town for the month or so that the World Cup is here. USL2 matches will also be going on. The owners of Santafé and Sunflower hope ardent soccer fans will take notice and turn out to support their area’s grassroots clubs.
“I think the best we can do is just continue to operate how we do and maybe promote our games in like different sectors that we’re not traditionally targeting,” Cadena said, “to see if some of those people would be drawn to watch a local game.”
Lipoff hopes the World Cup won’t have opposite effect, taking away from the base of fans that the smaller teams currently enjoy.
“It’s kind of that weird in-between,” he said. “I would love to be like, ‘Oh, (the World Cup in KC) is the best thing ever.’ But the business side of me is, like, it’s a coin-flip.”
Life in lower-tier soccer
And make no mistake, the USL2 is true grassroots soccer.
Small-business investment, volunteer coaches, U-23 player rosters and a 12-game season during the summer months — these are staples of life in USL2. The league is huge, with 158 teams split into 20 regional divisions across four conferences.
Rosters are mostly made up of college coaches and players looking to stay sharp over their respective offseasons. They take long van rides to such regional destinations as Des Moines, Iowa, and Springfield and Peoria, Illinois, gaining experience and skills as they push toward their goal of playing pro soccer.
And the talent is there for Santafé and Sunflower. Both have had several former men’s players (and women’s players, in Sunflower’s case) go off to begin their pro careers at clubs around the world.
One of Sunflower’s brightest examples of this is Cooper Forcellini, a Blue Valley West High School grad who recently signed with St. Louis City’s second team as an MLS second-round draft pick. Fifty-one Sunflower players have signed pro-soccer contracts over the past seven years, Lipoff said.
Both clubs also have youth academies aiming to offer affordable instruction to younger players.
Lipoff couldn’t have imagined how far his club would progress since his days as a Rockhurst midfielder. But he’s proud of what it has become, especially in terms of its success on the pitch with what he said is one of the smallest budgets in the league.
“A lot of these teams are losing, like, tens of thousands of dollars. We’re still in the black,” Lipoff said, adding that Sunflower operates on an $80,000 budget across all of its teams.
“We’re dumb enough to do this,” he said of the group’s thinking at the outset. “We’re gonna see where it goes. If we succeed, great. If not, I mean, it’s been a really great journey. It could lead to other things in the future, but we’ve done a lot for the kids and done a lot for (the) community.”
For Cadena, Santafé is about carrying on the tradition that his family began more than 30 years ago. He believes their story as an immigrant-run club should resonate far beyond the Hispanic community, especially during the global World Cup.
Cadena has indeed elevated the family venture to new heights, and perhaps one day it will even ascend to the pro level. A lot would need to happen for that to become a reality, but he is plenty satisfied with how things have played out thus far anyway.
“I think right now, we‘re where we need to be,” he said. “But, yeah, absolutely: Do I dream about a pro team? For sure.
“To be able to say this team founded by a bunch of Mexican immigrants that went from Sunday league to regional, to national, to USL2 and now into a professional league? I think it’s a beautiful story, without a doubt. We’ll see what happens.“
World Cup matches begin in KC on June 16, with the last match here, a quarterfinal, set for July 11. Santafé and Sunflower will play out the rest of their short schedules during that time, competing against each other twice — on June 24 and June 27.
“We’ll see if there’s any kind of boost out of the World Cup, if people are more inclined to go watch local football,” Cadena said. “Because I think that’s where it starts.”
