Kansas City police say soccer fans are a different breed from what we see in U.S.
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- Kansas City police sent a delegation to Germany and Scotland to study soccer fan behavior.
- KCPD sought indicators to distinguish excited fans from fans looking to do harm.
- Kansas City will host six 2026 World Cup matches at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
Shortly after Kansas City was named a host city for the 2026 World Cup, organizers sent members of the city’s police department overseas.
Maj. Abby Martinez, the division commander of events and special projects division, led a contingent to Germany and Scotland.
Germany was the host country of the 2024 European Championships, and the Kansas City police went to view how soccer fans behave.
“It was super valuable to hear her talk about it anecdotally, to kind of see fan behaviors, to kind of talk to the experts over there that deal with these type of matches and these large crowds year in and year out,” KCPD Capt. Jake Becchina said. “It really kind of gave them sort of a barometer for things to look for as fan behavior, like what’s an excited crowd of fans versus a crowd of fans looking to do harm? What do they look like? What are the indicators, the pre-indicators, things of that nature.
“Really give them a good baseline to start with, to come back here and start to kind of build some of our strategies and deployments and things like that.”
Kansas City will play host to six 2026 World Cup matches, and fans from Argentina, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Austria and other nations are expected to be in Kansas City.
Those matches will be held at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, which is known as the loudest in the world thanks to Chiefs fans. But the Kansas City police department is expecting a different kind of fan at the World Cup.
“We all know this, soccer or international football is way different than NFL football,” Becchina said. “We see very passionate fans, we see very excited fans here. They come to a game, and then they kind of go about the rest of their life, the rest of the week, right? Like, for some of these international football fans, it is all encompassing, almost to say, like a religious level of investment. It’s something they live and breathe almost every day, to some extent.
“And we really don’t see that paralleled here totally. We see passionate fans, we see excited fans, we see fans do celebrations. But that level of fanaticism, I think, is something that we felt it important to really try to understand as best as we can.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 11:38 AM.
