Why ‘Ted Lasso’ should give us a reminder about Kansas City as a World Cup host
Among thousands of Australians and visitors on Manly Beach across from Sydney Harbour in 2000, strangers cried and hugged as the Olympic torch relay passed.
Bidding goodbye to visiting journalists at North Star Media Village, Restaurant 3, at the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a student volunteer who saw us every day burst into tears.
At the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, Paul McCartney sang “Hey, Jude” and two stuntmen parachuted into the Olympic Stadium to James Bond theme music.
Monumental as being one of 16 North American host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup is, no, it doesn’t quite approximate the scope, scale and implications of what it would mean to have the Olympics being held in Kansas City.
But considering this likely is the closest we’ll ever get to that, some parallels are apt when it comes to an event that will be as well, or better, remembered for what happens around it than merely on the pitch.
Among the at least semi-commonalities is the sort of civic pride reflected in those Olympic images and countless others I was privileged to experience while covering 10 Olympic Games.
Each came with an abiding and intense local appreciation of the moment, a prevailing desire to connect with and please visitors and passion to demonstrate what each place is about.
It will be all of that and then some, really, in Kansas City since our self-conscious stature as the smallest of these host cities will amplify the impact here in every way.
Because of all that’s at stake, though, something else is entwined with the honor and responsibility of hosting.
Something that started well before defending World Cup champ Argentina takes on Algeria Tuesday in the first of our six games at “Kansas City Stadium” (Arrowhead) and will go on through our last (a quarterfinal) on July 11.
Amid unprecedented scrutiny, there is a bubbling battle of perception to assert a narrative about how this is going and will go, a battle at least subconsciously being waged through our own prisms:
From promoters to pessimists, from Pollyannas to Chicken Littles, from foreign media learning the terrain to local media learning the World Cup, from the open-minded to the apathetic.
All infused and confused by a scramble to judgment that we’ve already witnessed, such as the piece last week by The New York Times/The Athletic headlined, “Nine injured in shooting near England’s World Cup base in Kansas City.”
Appalling as the shooting was and horrifying as our gun violence issues are, Team England, in fact, is training in Swope Park, some 5 miles from where that happened. It’s staying even farther away at The Inn at Meadowbrook in Prairie Village, Kansas.
The notion of “near” has been debunked, in other words.
But the article even as of Sunday remains “highly cited,” per a Google search, and no doubt the perception will linger in some circles that England was endangered … despite not even arriving until Saturday, nearly a week after the incident.
Speaking of which, when news broke Friday that much of the team’s equipment had been stolen, there was a nearly instantaneous social media ridiculing of the city.
With an almost gleeful “told-you-so” tone, it seemed, from some.
Turned out, though, that it was an alleged inside job that apparently took place en route: Two Texas truck drivers were charged Sunday with the theft of nearly $20,000 worth of soccer gear that was recovered in ample time for England’s practice on Saturday at Swope.
Voila, Kansas City authorities go from being mocked to looking like the best of Scotland Yard.
If you were like me, you felt braced to accept that it happened On Our Watch and condemn the international humiliation. After all, things are going to go awry, and it’s going to be important for Kansas City — and those of us covering this — to be transparent about that when they do.
But as usually is true, it also was worth pausing to get a better grasp of this situation before opining on it. And, yes, I felt relieved it by all indications wasn’t the Kansas City own goal it might have been.
Then again, once an impression is made it can be hard to shake. Who knows how many people think that it was a Kansas City foul-up simply because it was initially blasted out that way by some?
We see it all the time these days with blatant lies repeated so often they become accepted and accelerated through irresponsible news outlets or social media nonsense.
It reminds me of one of the first times I encountered that peculiar dynamic:
When Mizzou was about to play Oklahoma in football in 2002, I went to Norman for a preview story and came across some inciting but obviously bogus quotes attributed to The Star and being posted and fed to OU players.
When it was mentioned to OU linebacker Lance Mitchell that the quotes were fake and that MU coach Gary Pinkel wasn’t likely to wave such a red flag in front of them, Mitchell said, “Well, it’s already waved. There’s no taking it back now …”
Never mind that it was fabricated in the first place.
That’s a revealing tale about how these things go, and it’s part of why restraint is going to be in order in the weeks ahead.
We’re all going to hear problematic things and could cynically, and recklessly, assume the worst.
And we might get some stuff dressed up and be tempted to readily accept it because we want it to be true.
Proceed with caution. Not just because what’s actually real isn’t always what it appears or simple to discern, but especially because some are predisposed to an agenda one way or another and more interested in feeling like they’re right (or first) than having it right.
Meanwhile, as we get underway in earnest on Tuesday, the essential legacy question is a story in progress.
It includes the ongoing matters of just how many people ultimately will come here, how many hotels reset prices reasonably and how many really will attend the games despite FIFA’s gouging and disillusioning way of doing business.
It also includes encouraging signs of how people are being made to feel here — highlighted by what’s been happening in Lawrence with Algeria and its base camp — even as we are left to see how the pivotal fundamentals of logistics and security will work out.
But with lifelong memories in the balance, both for our visitors and us, truth needs to eclipse misinformation in how this is being processed ... and how it will be remembered.
Since you can already see achieving that is going to be a challenge, maybe the best way forward is to embrace what we learned from our own Jason Sudeikis via his “Ted Lasso” character:
Be curious, not judgmental.
This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 9:44 AM.