How a former NFL star helped this Sporting KC midfielder rise to video-game prominence

Sporting Kansas City’s Wan Kuzain may be known among MLS fans as one of the most promising up and coming prospects in the league, but there’s another major part of his life that is not as well-known.

Kuzain is a huge fan of the soccer video-game series FIFA.

He began playing soccer video games in 2005 when he was just 7 and started playing FIFA regularly in 2012. He hasn’t stopped, and now he goes to toe-to-toe against some of the best FIFA players in the U.S.

He’s set to perform on his biggest stage yet this weekend as he competes on national TV in the eMLS Tournament Special.

The tournament, which begins Sunday on Fox Sports 1 and the Fox Sports App, will partner MLS players alongside their teams’ eMLS player in a single-elimination tournament against other teams around the league. The tournament will raise $50,000 for front-line workers in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and those in vulnerable positions throughout America and Canada.

Kuzain’s status as an MLS player helped boost his popularity in the game, but it was a chance meeting with a six-time NFL Pro Bowler that helped him rise to prominence.

Defeating the FIFA King

Standing in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Crossroads stood a hulking 6-foot-1 man wearing a flashy gold Rolex and pristine Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt.

Anyone who crossed his path received a cheery “I love you!” as he made his way to 18-year-old Kuzain’s apartment.

The man? Former Cincinnati Bengals Pro Bowler Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson.

Following his official retirement from football in 2017, Johnson began playing a lot of FIFA and would often challenge people via Twitter to duel him online or in person. He would — and still does — label himself as the FIFA King, posting match results on his Twitter timeline.

But on that summer day in 2017, Johnson finally met his match.

Visiting Kansas to watch his daughter compete in the Junior Olympics at KU’s Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence, Johnson tweeted that he’d be staying in KC and visiting the Legends Outlets following his daughter’s meet.

“I saw that tweet and I was just like why not just tweet him and say ‘Hey, come to my house, my pantry is your pantry,’ because that was my way to kind of get him in — he loves food,” Kuzain recalled Tuesday.

Two hours later, Johnson was on Kuzain’s doorstep prepared for what he thought would be a typical beatdown. Johnson picked his typical team, Italy’s Napoli, while Kuzain opted for Juventus, setting up a Turin-based rivalry.

Once the action began, Kuzain showed that his talents on the field translated well to the console: He went a perfect four-for-four in beating Johnson.

“He was really good actually,” Kuzain said. “He surprised me a lot. I happened to win all four games and I said, ‘If I win, can you tweet out a picture just saying how good I was,’ and stuff like that. And he happened to tweet out the picture ... I’m forever thankful for that moment.”

Despite coming up short, Johnson was gracious in defeat, joining Kuzain for a game of real soccer at The Soccer Lot, an indoor spot located behind Kuzain’s apartment.

Naturally, Johnson graced the field not only with his soccer talent but a round of “I love you’s” to those he was playing with.

“He started saying ‘I love you’ to random people, and people were then like, ‘Oh my God, is that Ochocinco, is that Ochocinco?’ I felt so cool at the time,” Kuzain said. “Obviously I was just an academy player at the time, so no one really knew who I was.”

Playing on the national stage

On Sunday night, Kuzain will be back on national TV, but not under his normal circumstances.

He will team up with Sporting KC eMLS player Alekzandur and take on Minnesota United goalkeeper Tyler Miller and eMLS player Jay Adams in their first matchup of the tournament.

“I think with me and Alekzandur, it’s a really good combination,” Kuzain said. ‘So it’s not just me, there’s also Alekzandur and Alekzandur is one of the best in the business, so I have nothing to be worried about.”

Alekzandur — who’s real name is Alex Betancourt — is a Kansas City-based FIFA player who has partnered with Sporting Kansas City since March 2018. He took a brief role playing for Italian team AS Roma in 2019 before returning to Sporting KC in December.

Just 21, Alekzandur is one of the top FIFA players in the nation, most recently finishing in ninth place in the eMLS League 2020 Series Two.

“I’m really excited to play with Wan Kuzain and have another opportunity to represent Sporting KC in eMLS,” Alekzandur told Sporting KC last week. “I know Kuzain is a really talented player, so it’ll be fun to see what we can do together in this event. Hopefully we can win our matches and raise money for those in need during this time.”

The tournament marks the first time the two have played together on the same team, but Kuzain recalls that they used to play against each other online before eMLS took off.

Kuzain competed in a weekly online FIFA tournament called the Gfinity Cup that featured a lot of future eMLS players, including Alekzandur.

“I was looking at my Xbox messages yesterday and I scrolled all the way to 2017 and I found a message from him saying, ‘Hey Bro, send an invite,’” Kuzain said. “For some reason, I couldn’t look at the rest of the messages about who won and who didn’t, but just from there when we played each other that it should be a really good pairing.”

The tournament format includes two legs per matchup, akin to the old MLS playoff format. The two MLS players will play the first game and the eMLS players will compete in the second game, with an aggregate score deciding the winner.

“It’s awesome getting to play FIFA on national TV,” Kuzain said. “But most importantly it’s for charity, so that’s what’s going on in my mind: to help out these charities and what they’re doing right now.”

This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 4:20 PM with the headline "How a former NFL star helped this Sporting KC midfielder rise to video-game prominence."