These World Cup moments in Kansas City will be remembered as our best
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- Shahdadpuri lives in Spain and mapped a U.S. tour to attend 12 matches.
- Shahdadpuri packed a Patrick Mahomes jersey he had wanted to wear for three years.
- Kansas City was a circled destination on Shahdadpuri’s three-week U.S. World Cup tour.
Sunny Shahdadpuri packed a suitcase for a three-week trip to America. He stuffed it with the usual — clothes, personal items, international soccer jerseys and his camera — and then added a prized possession he’d been dying to wear for three years.
A Patrick Mahomes jersey.
Shahdadpuri lives in Spain and had never been to an NFL stadium, but he spent his summer in the United States after telling his wife he needed to live out his soccer dream.
He mapped out a tour of the U.S. to include 12 World Cup matches, with one stop circled.
Kansas City.
The home of Mahomes.
When he arrived in KC last month, Shahdadpuri wore an Argentina soccer jersey. He appreciates the Argentines for their style and their star, Lionel Messi, who would record a hat trick that night.
Shahdadpuri was carrying the Chiefs jersey in his hands when someone he presumed to be a local fan pointed him in the direction of the team’s hall of fame exhibit at Kansas City (Arrowhead) Stadium.
Shahdadpuri walked to its location in the lower concourse, pulled the red jersey over the white-and-baby blue stripes of Argentina and spread his arms out wide — mimicking an image of Mahomes that was being shown on a video loop.
“I’m living my dream,” Shahdadpuri said.
The World Cup’s month-long stay in Kansas City concludes Saturday night, with Argentina returning for a quarterfinal against Switzerland. The tournament’s presence here was 10 years in the making; initially it was just a dream of its own, and that decade flew by like a proverbial snap of the fingers.
The memories will endure much longer.
For a city.
For its people.
And for its visitors.
The vibes have been electric in Kansas City throughout the tournament. Six matches. That Messi hat trick. The quarterfinal. Sold-out crowds for Argentina, Ecuador, the Netherlands and Colombia.
There’s a surreal feeling to hearing each fan base bellow out its respective national anthem at Arrowhead, a surreal feeling to standing inside the Power & Light during a U.S. or Mexico match, or walking through a 65-foot heart inside the FIFA Fan Fest.
But other moments that will endure? They’re the moments nobody could plan. They’re the moments of spontaneity.
They’re the moments when little old Kansas City stamped its signature on the biggest sporting event in the world.
The energy
Lionel Messi spent his summer — perhaps his final World Cup — surrounded by not the beaches of Miami, but the plains of Kansas City.
England spent its summer in Kansas City, too, despite not even being scheduled to play a match here.
Jake Reid, Sporting KC’s team president and CEO, is among those who worked for nearly a decade to make these things happen. When the English national team considered Kansas City a potential destination and requested Reid and former Sporting KC chief operating officer Alan Dietrich get tattoos to seal the decision, they looked at each other and said, “We’re in.”
But Reid’s most telling memory came on a routine downtown walk a couple of weeks ago, when he passed the Taste of Brazil, a restaurant and bar in City Market. It was packed, fans wearing yellow, green and blue jerseys.
“It was like a little Fan Fest for the Brazilians,” Reid said. “I think for me, it’s those little chance encounters with the fans that have really stuck out.”
The international fan bases arrived with energy. Kansas City has consistently returned its own.
The Netherlands did not just bring its “Oranje Fanwalk” to downtown Kansas City. The city brought its walking shoes and joined the march.
A 37-year-old Chiefs fan who’s never missed a Super Bowl parade did not just stand and watch from behind the gates, but at last glided in the parade.
Enduring memory? It’s the city of Lawrence lining the streets to welcome the Algeria men’s national team’s bus to town. It’s the University of Kansas mowing the grass at a performing arts center into the flag of Algeria, complete with red bricks — for which they needed a wheelbarrow.
It’s an Algerian father and daughter finally making good on a promise to travel together — and the father who is usually too shy to leave his own home suddenly striking up conversation with every local on a Kansas City sidewalk because, in his daughter’s words, we will listen.
It’s the Algerian 29-year-old missing his native country so badly that he’s considering moving back, but not without feeling something else in Kansas City at long last: a sense of home.
And it’s what has seemed like an entire South American country making a park on the Country Club Plaza feel the same.
Argentina in Kansas City
A block northeast of the Country Club Plaza sits a fountain so majestic that it’s often featured on TV live shots. You’ll see Mill Creek Park during Chiefs games, Royals games and the like, an image intended to symbolize all of Kansas City.
On Friday evening, it represented the heart of a country 5,500 miles away.
Rodrigo Fernandez, an Argentina native, swarmed the park a couple of hours before a planned party. Well, at least he thinks it was planned.
It was 25 days ago that Fernandez was here, dancing and chanting in this very park, the evening before Kansas City’s first World Cup match. He figured they’d gather again.
Last time Argentina played in the quarterfinals, the match reached an estimated audience of 400 million. That sort of audience will have its eyes on Kansas City Saturday evening. It might be the most-watched game in this town’s history, even if it features none of its teams.
When Argentina advanced to Saturday’s quarterfinal showdown, the first thought Fernandez had was that he would get to attend at least one more match.
His second?
“I get to come back to Kansas,” he said.