Why the KC Current will have a crucial place in Kansas City’s World Cup ‘26 legacy
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- Angie and Chris Long’s 2019 World Cup interest sparked their KC Current initiative.
- 2019 World Cup TV images of the Power & Light District ignited their idea and initiative.
- Principals of Palmer Square Capital Management aimed to bring an NWSL team to Kansas City.
In the seven years since Angie and Chris Long became fascinated with the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, one momentous milestone has cascaded into another — both for the co-founders of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current and the city itself.
Because the fever pitch they were witnessing in person and the sense of a burgeoning world-wide audience — including frequent television images of the teeming Power & Light District back in Kansas City — ignited an idea and initiative that has consumed them ever since.
Soon after those days in Paris, the principal owners of Palmer Square Capital Management set out to bring a new National Women’s Soccer League team to, well, our “Paris of the Plains.”
Next thing you know, the club co-owned by Brittany and Patrick Mahomes revolutionized women’s sports altogether by building a dedicated training facility and creating what’s widely understood to be the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional team — a stadium they intend to expand from 11,500-seat capacity to 18,000 by 2031.
Then they reckoned they could work with Port KC to transform the long-squandered Berkley Riverfront on the Missouri River, where they now are nearing the culmination of a $200 milion phase one of a projected 10-year, $1 billion-plus private investment plan.
For all that, though, Monday morning was a new watershed. A “pinch-me moment,” as Angie Long put it, “that this is all finally here.”
It was day one of the Current’s training facility being turned over to The Royal Dutch Football Association as its home for the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Starting June 16 and culminating July 11 with a quarterfinal at Arrowhead, aka Kansas City Stadium for FIFA purposes, Kansas City will host six games — including The Netherlands against Tunisia on June 25.
“Today is like that official welcome date of the world,” Chris Long said as the couple spoke in his Palmer Square office. “And it starts with what it’s all about: countries like The Netherlands feeling like Kansas City’s home.
“Undoubtedly, they’re going to feel like that in the KC Current training complex. And I really feel like every other country that chose us a base camp, and every other visitor that comes here, they’re going to still feel that warm welcome and this sort of new day of Kansas City.”
Also basing their operations in the area are Algeria (in Lawrence), England and Argentina.
As it happens, defending World Cup champion Argentina is training at Sporting KC’s Compass Minerals National Performance Center but arrived Sunday to stay at the Origin Hotel … at what is now known as Current Landing, adjacent to CPKC Stadium.
Adorning the hotel is the literal and figurative larger-than-life image of Lionel Messi, the superstar who is among the few most famous people on earth.
In a certain way, that rendering speaks to the collective and connective DNA the Current enterprise has injected into Kansas City.
And it looms as a meaningful part of our World Cup legacy.
While the Current wasn’t formed until after the World Cup bid was engaged by the Chiefs and Sporting KC and catalyzed through the Kansas City Sports Commission, no doubt the club became what Chris Long called “another piece of the puzzle” in earning a major role in the event — and reinforcing Kansas City’s oft-stated self-image as the soccer capital of America.
As such, it’s also a vital part of the potential takeaway for visitors — as well as what Kansas City might hope will endure from this summer of soccer.
Certainly, there will be something resonating in the statement made by the training center. While still accented by such Current iconography as the club crest and imagery on everything from barbells to chairs, the facility is now festooned with banners, flags and balloons and other welcoming “Team Netherlands” signs.
The scene where “One Teal Rising Way” signage temporarily has been accented with “One Oranje Rising Way,” the Longs believe, will be indelible and have ripples.
So it’s worth the cause that dozens of Current front office employees temporarily are working either out of the Palmer Square offices or CPKC Stadium. As for the team itself, during the month-long NWSL break the Current players will have access to the club’s $25 million Riverside Stadium and Performance Center, which opened next door in February.
The Netherlands choosing to stay at Current facilities, Chris Long said, “validates the training center in a way that words can’t. Their actions speak so loudly when you have this top men’s team select a women’s facility that’s leading the way globally in sports for its investment. That takes it to another level.”
Particularly in terms of how it could help further reset the expectation of what a proper facility for a women’s team should be — something the Current already has triggered the last few years.
“They can’t unsee that. They can’t,” said Angie Long, later adding that the experience should help change “mindsets and framework for how people think about professional women’s sports.”
It’s just one of the ways the Current’s ventures could inform any impressionable visitor’s mindset about the framework of Kansas City itself as a progressive city on the move — including quite tangibly in the sense of the new airport that was crucial to KC’s winning bid and the recently completed KC Streetcar Riverfront Extension.
“Perfect-storm moments,” Angie Long called the convergence of events that included building the stadium with free transportation now available to get there.
“Which changes Kansas City,” she said, “and the World Cup is the impetus to make it happen right now and not wait. Because (waiting is) what happens in projects sometimes.”
So even as Kansas City is further connected overall it’s also reviving its foundational roots on the river. Development there essentially includes an entirely new neighborhood, with a plaza, riverfront park and promenade, around 430 new apartment units in two buildings and nearly 50,000 square feet of retail space.
While this phase is months ahead of schedule, it won’t be completed until after the World Cup. But the plaza at its epicenter, with a 40-foot wide by 29-foot high Current Landing Videoboard built 27 feet off the ground, will be the site of soccer watch parties starting June 6, as well as outside the 18 days when the FIFA Fan Festival is open.
As they envision a future with constant watch parties for all sports, concerts, seasonal events and fans marching from the streetcar to the stadium past bars, restaurants and coffee shops and even a TV studio, the Longs seek the ultimate feel of such spaces as the High Line in New York City and the Chicago Riverwalk.
As he provided The Star a tour of Current Landing later Monday, Palmer Square Real Estate partner Mukul Sharma spoke of the compelling power of the Missouri River — which they’d eventually like to activate further with infrastructure for marinas and docks ... and which, incidentally, also connects to Riverside.
A Kansas City native, Sharma thought about places like New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia — places he’d lived before he returned to KC.
“Those cities have activated waterfronts,” he said. “It’s a big part of what summer in the city feels like. … And there’s absolutely no reason why Kansas Citians don’t deserve the exact same thing. Our own version of it, right?”
While little of that will be part of the World Cup experience this summer, the arrival of the World Cup injects what Sharma called “jet fuel” into the process.
And the synergy of it all surely will be entwined with what countless people will remember about their World Cup experience in Kansas City — and something the Longs aim to make generational.
Thinking back to when they started pursuing an NWSL franchise in 2019, Angie Long smiled and said when “you say it’s only been seven years, I get scared. What if it goes away? … So every investment decision that we’ve made has been with the (concept of), ‘Oh, no we’re not going anywhere. This is here. This is here for the next 100 years or longer.’
“And so when you build with that type of purpose, I think, it also changes things.”
Including Kansas City’s apparent trajectory and what people will take away from the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 2:35 PM.