In the most essential of ways, Kansas City being named a 2026 FIFA World Cup host spans the globe and eras back to 1966.

That’s when the visionary Lamar Hunt, founder of the AFL and owner of the Chiefs, turned on ABC’s Wide World of Sports to watch England and West Germany play in the men’s final of the global soccer tournament.

Enthralled with the spectacle, Hunt “pioneered the sport’s growth in the United States,” as described in his bio from Sporting KC — the franchise he had established here before selling it to Cerner co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig in August 2006.

But Hunt’s instrumental role in bringing the World Cup to the United States in 1994 became bittersweet for Hunt when Kansas City wasn’t named a host city.

That anticlimax proved enduring motivation for son Clark, now the chairman of the Chiefs.

His keen interest in seeing World Cup matches played here gained a key alliance in 2010. The franchise just rebranded to Sporting KC was pouring itself into the U.S. bid for the 2022 World Cup — a bid that lost out to Qatar.

Sporting KC president and CEO Jake Reid had just begun working for the club when he attended a watch party at the old 810 Zone in Country Club Plaza.

“That party was intended to be a celebratory one, not one of mourning, and it quickly turned into that,” Reid said in a phone interview Wednesday. “That was a pretty tough day for those who had been involved.”

Lessons for the future

Each of those disillusionments, though, had a crucial and abiding impact: a shared sense of passion and intense motivation to seize the moment the next time the World Cup was a possibility.

So when the chance to bid for the 2026 event arose about a decade ago, the Chiefs and Sporting pounced.

As Chiefs president Mark Donovan recalled, seeking to secure it this time might as well have been a mandate from Hunt. It wasn’t like it might typically be between them, Donovan said, with Hunt noting a challenge ahead and suggesting Donovan figure it out.

“This one was more of a ‘We’re going to do this,’” Donovan said by phone Tuesday.

Rather simultaneously, or likely even before then because of its connectivity with the U.S. Soccer Federation, Sporting KC became similarly inspired and engaged.

But whichever group had it percolating first, almost immediately Hunt and Illig were in contact about their aspirations to make this happen.

That was a formidable foundation: Between the Chiefs’ and Lamar Hunt’s legacy and Sporting KC, the 2013 MLS champion and a model modern franchise through its re-brand and state-of-the-art stadium, they possessed both the historic gravitas and contemporary relevance.

Kansas City’s somewhat self-proclaimed but ultimately validated status as the soccer capital of America flourished in an area that had begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into soccer facilities at every level — so much, and so many, that four nations, including three of the world’s most notable soccer countries, are making their base camps in the region.

Consider, too, the iconic venue of Arrowhead, boasting the Guinness World Record for world’s loudest stadium. And Kansas City’s forward progress with the impending building of a new airport and an emerging downtown — ultra-visible in soccer circles because of the hordes assembling in the Power & Light District to watch the beautiful game.

Suddenly, you could see plenty of compelling elements for why Kansas City would become the smallest of 11 U.S. host cities in the 16-site tournament — games will also be contested in Canada and Mexico.

But the chances of creating a winning bid still needed a catalyst to harness what Kansas City had — to bring it together and create critical mass.

Because only did the North American combined bid have to prevail over Morocco, after all, but KC was one of 44 initial candidate cities.

Bringing it all together

The bid effort needed somebody who could line things up, as Donovan put it.

Somebody who could be both glue and galvanizer.

So the Chiefs and Sporting KC promptly summoned to the cause Kathy Nelson — the inexhaustible Kansas City Sports Commission president who somehow along the way also became the leader of Visit KC.

She would emerge as what Donovan called a “critically important” factor in the equation.

All along.

“She’s that consistent thread,” Donovan said. “She’s the one calling late at night, she’s the one calling first in the morning. She’s the one saying, ‘Hey, can you do this … (etc.)’?”

In an infinite and arduous process that hinged on unity — from the bi-state area to Jefferson City, from a change in the KC mayoral administrations of Sly James and Quinton Lucas, between the Chiefs and Sporting and dozens of other entities — Nelson was part conductor, part liaison and, heck, maybe even part Ghostbuster.

“Who you going to call when times get tough?” Reid said.

And times did get tough. Or at least uncertain. Along the way, Donovan recalled, a meeting would end and he’d close his binder and think to himself, “Well, that was a good try.”

And about any time that happened, he said, “I’d get a phone call from Kathy saying, ‘Hey, what if we did it this way?’”

To be sure, there have been many other indispensable forces in how it came to be that Kansas City would play host to six World Cup games, starting June 16 and culminating in a quarterfinal match on July 11.

Fundamental was the endless work of initial KC2026 World Cup bid executive director David Ficklin, successor Katherine Holland, KC2026 CEO Pam Kramer and her team of teams and Chiefs and Sporting KC personnel who are stories in themselves.

But Nelson has provided a navigational through-line over a decade of otherwise ever-changing dynamics, including key governmental shifts, the building of the airport (without which the bid never would have been won), emergence of the KC Current and its facilities and a pandemic that delayed process.

Sowing goodwill and fostering contribution

From early on, the role required gathering goodwill and financial commitments from around the city and state while working with staff and the two clubs to sort through arcane and mundane details in the initial bid.

Experienced as Nelson might have been in such initiatives — it’s required for many of the events she’s helped lure here or organize, including NCAA competitions, victory parades and the NFL Draft — assembling this World Cup bid was on an entirely different scale.

“We knew what we were doing, even though we probably didn’t,” Nelson recently said with a laugh. “But we never felt like it wasn’t an opportunity.”

The bid effort called for explaining how Arrowhead could be contoured to FIFA specifications, an issue that the Chiefs weren’t able to answer satisfactorily before 1994. It required plans for training sites and fan fests, regional transportation models, safety and security blueprints and even human rights reports furnished with input from the city and state.

Working into the morning hours for weeks, if not months, were some five or six members of the sports commission’s staff, painstakingly going over each piece page by page with Sporting KC staff members.

Then editing it and going over it again for a bid book that Reid in 2017 personally hand-delivered to the U.S. Soccer offices in New York.

Sporting KC and sports commission staff held a 4 a.m. watch party the June 2018 morning when FIFA announced its decision in favor of the United 2026 bid.

Thrilled as all were, that breakthrough signaled an entirely different phase and scope of the operation — to become chosen among dozens of North American cities still in contention.

By then, though, the mindset locally largely had gone from feeling this is possible but far-fetched to … why not us? The pursuit reflected that.

Kansas City’s allure grows

As preparation and planning for the candidacy ramped up ahead of a decision that would come in 2022, Kansas City was becoming more energized, visible and appealing.

A city on the move, then and now.

Construction for the new airport got underway, the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes became global forces with multiple Super Bowl appearances and the Current announced its intention to create the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a women’s team.

The day that happened in 2021, Nelson recalled in February, she called a FIFA executive to share that news. But the FIFA executive was well aware: Amid a site visit in Houston, Nelson said, they’d gotten back on the bus to watch the announcement being livestreamed.

That would become part of the area profile that FIFA would later call “a mecca” of soccer venues — which helps explain why Argentina, England and The Netherlands will hold their base camps in the KC metro area.

Also apparently boding well along the way was a 2021 FIFA site visit here that included group excursions to Arrowhead, Sporting KC’s Compass Minerals National Performance Center, Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence and several potential sites for a fan festival.

No doubt the cause was helped by serving Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que at a luncheon in the Power & Light’s KC Live! Block, all exemplifying the Kansas City spirit.

Practically echoing Nelson’s words that Kansas City was “wearing our hearts on our sleeves” for FIFA, one official made an optimistic statement in that very spirit.

“The beauty of football is that it’s not about your size, it’s about the size of your heart,” Victor Montagliani, a member of the FIFA Council that would evaluate and award the host-city bid, told The Star’s Blair Kerkhoff that day. “The reality is Kansas City obviously has a stadium ... and is crazy about the game.”

Less visibly, KC2026 was engaging gears behind the scenes. And Nelson was a regular in Jefferson City, learning more and more about the legislative process while achieving an alliance with Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe — then the state’s lieutenant governor.

(Imposing figure that Nelson initially believed Kehoe to be, she said, smiling, over time “he truly became my phone-a-friend.”)

When the combined forces here encountered blind spots, Nelson said, they consulted with experts in engineering, transportation or whatever area they needed to understand better.

They learned not to hesitate to ask. And not to be afraid to ask themselves, “Where are the gaps?”

Filling the gaps and bringing it home

In the last two years, many of those gaps have been filled by the tireless Kramer and her staff and teams. As Reid put it, the initial entities might be providing “air cover,” but it’s Kramer and Co. who’ve been doing the heavy lifting.

“None of it happens without everybody being involved,” Reid said.

Especially somebody who could bring it all together, like Nelson.

The person who takes the phone calls from everybody, Reid said, “usually when things are going wrong.”

“That’s a very difficult skill-set,” added Reid, who enjoys the same sort of gift. “You can certainly strengthen that muscle over time, but I think you either have it or you don’t.”

It proved to be a crucial part of the difference between Kansas City either having the World Cup on its doorstep or not.

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