‘This will change women’s soccer’: why KC Current’s stadium has set a new standard

Tthrough strength, speed and courage, Temwa Chawinga created an opening in Portland’s defense. She sprinted past a defender to beat oncoming Portland goalkeeper Shelby Hogan with the ball, which flew into space. Teenager Alex Pfeiffer saw an opportunity, closed in and buried her left-footed strike. Music, smoke and fireworks erupt from the Kansas City Riverfront. Kansas City Current led Portland Thorns 5-1.

The brand new CPKC Stadium, the world’s first purpose-built for a professional women’s sports team, rippled with the joy of 11,500 fans in the Missouri afternoon sun. At 16 years, three months and 20 days old, Pfeiffer became the youngest goalscorer in the history of the National Women’s Soccer League.

“This is something that will change the world of women’s soccer,” Kansas City head coach Vlatko Andonovski said after the game. “This is the beginning of change.”

The momentum changed quickly after Pfeiffer’s strike and Portland responded with three goals in the final 20 minutes, forcing a sellout crowd to sweat out seven minutes of stoppage time. If the opening kick-off brought a cathartic release, the final whistle was a long exhale.

Football fans in Kansas City held on to the 5-4 victory after it was nearly snatched away. It was not an easy three points for the home team on Saturday. But then again, that wasn’t their entire journey to their own place either.

Kansas City claims the title of ‘Soccer Capital of America’ because of its rich football history. Several World Cup qualifiers, Concacaf Gold Cups and Olympic qualifiers have already been organized. There will be a further six matches during the 2026 World Cup, including a quarter-final. The city failed to host matches during the 1994 World Cup, but the tournament’s popularity laid the foundation for the Kansas City Wizards, a founding member of Major League Soccer.

Nearly twenty years later, the city welcomed a franchise with the birth of the National Women’s Soccer League. The first NWSL match started on April 13, 2013 – coincidentally between FC Kansas City and the Portland Thorns – 11 miles south of where last Saturday’s match was played.

Support from federations in Canada, Mexico and the US eased concerns that the league would disappear like all that had come before it. Andonovski, then coach of Kansas City, praised the competition environment. Many of the 6,784 fans in attendance arrived early and tailgated, providing a different experience than those watching on YouTube. “They seem like completely different worlds,” Andonovski said of the comparison between them and Saturday.

That 1-1 draw in 2013 started the most successful professional women’s football competition in the country’s history. FC Kansas City finished second in the regular season and reached the semi-finals of the competition, with an average of 4,626 fans per home game. (Portland, which averaged 13,320 that season, led the league in average attendance through the league’s first eight seasons.)

FCKC won the league trophy in their second season. Becky Sauerbrunn captained the team and played with fellow USWNT centurions Amy Rodriguez and Lauren Holiday. Andonovski wanted a goalscorer to help the team retain their crown. He knew Shea Groom from her childhood in Kansas City, but thought she would be picked early after a 41-goal career at Texas A&M University. Somehow, she fell on the draft board to FC Kansas City and the No. 12 pick.

“There was obviously nothing better than playing for your hometown,” said Groom, who often drove 45 minutes across Kansas City growing up to play in leagues that met her competitive level.

While Groom broke her foot midway through her first season, she returned in time to continue in the second half of FCKC’s 1-0 win in the 2015 NWSL Championship. Groom scored 17 goals in 54 games for her hometown club . Back-to-back championships in the first three seasons took FCKC to the top of the league – an unthinkable status for those looking behind the curtain.

“I will argue that it was perhaps one of the hardest clubs to be a part of at the time just because we had so little,” Groom said.

Players had no locker room. Some got dressed and prepared to leave the parking lot. Players and FCKC staff members, three in total, rode in team cars on outings. The 2022 Yates Report, an independent audit of the league commissioned by US Soccer, details how abuse and misconduct in the league went unchecked. NWSL’s base salary in 2017 was $6,000. Players lived with host families or stayed with an assistant coach’s family.

“I look back on those memories fondly because obviously I love the game,” said Kansas City native and Orlando Pride midfielder Haley McCutcheon. “And you had to love the game at the time to do this, because unfortunately there wasn’t much upside in it.”

The first house of FCKC was Shawnee Mission District Stadium, which they shared with three different high schools. The field was permanently covered with American Football yard lines and surrounded by a track. The club then moved to a university stadium surrounded by a track where the capacity was to be expanded from 850. With Sporting KC of MLS reluctant to share ground, the nomadic FCKC played their final match on a ground occupied by the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs left 40 years earlier. .

“Vlatko has always done a good job of making it feel like a professional training environment and that’s why people came,” Groom said. “Bringing home championships under these kinds of circumstances, I think, signaled to Kansas City that this is the place where a professional women’s team can exist.”

The unrest then exceeded the playing conditions and location. Late in the 2016 season, allegations were made that FC Kansas City co-owner Chris Likens and his sons, Brad and Greg, emails exchanged during 2013 who commented on the ‘hotness’ of potential players and made ‘sexually derogatory’ comments about unidentified FCKC players. Brad Likens responded at the time that the emails were fabricated by co-owner Brad Buzinski, who later sued the Likens brothers.

The team was sold to Minnesota-based businessman Elam Baer, ​​who retained the team for a season. Attendance dropped to third worst in the league and FC Kansas City effectively folded. The league divided its assets, including player contracts, among the Utah Royals and then began their first stint in the league. Women’s soccer left Kansas City for support despite its history.

“When the team was sold to Utah, I was devastated,” said Groom, who often told her coaches she would play her entire career in Kansas City. “Obviously because women’s soccer left Kansas City and because I would no longer be able to represent the city that I felt so strongly about.

“But you know what, I think it made me a better player. And honestly, I think it had to leave the city to get where it is now.

The club lasted only three seasons before another ownership scandal arose. Assets were once again sold back to the league. Kansas City-based financial executives Angie and Chris Long raised the money to send a team back to the Paris of the Plains, and Kansas City Current was formed in 2021 as an expansion team. Brittany Mahomes also purchased an ownership stake. Mahomes played professional soccer in Iceland after scoring 31 goals in 74 appearances at the University of Texas-Tyler. Her husband, Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, joined as minority owner last yearbecoming the first active NFL player to have an ownership stake in an NWSL team.

The new ownership group came up with plans for a new stadium on the Berkley Riverfront, built on the discarded shards of the Kemper Arena roof that collapsed in 1979. The CPKC Stadium was privately financed at a cost of $117 million and was built along the Missouri River on the former landfill of Kansas City Sports Ambitions. Even the name comes from Canadian Pacific Kansas City, a 20,000-mile railroad giant that bought naming rights in a 10-year deal.

“Because of the circumstances where I came from, where FCKC was first formed, you would never guess that this would be the club that would do this,” Groom said.

Ground was broken for the project on October 6, 2022. The Long and Mahomes families were both there to celebrate. They returned to the manicured grass on Saturday for the monumental event. Together with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, they cut the ceremonial ribbon that opened the gates to fans two hours before kickoff. Stadium festivities include special recognition for the first USWNT. Members of the ’85ers’ were praised at halftime, along with their names, likenesses and stories cover a wall in the stadium.

They were all among the 11,500 who witnessed the history and incredible drama of Saturday’s 5-4 victory. Kansas City’s players enjoyed the post-game celebration on their home court and cherished a moment they almost lost. A team with a place just for them, for fans who know this beacon along the Missouri River as a place for women’s soccer.

“When you describe this team, it has to be like we’re describing Kansas City,” Andonovski said afterward. “Hard worker, resilient, with flair, courageous, literally in people’s faces.

“We didn’t win because we were so good, so much better than Portland. We won because we were Kansas City today.”