Is KC a Soccer City? Author Andrés Martinez says Lamar Hunt’s soccer legacy, the Currents’ stadium and the coming World Cup make it so

Andrés Martinez’s personal and professional lives overlap more than most. Personally, he’s the ultimate fan of both footballs: the NFL variety and the kind that most Americans call soccer. Professionally, he’s the director of Arizona State University’s Great Game Lab, which is all about exploring how sports, media and politics come together worldwide.

Martinez, whose favorite soccer team is England’s Arsenal Football Club (who just happen to have claimed KC’s Swope Soccer Village as their World Cup homebase), throws a whole lot of love Kansas City’s way in his new book, The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Sport.

Ahead of his book talk this month, Kansas City magazine caught up with Martinez to talk about Kansas City’s important role in American soccer.

You moved to the U.S. from Chihuahua, Mexico, when you were 15. Was that difficult? I grew up in a fairly American household in Mexico because my mom was American, and I did not expect to have any wrenching adaptation issues by going to a “foreign country.” Yet, when it came to sport, I felt like I had been dropped on a different planet. [In Mexico], soccer was just in the air and in the water.

I think one of the things that is different about the United States—in addition to having our own football—is there are a lot of sports that are part of our dominant culture. I mean, we have baseball, we have basketball, we have American football, we have hockey. In countries like Mexico, it is 100 percent or maybe 90 percent soccer, right? And you’re connected to not just your community and your country, but it’s understood that this is a global cultural phenomenon.

You quote a journalist from The Guardian as saying that Kansas City is the most unlikely of the 16 North American World Cup host cities. What’s your take? I disagree with that because I think Kansas City does have a strong claim to being the soccer capital of America. There are some other cities that would quibble with that, but historically, you cannot understate the important role played by Lamar Hunt in bridging the two footballs. I think the fact that Kansas City was chosen is, in part, a tribute to his role.

There are so many ways in which Kansas City plays a prominent role in the soccer world. Kansas City has developed this expertise as a builder and designer of soccer stadiums around the world, not just in the United States. It’s the first city anywhere in the footballing world that has built a purpose-built women’s stadium.

Is it fair to say that we’ve already made a good impression on you as a host city? Yes, yes. And I think visitors are going to be equally wowed.

You see the history of sports beyond the football ties, too. Like the Negro Leagues Museum. One of the things I talk about in the book is, I mean, some of those players going back to the 1920s and ’30s were already practicing this type of sport diplomacy by playing baseball in the Caribbean, Latin America and going on goodwill trips to Japan, even before Major League Baseball was doing that. Kansas City is where this league was established and was already playing an important role in connecting the United States to the rest of the world through sport.

What lasting effect might the World Cup have on our city? I think that’s hard to quantify, but it’s super exciting. The status of having been a World Cup city, much like being an Olympic city, is something that stays with you forever, right? I think forever Kansas City will be branded as more of a global city than it was before.

Also, Messi is going to be in Kansas City playing some of the last matches, presumably, of his storied career. And you’re going to have an entire nation in South America that is going to be fixated on what happens. And among them, there’re going to be 10-year-olds who, 50 years later, are going to have these really strong associations with this city. It’s funny how these emotional connections to geography are created through sport.  

GO: Martinez’s book talk is at Kansas City Public Library Plaza Branch (4801 Main St., KCMO) on April 7 at 6 pm. Visit kclibrary.org/events for more information.

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