OK, I Was Wrong About the World Cup

The conversion came quickly. I was driving south on Main Street toward the Country Club Plaza when I heard a ruckus coming from Mill Creek Park, site of the erstwhile J.C. Nichols Fountain. “What are they protesting now?” I asked myself. Turns out they weren’t protesting at all. They were cheerleading for Argentina’s national soccer team in anticipation of that evening’s game at the erstwhile Arrowhead Stadium.

I must say, the eagerness to “erstwhile” our past bugged me throughout the area’s preparation for the World Cup. In the same spirit that the city stripped the name off the most celebrated of its fountains, FIFA’s make-over artists erased the name of Arrowhead Stadium. For the duration of the playoffs, Arrowhead Stadium had to pretend to be “Kansas City Stadium.” For the sake of our foreign visitors, we seemed to be creating a Potemkin Kansas City.

And yet, what a refreshing place Potemkin KC proved to be. Our visitors seemed to appreciate the area more than did the locals, certainly more than does the city planning class. As our visitors happily wandered through the Plaza and Westport, they seemed blissfully unaware of the area’s erstwhile glory.

Happily, the miscreants who have scared locals away from Midtown gave Mayor Q a break for the World Cup. Crime fell in Potemkin KC during the six-week stretch, even as officials had readied themselves for an increase.

True, on June 16, 2026, on Interstate 70, a driver pulled alongside an Uber carrying Argentina fans to the stadium and fired twice. Fortunately, the shooter missed the Argentinians. Unfortunately, he hit the driver, a local fellow whom police did not identify. The driver survived and saved Potemkin KC the notoriety that descended on the real KC after the fatal shooting at the last Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

Mayor Quinton Lucas praised the city’s security operations as “large-scale policing at its best.” For Lucas, acknowledging that extra policing helps lower crime was something of an “own goal.” If he has never exactly chanted “defund the police,” for many of his political allies “defund” has become a rallying cry.

Relieved that nothing horrible happened during KC’s moment in the sun, Lucas boasted, “We got thousands of questions, it seems, for years. Will we be ready? Can we handle it? How could this city pull it off? And we did do it better than anyone else.” Better perhaps, but Q was one stray bullet away from international outrage.

The Kansas City writ large that the visitors found, they liked. Almost every visitor interviewed spoke of how welcoming the people were. This observation did not surprise me. When I first moved to town many years ago, I had the same impression.

One visitor enthused, “The highways are a breeze.” Another fellow added, “Everything is very quiet. The roads are quiet.” Driving in Kansas City has always been a breeze and “quiet” because drivers need not honk at each other as they fight for space. It is unfortunate the “street dieting” crowd does not appreciate what the visitors do.

Several visitors spoke to how “very clean” the city was. Noted one woman, “The city is clean and beautiful and everything is manicured,” much cleaner and more manicured, I might add that it was six months prior. Penn Valley Park, through which I often walk, mutated from grotesque to picturesque almost overnight. Now if we can only keep it that way.

One young woman from Argentina made a shrewd observation that our city planners seem to forget. “I am proud to be in Kansas City this year,” she said. “This is the most American city you can get.” Yes, exactly. Given its centrality and its history, Kansas City embodies what international visitors found most refreshing about America writ large.

The angry, divided, depressed xenophobic, impoverished America their media promised proved to be a sustained lie. Traveling through flyover country, visitors found an America that was as vigorous and as open as the America de Tocqueville discovered 200 years ago.

Visitors loved so many of the things we have taken for granted, from free Coke refills to central air—air conditioning at all, for that matter. Given the variety of our food—barbecue was a big hit everywhere—and the size of the servings, visitors worried about putting on the “FIFA 15.” Now they understand why we’re so fat. If they’d stayed, they would be, too.

Weeks ago, who among us knew what an exotic treat ranch dressing was? Who knew that the Waffle House deserved a place of honor in the Michelin guide? Who knew that Buccee’s was the Eighth Wonder of the World?

One thing I did not know is that Kansas City has somehow emerged as “Soccer City.” The FIFA people knew, which explains why four of the World Cup teams, including two of the semi-finalists, headquartered here during the duration of the tournament. 

I attribute my ignorance on this score to my indifference to the sport. Coming into the tournament, I thought the game fatally flawed. Now, having watched more soccer in the last month or so than in the 50 years preceding, I am convinced the game is fatally flawed.

The core problem is that the goals are too small. They remain the same size they were when the rules were set in 1863. The goalies, however, are literally a foot taller on average and much more athletic. The result is a near absence of scoring. As a case in point, in the seven games before the final, Spain’s opponents had scored one goal—combined.

This much I knew coming in. What I learned was the oversized importance of penalties. With every stumble, players would fall to the ground writhing in imagined pain, hoping to draw a penalty. In one game I saw, a player broke a 0-0 tie with a penalty kick I could have made.

Soccer can be fixed. So, for that matter, can Kansas City. But first must come the recognition they’re broken.

PUBLISHED JULY 2026