Lionel Messi transformed Arrowhead Stadium into fútbol cinema at the heart of Kansas City

Trying to find the right words to describe what we witnessed last night in Kansas City is few and far between. The build-up of Kansas City hosting its first-ever World Cup was unlike anything the community has ever felt, and after just the first game played inside the Kansas City Chiefs' Arrowhead Stadium, as we call it in America, the 'soccer' match did not disappoint.

The defending World Cup champions, Argentina, walloped Algeria by a score of 3-0, and while it's easy to say that the victory belonged to the team, it was one man who shone above all the rest. The 38-year-old Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player of all time, pulled off a hat trick in his record-setting sixth World Cup appearance. His trio of scores brought him to a total of 16 in 27 cup games played, tying Germany's Miroslav Klose for the most all-time.

While Messi's performance will be talked about for ages as one of the best moments of his storied career, the electricity and buzz swirling through and around Arrowhead Stadium and the whole of Kansas City were palpable, something that we should not take for granted. What made last night truly special was the fans. And that shouldn't come as a surprise for the self-proclaimed "soccer capital of America".

The Chiefs' recent dominance has transformed Kansas City to heights nobody could have imagined.

Kansas City had already been a growing market for a few years before the Chiefs started having major success. The Royals winning the World Series in 2015 really gave us the first real glimpse of how truly passionate our fanbase is. But it's pretty easy to see when everything, for not just the Chiefs but the whole of both Kansas and Missouri, really started to take flight.

On April 27, 2017, the Chiefs traded up in the NFL Draft and selected Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes. It was a move that shocked the football world, but no one could have ever imagined that within years of that, the Chiefs would have reeled off three Super Bowl victories and five trips to the big game in six years. Mahomes became a football superstar, and many believe is in running to be the greatest of all time, but more than that, he became a global icon.

People around the world now knew who he was and who the Chiefs were, not to mention another Hall of Fame player in Travis Kelce, who was and still is Mahomes' go-to man on the field, and would later go on to get engaged to the biggest pop star of a generation in Taylor Swift. The world was buzzing for years about these Chiefs and their star players, pretty soon shining a light on Kansas City and the fans that make this place so special.

It was announced in June of 2022 that Kansas City would be one of the 16 host cities across North America for the World Cup, and that the Chiefs' stadium would be the venue at which these games would take place. Many underestimated the choice of KC, but over the last decade-plus, soccer has become a beloved sport in the area and one that fans have fully embraced.

The men's Kansas City MLS team had been around since the late 1960s and rebranded as Sporting KC in 2010, to play at the new Children's Mercy Park, which shifted the franchise into its most successful era, winning the MLS Cup in 2013 and multiple U.S. Open Cup wins (2012, '15,'17).

Then came the rise of the women's team, the Kansas City Current, founded in 2021, much thanks to Patrick and his wife, Brittany (who played soccer in college at the University of Texas), becoming part team owners and helping promote and grow the brand of women's soccer. It led to the development of the CPKC stadium, the world's first stadium purpose-built for a women's professional team. Fans filled every seat of every match, further strengthening the love of soccer within Kansas City.

It's safe to say that while KC hosting the World Cup is special beyond measure, years and years of work and economic growth have contributed to this. And perhaps no reason bigger than the Chiefs having the success they've had during the Mahomes era, helping to finally put Kansas City on the map as perhaps the best place to be a sports fan in America.

Arrowhead Stadium hosts its next game between Ecuador vs. Curacao on Sat. 6/20 @ 7 p.m. CT

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