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Article on Kansas City Soccer


It's been nice to see Sporting KC grow by giant leaps over the past two years. The franchise really has taken the city by storm, thanks in large part to the ineptness of the Royals for the better part of 25 years, and Chiefs for the better part of a decade. It wasn't that long ago that the Wizards were playing in front of 8,000 people in Arrowhead (which made it feel like no one was there), and playing on a makeshift field in a minor league ballpark (which made it feel like a cheap novelty act). There's always going to be people who will never like soccer, and that's fine, but KC has a great thing going with Livstrong Sporting Park. I just hope I can get tickets to upcoming games this summer. They'll likely come close to selling out just about every home game through the season. Two or three years ago, I never thought that would happen.
 
Any idea why these mls teams dont go the traditional route of simply calling their teams by the name of the city they play in? Sporting KC and Real Salt Lake just sound so pretentious
 
I can see your point, mjw - my best guess is those names reflect the club owners (Real, Chivas are both names of clubs in Spain and Mexico as well), although most clubs in MLS use more standard names like Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, etc.

There seems to be a real Euro- and Latin- envy among US soccer, and the names show that to some extent. The British tendency to use singular nouns to describe a group of things, in our case a team, is reflected in LA Galaxy, Houston Dynamo, New England Revolution (a play on the Patriots, by the way), Chicago Fire, etc.

Again, I can see how the names would come across as pretentious - they are more reflective of already-established soccer cultures around the world than they are of the existing tendency in American sports to name a club [city/state] [plural nickname]. Stanford Cardinal is a notable exception, which also doesn't help the "pretentious" impression.
 



We can thank the late Lamar Hunt for everything that Sporting KC has become. A single plane ride to Dallas was the make or break moment for soccer in Kansas City.
 
mjw11 said:
Any idea why these mls teams dont go the traditional route of simply calling their teams by the name of the city they play in? Sporting KC and Real Salt Lake just sound so pretentious
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I thought the name Sporting KC was a bit over the top, but I also thought the Kansas City Wizards name was very lame. People seemed to have embraced the name Sporting Kansas City. Of course it helps when the team wins, and you've got a very cool stadium.
 
RedPhoenix said:
We can thank the late Lamar Hunt for everything that Sporting KC has become. A single plane ride to Dallas was the make or break moment for soccer in Kansas City.
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Agree, Lamar Hunt did a lot of good things for Kansas City. I have a feeling the same won't be said about his son.
 
HuskerMaestro said:
I can see your point, mjw - my best guess is those names reflect the club owners (Real, Chivas are both names of clubs in Spain and Mexico as well), although most clubs in MLS use more standard names like Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, etc.

There seems to be a real Euro- and Latin- envy among US soccer, and the names show that to some extent.
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Real I get if you are in Spain for Royal, but in Utah it just looks silly and makes me wonder if there is a fake Salt Lake
 




The Sporting KC name supposedly came about because in the future they are not going to be just a soccer club, I guess there is plans to eventually add a Rugby team under the name.
 
BigRed Mosquito said:
The Sporting KC name supposedly came about because in the future they are not going to be just a soccer club, I guess there is plans to eventually add a Rugby team under the name.
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There is an entire master plan behind not only the name of the team but how it is all set up. From the stadium to the donations the team makes and projects it funds. Patterson and Lamar had long talks about how to go about implanting soccer in kC. Quite fascinating.
 
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