How Kansas City became the heart of American soccer and landed the 2026 World Cup

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MLS commentator Nate Bukaty joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Kansas City’s influence on American soccer and how the city came to host the World Cup. Bukaty, the co-author of Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup along with writer Rustin Dodd, discusses how immigration and local leaders like Lamar Hunt turned a Midwestern “flyover” city into an unexpected soccer powerhouse. Terrell and Bukaty reflect on their youth playing the sport in Kansas City and describe what it felt like for their hometown to become a focal point of this year’s World Cup and a destination for teams and fans from all over the world. Bukaty considers the U.S. men’s team’s loss to Belgium in the round of 16 and compares the most recent roster to the 2014 lineup. He reads from Perfect Pitch.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account , the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel , and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell.

Nate Bukaty

Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup

Others

Kansas City, the Smallest World Cup Host, Has the World at Its Feet The New York Times • Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play. The New York Times •Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6, Episode 21, Kingdom Quarterback: Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd on Race, Kansas City Football, and Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes

EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION WITH NATE BUKATY

V.V. Ganeshananthan: I think we probably have some listeners who won’t know about the Balogun situation. Could you explain for those of our folks who might not know?

Nate Bukaty: To be clear, I don’t know that we know exactly what happened because there are conflicting reports or at least conflicting claims. So, Folarin Balogun emerged as the star player for this national team. He has a really interesting story that we could spend more time on, but he is a birthright citizen. He was born in the United States purely because his mother, who was trying to fly back to Europe from New York City, was deemed too pregnant to get on the plane by one of the flight attendants, and so stayed in New York. So, he was born in New York, and then had the ability to play for the United States national team. He’s one of the top young strikers in France right now, where he plays his club ball.

He came to this World Cup, he was scoring goals, he was playing really well. He received a red card on video review in the game leading up to the Belgian game, and it was controversial because most of us felt it should not have been a red card. It was an unlucky situation in which he stomped on the ankle of his opponent, but not intentionally. It was because they were tangled up, it was awkward and they were falling. But the referee decided it was a red card. Almost all the pundits I listened to felt that it was an unjust red card. But that meant he was going to be suspended for this big game against Belgium.

All of a sudden, the day before the game, reports started coming out that FIFA were going to suspend his suspension. That didn’t mean they overturned it. They found Article 27 in their bylaws because there really is no means in the World Cup for appealing a red card suspension, and he was going to be allowed to play. Then reports came out from the White House that Donald Trump had made a call to Infantino, the the head of FIFA, and expressed his displeasure with the red card. While FIFA claimed the decision was made by an independent panel that was not swayed at all by this alleged phone call from the administration, hardly anybody in the media or in other aspects of the world of soccer seem to believe that.

Now, the UEFA, which is the governing body of the European teams in world soccer, are talking about. Actually the European Union, on a government level, are talking about launching an investigation into government intervention because it’s supposed to be separate. You’re not supposed to let the government come in and tell you if you can suspend a player or not. So the Belgian players spoke about it. Their goal celebrations mocked Donald Trump, and it seemed to show that it really galvanized their team. Hopefully, I did a good job of laying out the facts as I know them without giving too much of my own view.

Whitney Terrell: I felt like it would have been to our advantage to go in without Balogun because we would have been the underdog then. Something unfair happened to us, and we were going to have to fight out. The team’s play against Bosnia Herzegovina when they were a man down after this red card was quite remarkable. They could have very easily folded in that game, and they did not, and that was why I was so surprised that they came out so poorly against Belgium.

NB: The soccer cynic might say, “Well, that’s because Belgium are a lot better than Bosnia Herzegovina.” But I don’t think that the United States’ performance was their best.

WT: So after this loss, the finger pointing began, and a lot of people started talking—as they do a lot of times after the World Cup—about how players are developed in America. You and I both played in high school, and we have kids who play soccer now. We met for the first time in person after I’ve been listening to you on the radio for many years at a tournament in Orlando that our sons were playing in. We just survived a very hot ECRL playoff round in St. Louis. It’s expensive, and it’s a weird system. How effective is our youth soccer system in developing players who make it onto the World Cup team?

NB: Well, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as effective as it should be, considering how many kids are playing it in this country. In this country, we know that everything is designed around maximizing profits and not maximizing outcomes, right? We could get into all the different levels of our American social construct where that comes into play. So it’s about making money for the organizations more than it is about maximizing the growth of the kids. That doesn’t mean they’re not teaching our kids how to play the game. I look at my kids and their understanding of tactics and technical ability and all of that is incredibly advanced compared to what mine was at that time. So I do think we’re making a lot of progress in that regard.

But I do think that we have a long way to go, first of all, to making it affordable and accessible for everyone. But also, there’s a cultural thing here, where when you see these other countries—I was in Arrowhead Stadium or Kansas City Stadium, as they call it right now, for this Argentina game. I’ve gotten to know a handful of people from South America that I work with on the Apple broadcast, and you get a real sense for how deeply the passion for the game runs in the culture. Every kid’s playing soccer from the moment that they can kick a ball. Every kid is out in the street playing soccer at all hours of the day because they want to and because they love it.

How many of our American kids are practicing two or three times a week and playing a game on the weekends, and then that’s the only time they touch a soccer ball? They’re going in to play video games or play another sport or whatever. And I don’t know if that changes or how you change it. I don’t think it’s really fair to blame the academy systems for that. It’s a cultural difference. You know, we don’t walk around most of the United States and just see kids outside playing soccer all the time. You see that in other places, and I think that develops better players.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Rebecca Kilroy. Photograph of Nate Bukaty by C. Castor.