World Cup host Kansas City: Through the eyes of Nate Bukaty

For the first time ever, the World Cup is coming to Kansas City. One man who has played a big role in carrying the flag for Kansas City soccer is Nate Bukaty. He served as the lead commentator for Sporting Kansas City on local broadcasts in 2015-22 before working as a play-by-play commentator for MLS on Apple TV.

While he’s also had the chance to provide commentary for other sports teams like the Kansas City Royals and University of Kansas basketball and football teams, he’s nevertheless helped shape the trajectory of Kansas City’s soccer scene. And in just a few months, he will publish his first book — “Perfect Pitch: How Kansas City Became the Heart of American Soccer and Landed the World Cup” — having written it with The Athletic journalist Rustin Dodd, featuring a foreword from Sporting Kansas City legend Matt Besler.

Soccer America spoke to Bukaty about a number of topics, including:

SA: First off, can you just explain to me your relationship with Kansas City?

NATE BUKATY: I’m a lifelong Kansas City guy: I was mostly born and raised here, I bounced around a lot of different parts of the city growing up, and spent a portion of my childhood living in a small town and farm in southern central Kansas, which is about a 4-hour drive from Kansas City. But that whole time, my parents were divorced, my dad lived in Kansas City, so I was commuting back and forth, and in a weird way, I would say that all of the small towns in the four-state area around Kansas City still kind of consider themselves part of Kansas City, if that makes any sense. Everybody’s a fan of the Kansas City sports teams, and that’s where they go for vacation.

SA: Thirty-two years after watching the World Cup come to your country, you’re finally getting the chance to see the World Cup come to your city. How proud does that make you feel? Do you think that’s a reflection on how much more enthusiastic Kansas City’s population is about soccer?

NATE BUKATY: First of all, I would say it’s a massive understatement to say I’m proud that this is happening in Kansas City. So, a little bit of history on that fact.

Lamar Hunt was the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and the founder of the AFL, the AFC Championship trophy is the Lamar Hunt Trophy, and the oldest soccer tournament in America is the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. He named the Super Bowl: they were combining the AFL and NFL, and he wanted a name that would be catchy, because they called it originally the AFL-NFL Championship game, which doesn’t really have a ring to it, and he came up with the Super Bowl name. He’s the most influential man in American soccer history, maybe in American sports history. He tried to sell Arrowhead Stadium to FIFA for the World Cup in 1994, and they just felt like the city was too small, the airport wasn’t an international airport, there weren’t enough hotels, they didn’t really give it much of a consideration, but Hunt did take FIFA officials on a tour to try to get Kansas City as a World Cup site in 1994.

They tried again to get Kansas City as a host site when the U.S. put that failed bid together for 2018 that ended up going to Russia [and 2022 that went to Qatar], so this is actually kind of the third try. Third time is the charm, so to speak.

It’s very reflective of how far soccer has come: I was a senior in high school during that 1994 World Cup, and I was playing high school soccer. I knew almost nothing about the international game and who the biggest stars were. I think I read one article in Sports Illustrated about the Manchester United team that was the dynasty at that time, but I didn’t know where to find soccer games on television or anything. Fast-forward just over 30 years later, I’m a part of a group called the Kansas City Gooners, and they meet every single week, and they fill up a bar to watch Arsenal games. … We’ve had over 300 fans at matches. The English Premier League Fan Fest came to Kansas City this year, and the place was packed all weekend long: they said it was the best market they’d been to yet. And, of course, you’ve got a thriving men’s soccer team in Sporting Kansas City with one of the nicest facilities in the country, and now the pioneers of the women’s game in terms of facilities and everything in the Kansas City Current, all here. It’s quite a juxtaposition to what the soccer landscape was in 1994, that’s for sure.

SA: What’s one thing that outsiders should know about Kansas City’s soccer scene?

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