Wizards try to create soccer success in KC

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Robb Heineman looked around at a mostly-empty Arrowhead Stadium and couldn't help but worry.

He was at his first Wizards game. It was March 9, 2005, and the Wizards were playing a night game against Deportivo Saprissa, a Costa Rican team. It was cold, maybe 20 degrees. The official attendance of 1,207 was pitiful, but Heineman remembers it being closer to 300.

And this was the team he was thinking about buying?

"Maybe we were crazy at the time," said Heineman, the CEO and managing partner of OnGoal LLC, the group of local investors that purchased the Wizards from Lamar Hunt 17 months later.

Heineman says OnGoal made the deal with the hope of turning the Wizards into a financial success and Kansas City into the soccer hub of the Midwest.

Today, the Wizards will play the biggest game of their 15-year history, an exhibition against English power Manchester United that could draw more than 50,000 to Arrowhead.

The Wizards say their ability to lure the world's most popular team is an indication of soccer's bright future here. The way crowds flooded the Power & Light District in June to watch World Cup games on television, and the fact Kansas City remains a finalist to be a host city for a future World Cup in the United States makes for a convincing argument.

On the field, the Wizards have struggled, going 12-22-13 the last two seasons. But off the field, the Wizards have built their own training facility at Swope Park, maintained crowds at their temporary home at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas City, Kan., and have a state-of-the-art stadium under construction nearby that could open next summer.

All of this would have seemed improbable five years ago.

"I wouldn't have believed it for a second," said midfielder and team captain Davy Arnaud, who has been with the Wizards since 2003. "I've seen this club when it was different than the way it is now."

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San Jose. Philadelphia. San Antonio. Rochester, N.Y. Assistant coach Kerry Zavagnin, who played midfield for the Wizards from 2000-08, heard all the rumors.

Hunt helped create Major League Soccer and brought the Wizards to Kansas City, but he called the team "a financial drain" when he put it up for sale in December 2004. He said the next owner of the team needed a soccer-only stadium to succeed, but there had been little initiative taken to build one.

For the next 20 months, rumors flew about the Wizards leaving Kansas City. During a visit in July 2006, MLS commissioner Don Garber gave Wizards players and coaches two potential scenarios for the team — either it would find a buyer who was committed to building a stadium in Kansas City or the franchise would be moved.

"That talk really made it real," Zavagnin said. "He painted an optimistic picture in the sense that if we weren't going to be here, we were going to be somewhere.

"But for those of us that have spent so much time in Kansas City, it was a difficult pill to swallow because we felt like we'd given so much to this town."

Defender Jimmy Conrad, who has been with the Wizards since 2003, remembers feeling like he was on a team without a home.

"Part of us just wanted to go where we were wanted," Conrad said. "If San Antonio wanted us, we'd go and make the best of it."

Ultimately, they were wanted by OnGoal, which was led by Cerner Corp. co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig. Their purchase of the Wizards in September 2006 gave fans reason for hope. They were local guys and they wanted to keep the team in Kansas City.

The Wizards were saved. Now they just needed a new home.

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A 35-minute car ride on westbound Interstate 70 will take you from Arrowhead Stadium to Village West, the future location of the Wizards' 18,500-seat stadium. Cranes and pickup trucks litter the 11-acre site near Kansas Speedway.

This is a scene Heineman doesn't take lightly. The Wizards left Arrowhead before the 2008 season and have been playing home games on a minor-league baseball diamond-turned-temporary soccer pitch. Two proposals to build stadiums, one in Overland Park and another at the site of the former Bannister Mall, fell through.

Last September, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County put together an offer that lured the Wizards to KCK.

"We would have no future (here) without this stadium," said OnGoal vice president of development David Ficklin, who oversees the $414 million project. "Soccer is a business, and we'd never be viable in this market in Arrowhead."

Over the last five seasons, the Wizards have averaged between 9,000 and 12,000 fans a season. They're hoping the buzz from the World Cup, today's game and the new stadium will improve those numbers, which have been toward the bottom of MLS. But one thing that could derail that plan is the failure to build a consistent winner.

The Wizards are 4-8-4 this season, one year after they fired coach Curt Onalfo midseason and finished 8-14-9. Their lone MLS Cup championship was in 2000.

"Performance on the field is going to make or break our business long-term," Heineman says. "I think we have a plan to (win consistently), but I'd say the execution right now is probably below average."

That would fall on coach and technical director Peter Vermes, who Heineman says will coach the team through this season.

"I believe in Peter," Heineman says. "He's instilling a philosophy and style of play we believe in, but we've got to produce results, and I think we're all aware of that."

Winning is the key to the Wizards future, but OnGoal is also focused on building momentum toward a brighter soccer future in Kansas City. And while Manchester United is in Kansas City today, the truth is the world - as in a future World Cup - might be here tomorrow.

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To the Wizards, the best thing about Kansas City's burgeoning soccer love is that people from out of town are starting to take notice. Consider this:

1. After hearing about the massive crowds at the Power & Light District during the World Cup, ESPN came to Kansas City to film fans watching the U.S. team face Ghana in the round of 16.

2. Kansas City is one of 18 cities included in the United States' bid for either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. FIFA will announce the host countries for both years in December.

3. Manchester United is here.

Don't underestimate the importance of No. 3. Sure, the Hunt family's friendship with the Glazer family, which owns United, put Kansas City in the running to host the game, but the Wizards and Chiefs still had to pay a seven-figure appearance fee.

Richard Arnold, United's commercial director, said the club wouldn't have come here if it didn't believe Kansas City was a legitimate soccer hub with good training facilities and "a knowledgeable and vibrant fan base."

"We know that Kansas (City) is working very hard on being a destination city for these key games," Arnold said. "We worked very hard with Major League Soccer researching the cities that we go to."

And the Wizards hope Manchester United won't be the last big name to visit Kansas City.

"If (United comes) here and has a great time, then all the other big teams are going to want come into our soccer specific stadium down the road," Vermes said. "Think about the games we'll be able to have."

So far, so good. The Wizards said Thursday that they have already sold more tickets (46,000) tickets for today's game than the much-larger cities of Toronto (39,139) and Philadelphia (44,213) did on the first two stops of United's five-city North American tour.

As the framework of the Wizards' new stadium takes shape, so does OnGoal's vision of big-time soccer in Kansas City.

"To go from my first Wizards game to Sunday, when we'll have a nearly full Arrowhead Stadium," Heineman said, "it speaks volumes about the momentum we're building."

This story was originally published July 25, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Wizards try to create soccer success in KC."