New renderings are out for the new stadium for the Kansas City Current, the city’s NWSL franchise, which claims to be “the first stadium in the world built solely for a professional women’s soccer team.” What do we got?
Sure, that’s normal enough, if a little hard to see why it would cost $117 million. (Most of this is being paid for by the team; the owners asked for $6 million in tax breaks in May to help cover cost overruns, but ifd that’s been approved, it’s escaped media mention.) Are there any other views?
Now that’s more like it! Not only can we see additional seating that wasn’t visible in the first image, this one is a smorgasbord of bizarro details:
- Let’s start with the game action, where the team in white (presumably the Current, though their main kit is currently red) has sent the entire team up to within 20 yards of goal, not bothering to leave even a single defender back to help the keeper defend against a counterattack. This could be a desperation move to score a goal in the closing minutes, but more likely is because, as a closer look shows, they appear to be playing at an 11-to-8 player advantage, after the opposing team had three players sent off.
- What could have caused the red team to accumulate all those red cards? Perhaps they were objecting to the home team setting off fireworks in the middle of a match, which does seem a little unfair.
- While we’re looking in the sky, what’s that odd crescent in the top right corner? It could be the moon, but I dunno, it looks awfully big to be the moon, unless this is depicting a photo taken with a zoom lens, which it can’t be given the rest of the perspective. Maybe it’s the Death Star? Using the Death Star to gain home field advantage would definitely seem like a violation of the Laws of the Game, so I can see now why the opposing team’s players got themselves ejected.
- Whatever that is, it seems to be backlit by the sun in a way that can’t quite happen in normal geometry, though given the stadium’s location, the sun appears to be setting in the north, so maybe everyone in this image has bigger things to worry about than being vaporized just so Grand Moff Tarkin can show off his new toy.
That was pretty good, even better than the last batch of weird renderings the team issued. The stadium is set to open in 2024, so be prepared for the Earth to be thrown off its axis sometime next year.
“It’s not a moon” or as bad lip reading reminded us https://youtu.be/eT4shwU4Yc4
Maybe the fireworks are to celebrate tarkins promotion to grand moff?
Playing 11-8 is really something! I especially like that some for the players ins white aren’t really engaged in the game. And one is offsides and standing in the goal.
I noticed that offsides player, and briefly considered that maybe the red team has the ball. If so, though, they are playing some truly awful defense, including that one player guarding the far post for no apparent reason during the run of play.
The person who created this rendering isn’t here to defend himself or herself, so I will do it for him or her. The other three players for the red team are in the corner, out of view in the rendering. Why all three are massed in the corner is a mystery, however.
Work-to-rule job action?
Maybe the red team are, in fact, the current. And they have a corner kick – As an offensive play.
So at least one player could be in the corner out of view as the kicker.
Perhaps the other two are playing a strategy and are likewise in that corner?
If we assume late game, maybe they brought everyone (but the goalie) up for some heroics?
Of course that’s awfully abstract. So maybe not…
That’s the best theory I’ve seen. And yet it still requires the defending team to have positioned four players outside the box, as well as one defending the near post while facing away from the corner taker … I think we can all agree that some coach is getting fired after this play for something, it’s just not clear what.
What is that upside down V shaped thing that sits in the river next to the stadium?
At least when I follow the “stadium location” link it looks like it’s in the river.
Looks like the bridge carrying I-29.
Oh, thanks Neil!
In defense of the Current, at least they’re spending a large percentage of the total cost to build the stadium, even with 6 million
The Royals, on the other hand….
I’m stunned the Current owners are covering 95% of the cost! Are they un-American?
I suspect they realized that “Give us $100m for our women’s soccer team” would not get them the response they were hoping for.
(Nothing against women’s soccer — I’m a fan — but it’s not seen as life-or-death the way, say, men’s football is.)
Funny how when public dollars don’t materialize…..
Another flaw in the rendering is the stands looking to be at capacity.
Can someone please explain why they can’t just share the stadium of the MLS Sporting KC?
That’s where they play now. They’re averaging 7,657 vs 18,365 for Sporting KC, so it’s probably costing a lot more than they’d like to play in a stadium that’s too big for the current crowds. Also, given those numbers, it wouldn’t make sense for SKC (or whoever owns the stadium – I’m not sure) to give KCC the better Saturday night slots, etc.
But it seems like it would be cheaper to subsidize the women’s club for a while and hope they can build their audience in the bigger arena than build a whole new stadium. Or, maybe there are other possible uses for a smaller stadium – college games, etc.
One of the main reasons why all the pro women’s soccer leagues – and women’s pro leagues in a number of sports – haven’t done particularly well is that, absent enough deep-pocketed investors, they’ve often been stuck playing in venues where fans don’t particularly want to go, no matter who is playing. It looks bad on TV and it’s hard to build a following. So playing in MLS stadiums is preferable, but it’s expensive to play a game in a half empty stadium.
It also makes it hard to pay players enough to make it a full time job, which impairs the overall quality of the teams, especially while European clubs are increasingly able to use the largess of their men’s teams to grow their women’s teams.