By Andy Edwards - The Daily Wiz
Livestrong Sporting Park Lives Up To Hype, Even If First Match Didn’t
What happens when you open a beautiful, new, $200 million dollar colossus of a soccer-specific stadium? You pack the house and throw trash all over the field following a bad refereeing decision, of course. At least, that's what a few select fans did in Kansas City on Thursday night when Sporting Kansas City opened LIVESTRONG Sporting Park against the Chicago Fire, and drew, 0-0.
A team that has waited for a permanent home all their own for 15 years, Sporting KC finally had finished the never-ending 10-game road trip to start their 2011 season, and were they ever ready to come home and play in front of a home crowd. The stadium, regularly a 20-22-month construction job that was completed in just over 16 months, was packed to the rafters after the team sold nearly 1,500 standing-room-only tickets on the day of the game. Fans were not about to miss such a monumental night in Kansas City soccer history.
It's just too bad that the game itself didn't live up to the hype, and instead will temporarily be remembered for a what seemed to be an egregious non-foul call against Bratislav Ristic when he took Sporting forward Omar Bravo down in the box in the 85th minute, and the aforementioned bottle tossing which ensued. A beautiful evening's festivities were suddenly undone and marred with somewhat a black eye on a very small portion of the team's fanbase.
Not even that, though, could completely ruin this night in the otherwise unexciting Kansas City, Kan.
When Sporting KC’s ownership group - OnGoal, LLC - designed the stadium with stadium design juggernauts Populus, the goal was to design a stadium that not only provided fans an adequate venue to watch a soccer game, but also to give their club the greatest home field advantage possible. Suffice it to say that they certainly achieved said goal.
From about two hours prior to kickoff, fans flooded the LSP gates and, many for the first time, took in their new home in all its beauty and elegance. From the iconic roof which covers everything but the playing field itself, to the one of its kind supporters section club that seats 2,000 fans, to its revolutionary interactive members portal run on the stadium’s world class online network - LSP is the creme de la creme of American soccer stadiums.
More so than anything, fans found it astounding that just four short years after threats the club could be leaving town and relocating elsewhere, they were now the proud inhabitants of the world’s most technologically advanced sports stadium. Of course OnGoal are the group of men they have to thank for this. Even after failed stadium proposal after failed stadium proposal, onward they pressed until they finally secured the county funding to build the Village West behemoth on the outskirts of the Kansas Speedway.
Offering up the largest LED videoboard in all the league, fans were treated to immediate replays of important events on the field, both controversial and otherwise.
While the game itself might have been somewhat a disappointing, albeit exciting, 0-0 draw, Sporting KC, OnGoal and the fans were all huge winners on the night. No tossed bottle, missed call or spur of the moment mistake could take anything away from any of them, because they were all home.
The chorus for the night: “Ahh, home; Let me come home; Home is wherever I’m with you” - Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes
All photos courtesy of The Daily Wiz
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