Through strength, speed and courage, Temwa Chawinga created an opening in the Portland defense. She sprinted past a defender to beat oncoming Portland goalkeeper Shelby Hogan to the ball, which spilled out into space. Teenager Alex Pfeiffer saw an opportunity, closed in and buried her left-footed strike. Music, smoke and pyrotechnics burst from the Kansas City Riverfront. Kansas City Current led Portland Thorns, 5-1.

The brand-new CPKC Stadium, the world’s first purpose-built for a women’s professional sports team, billowed with the joy of 11,500 fans in the midday Missouri sun. At 16 years, three months and 20 days old, Pfeiffer became the youngest goalscorer in National Women’s Soccer League history.

“This is something that will change the world of women’s soccer,” Kansas City head coach Vlatko Andonovski said after the match. “This is the beginning of change.”

Momentum quickly shifted after Pfeiffer’s strike and Portland responded with three goals in the final 20 minutes to force a sold-out crowd to sweat out seven minutes of stoppage time. If the opening kickoff brought a cathartic release, the final whistle was a long exhale.

Soccer fans in Kansas City clung to the 5-4 victory after nearly having it ripped away. It wasn’t an easy three points for the home team on Saturday. But, then again, neither was their entire journey to a place of their own.

Kansas City claims the title ‘Soccer Capital of America’ for its rich football history. It’s already hosted multiple World Cup qualifying matches, Concacaf Gold Cups and Olympic qualifiers. It will host another six matches in the 2026 World Cup, including a quarter-final. The city failed in a bid to host matches in the 1994 World Cup, but the tournament’s popularity laid the groundwork for the Kansas City Wizards, one of the founding clubs in Major League Soccer.

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Nearly two decades later, the city welcomed a franchise with the birth of the National Women’s Soccer League. The first NWSL match kicked off on 13 April 2013 – coincidentally between FC Kansas City and the Portland Thorns – 11 miles south of where last Saturday’s match was played.

Support from federations in Canada, Mexico and the US soothed worries the league would fold like all that had come before it. Andonovski, Kansas City coach at that time, praised the match environment. Many of the 6,784 fans in attendance arrived early and tailgated, providing a different experience than those watching on YouTube. “It’s like completely different worlds,” Andonovski said of the comparison between them and Saturday.

That 1-1 draw in 2013 started the most successful women’s professional soccer league in the country’s history. FC Kansas City finished second in the regular season and made the league semi-final, all while averaging 4,626 fans per home match. (Portland, with 13,320 average that season, led the league in average attendance throughout the league’s first eight seasons.)

FCKC lifted the league trophy in their second season. Becky Sauerbrunn captained the team and played with fellow USWNT centurions Amy Rodriguez and Lauren Holiday. Andonovski wanted a goalscorer to help the team retain their crown. He knew Shea Groom from her youth in Kansas City but thought she’d get picked early after a 41-goal career at Texas A&M University. Somehow, she fell down the draft board to FC Kansas City and the No 12 pick.

“There was obviously nothing better than playing for your home town,” said Groom, who often drove 45 minutes across Kansas City growing up to play in leagues that met her competitive level.

While Groom broke her foot midway through her first season, she returned in time to come on in the second half of FCKC’s 1-0 win in the 2015 NWSL Championship. Groom scored 17 goals in 54 appearances for her hometown club. Back-to-back championships in the first three seasons elevated FCKC to the league’s pinnacle – an unthinkable status to those who saw behind the curtain.

“I’ll argue that it was one of the maybe hardest clubs to be a part of at the time just because we had so little,” Groom said.

Players didn’t have a locker room. Some dressed and prepared in the parking lot. Players and FCKC staff members, three in total, drove team cars on away trips. The 2022 Yates Report, an independent audit of the league commissioned by US Soccer, detailed how abuse and misconduct went unchecked in the league. NWSL’s base salary in 2017 was $6,000. Players lived with host families or bunked together with an assistant coach’s family.

“I look back at those memories fondly because, obviously, I love the game,” Kansas City native and Orlando Pride midfielder Haley McCutcheon said. “And you had to love the game back then to be doing this because there wasn’t a lot of upside, unfortunately.”

FCKC’s first home was Shawnee Mission District Stadium, which they shared with three different high schools. The field was permanently covered by American football yard lines and surrounded by a track. The club then moved to a college stadium surrounded by a track where seating capacity needed to be expanded from 850. With MLS’s Sporting KC reluctant to share grounds, the nomadic FCKC played their last match on a ground the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs left 40 years earlier.

“Vlatko always did a great job of making it feel like a professional training environment and that’s why people came,” Groom said. “Bringing championships home in those kinds of conditions, I think, gave Kansas City the mark that this is where a women’s professional team can exist.”

Turmoil then surpassed playing conditions and location. Late in the 2016 season, allegations were made that FC Kansas City co-owner Chris Likens and his sons, Brad and Greg, traded emails throughout 2013 that made comments about the “hotness” of prospective players and made “sexually demeaning” remarks about unidentified FCKC players. Brad Likens responded at the time that the emails were fabricated by co-owner Brad Buzinski, who later sued the Likens brothers.

The team was sold to Minnesota-based businessman Elam Baer, who kept the team for a season. Attendance dropped to the third worst in the league and FC Kansas City effectively folded. The league distributed its assets, including player contracts, to the Utah Royals, then starting their first stint in the league. Women’s soccer left Kansas City despite its history for support.

“When the team got sold to Utah I was crushed,” said Groom, who often told her coaches she’d play her whole career in Kansas City. “Obviously because women’s soccer was leaving Kansas City and because I wasn’t going to be able to represent the city that I felt so strongly about.

“But, you know, I think it’s made me a better player. And, honestly, I think it had to leave the city to get to where it is now.”

The club lasted just three seasons before another ownership scandal. Assets were again sold back to the league. Kansas City-based financial executives Angie and Chris Long ponied up the funds to return a team to the Paris of the Plains, and Kansas City Current were founded as an expansion team in 2021. Brittany Mahomes also bought an ownership stake. Mahomes played professional soccer in Iceland after scoring 31 goals in 74 appearances at the University of Texas-Tyler. Her husband, Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, joined as a minority owner last year, becoming the first active NFL player to have an ownership stake in an NWSL team.

The new ownership group brought plans for a new stadium on the Berkley Riverfront, built on the discarded shards of the Kemper Arena roof that collapsed in 1979. Privately funded for $117m, CPKC Stadium was built along the Missouri River on the former dumping grounds of Kansas City’s sports ambitions. Even the name comes from Canadian Pacific Kansas City, a railroad behemoth spanning 20,000 miles that bought naming rights in a 10-year agreement.

“From the conditions I came from, where FCKC was first formed, you’d never guess that was going to be the club to do it,” Groom said.

Ground broke on the project on 6 October 2022. The Long and Mahomes families were both there to celebrate. They returned to manicured grass on Saturday for the monumental event. They, along with Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas, cut the ceremonial ribbon that opened the gates to fans two hours before kickoff. Stadium festivities included a special recognition for the first USWNT. Members of the ‘85ers’ were praised at half-time and their names, likenesses and story cover a wall inside the stadium.

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They were all among the 11,500 who witnessed history and incredible drama in Saturday’s 5-4 win. Kansas City players soaked in the post-match celebration on their own field – cherishing a moment they almost lost. A team with a place just for them, in front of fans who know this beacon along the Missouri River as a place for women’s soccer.

“If you describe this team it has to be like we’re describing Kansas City,” Andonovski said afterward. “Hard worker, resilient, with flair, brave, literally in people’s faces.

“We didn’t win because we were so good, so much better than Portland. We won because we were Kansas City today.”