Kansas City Wiz / Kansas City Wizards

Major League Soccer (1996-2010)

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Kansas City Wiz Sublimated Mesh V-Neck T-shirt from the Mitchell & Ness MLS Since ’96 Collection

Background

A pair of abandoned pro soccer brands today, rather than a defunct franchise. Major League Soccer’s Sporting Kansas City club is in relatively robust health these days, but it wasn’t always so. Sporting traces its origins back to the original 10 MLS franchises revealed in June 1995. And those origins are decidedly offbeat.

The new league called upon the marketing gurus of apparel partners such as Nike and Adidas to help select the names, branding and colors of various clubs. Adidas was tabbed to set up Kansas City’s brand identity. And they came up with … Wiz. Though the club’s colors were officially Carolina Blue & Black, the defining features of the club’s original look were the garish rainbow stripes on the team kits from 1996 to 1999.

Year of the Wiz

MLS took pains in its early years to separate itself from the failure of the North American Soccer League (1968-1984) a decade earlier. But the Wiz had a number of connections to the United States’ previous top flight league. Wiz investor-operator Lamar Hunt, who also owned the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, backed the NASL’s Dallas Tornado for 15 seasons from 1967 to 1981. No other NASL owner hung in with the league as long as Hunt did.

Hunt brought in long-time associate Ron Newman, the winningest coach in American professional soccer history with over 700 victories, to manage the Wiz. A quarter century earlier, Newman led Hunt’s Dallas Tornado to the 1971 NASL championship as a player coach. When the focus of American pro soccer shifted to the indoor game in the 1980’s, Newman adapted also and won 10 indoor titles as coach of the San Diego Sockers.

The Wiz also signed one of only three former NASL players to play for MLS, 29-year old U.S. National Team veteran Frank Klopas. (Klopas had signed with the NASL’s Chicago Sting straight out of high school in 1984, but never saw game action during that league’s final season due to injury). The Wiz finished the 1996 season 17-15 and advanced as far as the playoff semi-finals, where they lost a two-leg series to the Los Angeles Galaxy.

Meanwhile, fans seemed justifiably perplexed by the whole Wiz concept. The club’s name, geography and prominent rainbow motif seemed to scream Wizard of Oz. But the Wiz’s 1996 media guide claimed, preposterously, that drawing a connection to the classic film was “never an intention of the club” (?!). General Manager Tim Latta instead boasted of a “medieval, Knights of the Round Table theme” for the club’s marketing efforts.

The Wiz drew an average of 12,878 fans in 1996, ranking 8th out of 10 teams in MLS. In November 1996, the team scrapped the Wiz identity in favor of the more conventional “Wizards” ahead of the league’s sophomore season.

The Rainbow Years

The “Wiz” were history by 1997, but Kansas City kept the love-’em-or-hate-’em rainbow stripes on their kits through the end of the decade.

“We were last in apparel sales virtually every year,” long-time Wizards/Sporting KC exec Rob Thomson recalled to The Kansas City Star in 2018. “We even finished behind MLS. The league sold apparel with their own logo on it, and even that stuff outsold the Wizards.”

Serbian-born midfielder Preki, a legend of the American indoor leagues of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, emerged as a late-blooming outdoor star for both the Wizards and the U.S. National Team in the latter half of the decade. He won the MLS Most Valuable Player award in 1997 and 2003.

Other key players of the Rainbow era included:

• U.S. international midfielder Mark Chung (Wizards ’96-’98)
• Scottish international striker Mo Johnston (Wizards ’96-’01)
• Zimbabwean striker Digital Takawira (Wizards ’96-’00)
• American midfielder Chris Klein (Wizards ’98-’05)

Off the field, the Wizards struggled. The club finished last in MLS in attendance every year from 1997 to 1999. The situation bottomed out in 1999. Ron Newman was forced to resign after an 0-4 start and criticism from newly acquired U.S. National Team goalkeeper Tony Meola, who publicly took the Hall-of-Fame coach to task. This despite the fact that Meola was injured and had yet to play in a single match for Kansas City. The Wizards finished last in the Western Conference (8-24) and drew just 8,183 fans per match.

2000 MLS Cup Championship

The year 2000 marked a fresh start for the Wizards in all aspects. The rainbow kits were left behind in their 1990’s time capsule. Former U.S. National Team coach Bob Gansler, who replaced Ron Newman midway through the wretched 1999 campaign, took charge for his first full year at the helm. Tony Meola was finally healthy and about to embark on the greatest club season of his career. 30-year old newcomer Miklos Molnar arrived from Denmark and notched a team-leading 12 goals. The Danish striker expertly complemented veterans Chris Henderson (10 goals), Mo Johnston(4 goals) and Preki (3 goals, 9 assists).

Molnar was particularly deadly in the playoffs. After scoring in the Wizards’ final three regular season games, he scored five more times in Kansas City’s seven playoff matches. Down 2-1 heading into the second and decisive leg of the Western Conference finals against Los Angeles Galaxy, Molnar netted a brace to send KC on to its first MLS Cup final. Nine days later Molnar buried the game winner in the Wizards’ 1-0 Cup victory over the Chicago Fire. He retired from pro soccer moments after the game after spending only one season in America.

Meola, the league’s Most Valuable Player for the 2000 season, recorded five clean sheets in seven playoff matches. He was the MLS Cup Final MVP as well, posting a 10-save performance in a match where the Fire outshot the Wizards 22-6.

Re-Branding

By the summer of 2006 the Wizards had been up for sale for nearly two years. Lamar Hunt was ill with prostate cancer, which would ultimately take his life at age 74 that December. In August 2006, a group of six local businessmen known as OneGoal LLC purchased the Wizards from the Hunt family with the intention of building an 18,500 soccer specific stadium for the club.

Under the new team ownership, the Wizards moved out of vast Arrowhead Stadium after the 2007 season and into a temporary residence at 10,385-seat CommunityAmerica Ballpark, the home of the Kansas City T-Bones minor league baseball team. The Wizards ended up stranded at the ballpark for three seasons (2008-2010) as the stadium development project languished during the Great Recession.

The Wizards returned to Arrowhead for a pair of big games during this period: a 2008 match against the L.A. Galaxy featuring David Beckham (26,113 in attendance) and a 2010 international friendly against Manchester United (52,424).

In November 2010 club ownership announced the end of the Wizards era. The team’s new Sporting Kansas City identity launched in concert with its move into the $200 million LiveStrong Sporting Park for the 2011 MLS season.

Trivia

The Wizards boast both the only two-time winner of the MLS Most Valuable Player award and the only goalkeeper ever to earn that honor. Midfielder Preki won the award in 1997 and 2003. Tony Meola recorded a league-record 16 shutouts during the Wizards’ MLS championship campaign in 2000 en route to MVP recognition.

The largest MLS crowd of the Wiz/Wizards era was 32,867 for a September 27, 2007 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy at Arrowhead. The match was supposed to feature British superstar David Beckham’s first appearance in Kansas City but he missed the game due to injury.

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Lamar Hunt: A Life In Sports

By Michael MacCambridge

 

Written by award-winning author Michael MacCambridge, this is the definitive, official biography of one of the 20th century’s most important and beloved sporting figures; the soft-spoken, strong-willed man whose audacious challenge to the National Football League transformed American sports. Hunt revolutionized three different sports—pro football, tennis, and soccer—winding up in the Hall of Fame of each. Drawing on 50 years of Hunt’s personal papers and more than 200 interviews, MacCambridge provides an intimate, original portrait of the man forever captivated by these serious pursuits we call games.

 

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Kansas City Wizards Video

Wizards vs. the San Jose Clash in the breakaway-style tiebreaker shootout used by MLS during its early years from 1996 to 1998. From MLS’ debut season in 1996 at a nearly empty Arrowhead Stadium

In Memoriam

Wizards founding owner Lamar Hunt died of complications from prostate cancer on December 13, 2006 at age 74. New York Times obituary.

Uche Okafor (Wizards ’96-’00) passed away unexpectedly in his home on January 6, 2011. The Nigerian defender was 43 years old. MLSSoccer.com obituary.

Wiz / Wizards manager Ron Newman passed on August 27, 2018 at age 84. San Diego Union-Tribune obituary.

Links

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Major League Soccer Programs

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