Friday, April 09, 2010

Something Kind of Cool

I was looking around Facebook tonight and came across a post from the Major League Soccer fan page. Basically Chicago is hosting a Sister Cities International Cup in Chicago in late May. Along with the Fire, 3 teams from Europe will compete in the tournament as well, all 3 are from sister cities of Chicago. There's Legia Warsaw, Paris Saint-Germain, and Red Star Belgrade. Personally I think this is a pretty interesting idea to bring in teams affiliated as sister cities with the home city for a small tournament. True the timing may not be the best, but I like the overall idea.

If there was something KC were to do, there are plenty of cities to choose from for sister city teams. Kansas City, MO has plenty of sister cities that have teams that could be invited to such a tournament. A tournament in KC could contain clubs like Sevilla FC, Hannover 96, FC Metz, or even a team that is already a sister club, Atlas. Even if the team was interested in using KCK, the Kansas City on the other side of the state line also has their own sister cities (although their clubs aren't as glamorous. If you used KCK, you could have LASK Linza in Austira, NK Karlovac in Croatia, Limerick FC in Ireland. Overall, it's a good concept Chicago has with this tournament and it'll be interesting to see how the tournament turns out. I personally think the concept around the tournament is pretty cool by bringing in teams from the clubs from the sister city of the team. Whether KC does some sort of local tournament isn't know, there had been talk a few years ago about a similar tournament, although that never came to be. Still it's nice to think about the likes of Sevilla and Hannover coming to KC.

1 comment:

Ron Bishop said...

I like that idea!

You see signs listing sister cities, but wonder "Why? What good?" yeah - I know "Peace, Love and Understanding, warm fuzzies, yada,yada,yada "-

-but "soccer" seems much more fun and tangible! Especially if you get clubs from different areas of the globe.