"I think he would be over the moon." That's Dan Hunt, talking about his father Lamar — the man who, more than anyone else, made professional soccer viable in the United States and pushed hard enough, long enough, to bring the World Cup here twice.
It started, improbably, on a standing terrace at Shamrock Rovers. Lamar Hunt had crossed the Atlantic in the early 1960s to visit his future wife Norma, who was studying in Dublin, and found himself watching European football for what may have been the first time. Something clicked. A few years later, he was at Wembley for the 1966 final — England beating West Germany in what remains England's only World Cup — and by that point the obsession was fully formed.
Building from the rubble
Hunt didn't just watch. He invested. He co-founded the United Soccer Association in 1966, which eventually became the North American Soccer League — the league that brought Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, and Carlos Alberto to American pitches. For a while, it worked. Then it didn't. By 1984, attendance had collapsed, television deals had evaporated, and the NASL folded.
Most people would have walked away. Hunt treated it as a research project.
When FIFA made a top-tier domestic league a condition of hosting the 1994 World Cup, Hunt was already in the room. He helped bankroll Major League Soccer, owned three of its founding franchises, and used everything the NASL's failure had taught him to build something more structurally sound. The league now has 30 clubs, has hosted Beckham and Messi, and underpins a nationwide youth development pipeline that simply didn't exist a generation ago.
"You knew that if Lamar Hunt was part of it, it meant something," said Thom Meredith, his longtime right-hand man. That credibility was the difference between a league that launched and one that actually lasted.
Kansas City, Dallas, and the 2026 payoff
Hunt died in 2006 at 74, four years after attending the South Korea/Japan World Cup alone — a trip that included a stolen briefcase, a shredded ATM card, and cash having to be wired to a billionaire by his sons. Typical Lamar, by all accounts.
Now, two decades later, the tournament he spent his life chasing arrives in the cities he called home. Kansas City — which missed out on 1994 hosting duties because Arrowhead Stadium couldn't fit the required pitch — spent nearly $20 million modifying the venue and will host six matches, including a quarterfinal. Argentina and Messi open there on June 16 against Algeria. Dallas, Hunt's hometown, gets five group-stage games at AT&T Stadium plus a semifinal on July 14.
These aren't just matches. They're the closing argument for a 60-year case Hunt made about American soccer's viability — first from a terrace in Dublin, then through two failed leagues and one that survived, and finally at a World Cup final he never got to see played on his own soil.
"This is one of the final pegs of fulfilling dad's legacy," Dan Hunt said. Hard to argue with that.
