The Current Housed the Dutch Then Took Teal Back

The Netherlands spent three weeks at a Kansas City World Cup base camp the Current built for women, then flew home after their earliest tournament exit. They were the third national side to settle in the metro, and the first of the four local camps to empty out.

The squad landed just before 12:45 p.m. on June 9 at Kansas City Downtown Airport, Wheeler Field, a day after a 2-1 friendly win over Uzbekistan in Westchester County, New York. By early July the orange was gone, the coach was gone, and the NWSL club that hosted them was putting teal signs back on the walls.

Orange Landed at Wheeler Field on June 9

Fans were already waiting at the Cascade Hotel on the Country Club Plaza, the Dutch overnight address for the rest of the group stage. The hotel sits about 25 minutes from the pitches in Riverside. That gap was a choice: sleep on the Plaza, train on a women’s campus, drive the loop in between.

Argentina had been in town since May 31. Algeria had already bused out to Lawrence. England was still a few days from Swope Soccer Village. The Dutch were the missing piece in a metro that had sold itself, inside FIFA circles, as the base-camp capital of the 48-team tournament.

That pitch is the version of the stay you got when the Dutch first touched down in June. What followed was a women’s club handing over its headquarters, a three-week orange occupation of Riverside and the Plaza, a rainy group-stage night at Kansas City Stadium, and a 9 a.m. departure from KCI after a penalty loss in Mexico.

City Hall treated the booking as a civic win. In a release that went out when the camp was confirmed, Mayor Quinton Lucas welcomed the Oranje with a bilingual joke and a claim that Kansas City was now the soccer capital of America and the base-camp capital of the world. The Current had more on the line than a slogan. The club had built the ground. The Dutch were about to live in it.

Why the Dutch Picked a Women’s Training Ground

Argentina held first pick after the December draw and took Sporting Kansas City’s Compass Minerals center. The Netherlands, ranked No. 7 when the deal was struck on February 12, went next and chose the Kansas City Current Training Facility in Riverside, the first complex of its kind in the NWSL. Austria had wanted the same pitches. Once the Dutch committed, that door shut.

Co-owners Angie and Chris Long had spent years walking federations through the place. The club’s president, general manager, head of facilities, and a co-owner would wait outside for visiting staff. Ronald Koeman, then 63 and in his second spell as Netherlands coach, came himself.

When selecting our base camp, we first looked at the most favorable climate conditions in the region where we will be playing. I visited the site myself, and for the region where we will play our group matches, Kansas City is the best option.

Ronald Koeman, Netherlands head coach, on choosing Riverside

Marianne van Leeuwen, the KNVB’s director of professional football, said the federation scored sites on sporting, logistical, and operational tests, and that closing the group in Kansas City with Dutch fans on the ground was an extra. The Current called the booking a privilege. Chris Long later said a top men’s team picking a women’s facility “validates the training center in a way that words can’t.”

The campus the Dutch inherited was a privately funded $20 million training facility finished in June 2022: 17,000 square feet, two grass pitches, a weight and cardio room, recovery rooms, and the Current’s front office under the same roof. Next door sits Riverside Stadium, a 2,000-seat outdoor ground with a heated grass pitch, finished in 2025 so the women’s team would not be homeless if a World Cup side moved in.

THE CURRENT’S WORLD CUP SHIFT

• The handover: Offices, health rooms, locker rooms, and meeting spaces went orange, with a carpet and the Dutch lion over the teal.
• The workaround: Current players kept training on the expanded site next door through the NWSL’s four-week break after the May 29-31 round, which had included a home match against Boston Legacy FC on May 30.
• The overlap: The Current still had an NWSL Challenge Cup date on June 26 in Columbus, Ohio, the morning after the Dutch played Tunisia in Kansas City.
• The return: League play was due back on July 3, 10, and 17, so the club needed its primary building the moment Oranje left.

Long had said the extra stadium and performance space existed so the women’s team could “continue uninterrupted” if a country took the main building. The Netherlands were that country. The Current’s own season did not pause for them. It just moved a few dozen yards south.

Four Camps Split the Metro Between Them

Kansas City did not host one famous guest. It stacked four, with hotels and pitches spread from the riverfront to Lawrence. The Dutch were the Plaza-and-Riverside pairing, a full-floor meeting space and a short drive, which is what their staff had asked for on a printed hotel list.

WHERE THE FOUR KC-AREA TEAMS LIVED

All four sides reached the round of 32. That is the part the metro can keep. The Dutch were simply the first of the four to pack, because they were the first of the four to lose a knockout game.

Cody Gakpo, speaking while the camp was still live, sounded like a man who had been sold the right building. “I think the facilities are very good,” he said. “Obviously, the training room is amazing, and no doubt as good as home.”

Riverside Opened the Gates for Footvolley

The occupation started in public. On the morning after they landed, the Dutch worked in front of locals instead of behind a fence. Then they disappeared into the usual camp rhythm: pitches, Plaza, a few unscripted hours, and the next flight to a group game.

THE DUTCH STAY, DAY BY DAY

1. June 9, 2026: Squad lands at Wheeler Field just before 12:45 p.m. and checks into the Cascade Hotel. That afternoon they golf at Tiffany Greens.
2. June 10, 2026: Open session at Riverside Stadium, 10:30 a.m. CT, about 1,000 fans, 70 minutes of drills and three-a-side footvolley, then autographs at the bleachers.
3. June 14, 2026: Open Group F with a 2-2 draw against Japan at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, attendance 69,285.
4. June 20, 2026: Beat Sweden 5-1 at NRG Stadium in Houston, attendance 68,777, with two goals each from Brian Brobbey and Gakpo.
5. June 25, 2026: Beat Tunisia 3-1 at Kansas City Stadium in the rain, attendance 68,391, after an estimated 20,000 orange fans walked downtown.
6. June 29, 2026: Draw Morocco 1-1 in Guadalupe, then lose 3-2 on penalties at Estadio BBVA Bancomer, attendance 51,243.
7. July 1, 2026: After a night back in Kansas City, the squad leaves Kansas City International Airport around 9 a.m.

Tickets for the community training session at Riverside Stadium went out through a drawing for Current season-ticket holders, Current Club members, Teal Rising Alliance members, and Riverside residents. Parking was free. Concessions and Current merch were on sale. When the 70 minutes ended, the players walked to the stands, clapped the crowd, and signed shirts. Virgil van Dijk drew the densest crush at the gate.

The small details stuck because they were not in any FIFA brochure. The squad borrowed two orange e-bikes, then asked Midwest Cyclery for 15 more. They used the Plaza as a place you could actually leave, not a sealed floor. Months later, when people in Kansas City argue about whether a photo from last June is real, they are usually arguing about the walk, not the 3-1.

Ten Group Goals, Then a Shootout in Monterrey

On the field the camp looked like a bargain. The Dutch went unbeaten in Group F, scored a tournament-high 10 group-stage goals, and took first place on 7 points, +6 goal difference. Japan finished on 5, Sweden on 4 as a best third-place side, Tunisia on 0.

NETHERLANDS AT WORLD CUP 2026

The Kansas City night was the one the metro had booked. Tunisia were already out. Ellyes Skhiri put through his own net in the 3rd minute off a Denzel Dumfries cross. Brobbey made it 2-0 in the 7th, his third goal of the tournament. Hazem Mastouri headed one back in the 54th. Jan Paul van Hecke scored from a Tijjani Reijnders corner in the 62nd. Koeman, asked about the heat, refused the alibi. They had already played a 3 p.m. friendly in New York, he said, and they trained in Kansas City, and it had been sweltering there too.

Downtown had been orange since morning. An estimated 20,000 fans walked the Oranje Fanwalk through Grand Boulevard in a light rain, the Dutch bus in the middle of it, and then filled Kansas City Stadium. People who were on those streets still describe that walk before they describe the score. The Current had given the team a private campus. The city gave them a public one for a day.

The knockout draw sent them to Monterrey against Morocco, second in Group C on the same 7 points. Gakpo scored in the 72nd minute. Issa Diop equalized in the 90+1st. In the shootout, Yassine Bounou saved Crysencio Summerville’s kick and Ismael Saibari hit the winner. Justin Kluivert and Quinten Timber also missed. The KNVB said those three players then took racist abuse online and that it would pursue charges.

The Netherlands had reached at least the last 16 in 11 previous World Cups, including a quarterfinal in 2022. This was their 12th finals. In a 48-team tournament the first knockout round is the round of 32, so the loss is their earliest World Cup exit, and it was their third straight World Cup elimination on penalties after Argentina in 2014 and 2022. They had finished as runners-up in 1974, 1978, and 2010. They went home without a second knockout game.

Koeman Quit Before the Squad Cleared Security

The team flew back to Kansas City on June 30, slept, and left. Koeman did not wait for the jet bridge. He told the KNVB he would not extend his expiring contract, ending a second spell that had begun in January 2023 after his first run from 2018 to 2020.

He said the decision was not easy after working so long with this staff and this group, and that he wanted more time with his wife, children, and grandchildren. Nigel de Jong, the KNVB’s director of top-level football, said the post-tournament review had already started and that Koeman leaving after the World Cup was one of the scenarios the federation had planned for. De Jong’s own target for the summer had been a semifinal, with the ambition to become world champions. He called the gap honest.

Some players peeled off from KCI to join clubs. The rest took the morning flight. A fan video posted the same day thanked Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, and Monterrey in one line, which is a neat map of the whole campaign: three American group cities, one Mexican knockout, and no second week.

Teal Signage Went Back Up in July

On July 2 the Current started moving furniture back in and hanging club signs where orange lions had been. The Longs put out a statement that read like a thank-you note and a sales deck at once. Selecting the training ground, they said, “was a powerful testament to the investment and vision behind what we’ve built in Kansas City.” They called the Fan Walk and the community session a celebration of soccer, culture, and connection, and they said everyone around the Netherlands had been “an absolute class act.”

That is the hidden ledger of the stay. The Dutch got a women’s palace that Gakpo compared to home, a Plaza hotel, a golf afternoon, a bike fleet, a public footvolley morning, and a downtown that dressed for them. They used it to win a group and then lost the first knockout game they played. Koeman used it as the last camp of his international career.

The Current got something harder to book than a friendly. A men’s team ranked in the world’s top 10 lived in a building designed for women, said the pitches were good enough, and left without a complaint about the rooms. Riverside got a packed 2,000-seat stand on a Wednesday in June. The Plaza got three weeks of orange in the lobby. Kansas City got a walk people are still using, in September, as evidence that the summer happened.

By the afternoon of July 2, the orange carpet was in storage and the teal signs were going back on the doors.