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The Best World Cup Storyline is the Unexpected Kansas and Algeria Alliance
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One of the funny things about this World Cup is the quirkiness of juxtaposition, for instance, Erling Haaland on the Carolina Hurricanes jumbotron and European visitors checking out Waffle House and Buc-ee’s for the first time.
This is highlighted by team Algeria staying at a Doubletree in Lawrence, Kansas. They play two of their games at Arrowhead, so they picked the Jayhawks’ hometown as their base of operations.
As it turns out, the locals have been super-welcoming of the Algerian players, and the Algerians in turn have leaned into it, spending time with local kids and visiting the KU facilities:
This is so cool. How can you not love this? If you don’t love this, you are cold and dead inside, or maybe you are a broken and defeated San Antonio Spurs fan. The KU band learned Algeria’s national anthem and played it for them before a training session. And the Algerian players and coaches spent some time with local kids at a community training session, just kicking the ball around and coaching them up and taking pictures. That was either before or after a visit to the KU facilities for some basketball and field goal kicking.
It’s very nice to see stuff like this. Very American. They’ve been rolling out the red carpet for these players and these teams, especially in these college towns, but it takes two to tango, right? The Algerian team really embraced all of it.
I was wondering if Ivory Coast would do anything like this, since they’re staying in Wilmington and playing two games in Philadelphia. They had a friendly the other night against the Union’s second team, and there is a community training session tonight at Subaru Park, which is open to the public. But their socials have been kind of boring, to be honest. I was hoping we’d get some pictures of them walking around inside of a Wawa, or checking out the Cabella’s at the Christiana Mall. So far, it’s mostly just pictures of them in their World Cup uniforms. Maybe they’re laser-focused on the training and don’t want to be distracted. Maybe Cote d’Ivoire is all business ahead of the Coupe De Monde. No problem with that. But it would be dope to bring them up to “Philadelphia Stadium” and do some #content. I wanna see Franck Kessie taking batting practice with Kyle Schwarber at Citizens Bank Park. Maybe next week during the homestand. Let’s grab the low-hanging fruit and get some viral images out there.
We wanna get behind the Elephants, but they gotta meet us halfway.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com