Seattle knows it's a soccer city. But the World Cup offers validation.

Fred Mendoza never expected to be sitting in an office with one of the richest men in the world, let alone making a case he wasn't sure if would be taken seriously.

On that day nearly 30 years ago, he sat with Paul Allen and what Mendoza was suggesting made sense, even if he was uncertain how earnest Allen was in considering the idea.

If Allen wanted to get statewide approval on the referendum to build a new stadium and secure the future of the NFL team in town, he should make a pitch to the soccer players, fans and families of Washington state as well. And suggesting that someday the World Cup could come to the Emerald City might help the case.

History tells us what Mendoza proposed that day in early 1997 was successful. Tapping into soccer communities from Walla Walla to Bellingham garnered enough support to approve the referendum - which called for a football/soccer stadium in the language - and led to the construction of Lumen Field.

And now decades after that meeting, what Mendoza suggested is coming true. The FIFA Men's World Cup is here, adding to Seattle's history of big sporting moments, from All-Star Games to Final Fours to championship contests, to now the largest global sporting event.

But, specific to Seattle, the tournament is fraught with layers that have clouded talk of the actual soccer in the buildup and will have a role in defining how the event is remembered in the city's sports history.

"It's pretty emotional for me. I was the guy who was sent everywhere to pitch this deal to soccer, and I pitched everything," said Mendoza, the longtime head of the public stadium authority that oversees the stadium. "And one of the wild claims that I made was we could get a World Cup someday."

For generations, the city, the region and the state has championed the sport. The evidence is abundant, from the families and kids who spend their rainy weekends filing the fields of Sixty Acers in Redmond or Starfire in Tukwila playing the game, to the professional ranks beginning with the original Sounders in 1974 and continues today with the Sounders and Reign at the highest levels of their leagues.

Getting the World Cup here, to a degree, is a validation to the region for all those years supporting the game.

"This is the culmination of generations of soccer fandom and participation," Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer said.

The first of six matches kicks off Monday afternoon when Belgium faces Egypt at the venue renamed Seattle Stadium during the tournament. That's followed next Friday by the United States facing Australia.

It should be weeks of celebrations as cultures and nations come together around soccer. Australians carrying inflatable kangaroos and singing Men at Work's "Down Under" coalescing with American fans dressed as Uncle Sam and probably rocking out to Springsteen. Belgians and Egyptians sharing a waffle and a falafel, while waiting to see some of the best players in the world named Salah, Daku and De Bruyne on the same field.

That's the wish, anyway. Reality might tell a different story.

Much of the attention on Seattle and the World Cup in the lead up has centered on Iran and whether the country would be able to participate in the tournament after the country was attacked by the U.S. and Israel, with specific attention on its June 26 match against Egypt in Seattle.

The ongoing geopolitical conflict is only one layer. The Egypt-Iran match comes at the start of Pride weekend between two countries where homosexuality is illegal. Aside from the focus on Iran, there's been ongoing frustration with FIFA's ticket distribution and prices and accompanying price gouging on everything from hotel rooms to parking.

The tournament has the chance to be remembered as much for off-field issues as the games themselves.

"I think both of those can be true at the same time. You can critique the global political situation. You can critique FIFA's exorbitant pricing and all the crap they do, and you can still love the game," said Ron Krabill, director of the Global Sports Lab at UW. "I don't think those are mutually exclusive. I think you can still watch a game and be like, ‘Wow, that was a beautiful play,' or ‘I love sort of how this team plays.' All of that can still be completely true even while you have that critique."

Growing up since ‘94

Thirty-two years ago was the first time the U.S. played host to the World Cup and it came to a neophyte soccer country at the time. The U.S. being awarded the tournament was an upset and with it FIFA saw an opportunity to make inroads into the American marketplace. Their hunch was rewarded with the highest attended World Cup to date.

But we weren't an educated soccer country.

Kasey Keller was controversially left off the American roster for the 1994 World Cup. The kid from Olympia was on the 1990 World Cup team and teams in 1998, 2002 and 2006. But 1994, when the tournament was at home, Keller was not selected.

He was there, though, making appearances at matches on behalf of sponsors. At one match between Mexico and Ireland in Orlando, Fla., Keller sat next to a man and his son and recalled that it took until halftime before the man realized he was cheering for the wrong team in green and white.

"He thought he was rooting for Mexico, but he was rooting for Ireland," Keller said.

His point in retelling this story is that the U.S. was then - relatively speaking - ill-informed about the sport.

Today, that's far from the case. The creation of Major League Soccer was a byproduct of the 1994 World Cup and is now going on 30 years, and eventually came the MLS version of the Sounders in 2009. Step into the George and Dragon or Atlantic Crossing or any of Seattle's soccer hubs on a weekend and matches from the Premier League in England, La Liga in Spain, the Bundesliga in Germany and Serie A in Italy flood TV or streaming services. The UEFA Champions League is shown midweek on network TV from games behind played in London, Manchester, Paris, Munich or Milan. Soccer is available from anywhere, seemingly all the time.

We're now an educated country about the sport, and Seattle is near the top of that list.

"I think they're going to see this is a sport where the fans are knowledgeable about soccer now and a lot of that has to do with you can catch a game anywhere in the world at any time, live on your phone," said Everett native Chris Henderson, the current chief soccer officer for Atlanta United of MLS.

Away from the field

The World Cup draw in December was an underwhelming result for Seattle. It was known in advance the U.S. would play a match here, but overall it was mostly a dud.

Seattle is void of the biggest stars of this tournament, with none of the players known by just one name expected here. No Messi. No Ronaldo. No Mbappé. No Neymar. None of the top eight countries in the FIFA world rankings are likely to come here either. No England. No Spain. No Brazil. No France. Italy had a chance to land here and face Qatar but couldn't get out of European qualifying. It's Bosnia and Herzegovina instead.

Belgium is a nice consolation. The Red Devils - the No. 10 ranked team in the world - chose the Sounders facility in Renton as their base camp and could end up playing here three times.

But it's the team playing here once that's been the dominant storyline.

Iran will play the last of its three group-stage matches in Seattle even amid the ongoing Middle East conflict that led to months of uncertainty about whether the Iranians would even participate in the tournament. That match against Egypt was designated a Pride celebration by the local organizing committee well in advance of the draw as it will be played at the start of Pride weekend. And then, it unexpectedly ended up involving two countries where homosexuality is illegal.

Iran will be a major focus for the entire tournament and especially the match here.

Still, as past World Cups have shown - fair or not - the soccer often wins out over other societal issues.

Eight years ago, the tournament was taken to Russia under the regime of Vladimir Putin. Four years ago, it went to Qatar, where FIFA seemed unbothered by the human rights concerns or LGBTQ+ restrictions of the Middle Eastern country and told several European countries their team captains couldn't wear rainbow-colored armbands.

And yet, those tournaments are mostly remembered for what happened on the field. Krabill referenced a theory from a Brazilian scholar describing why that's the case.

"Global football in general, and the World Cup in particular still has this place in popular culture that people have deep passion for, love, get excited about, make meaning out of in all these ways," he said. "And even though FIFA is trying so hard to sort of take that over and monetize it and extract and succeeding in a ton of ways, it still can't take over that space it has in popular culture."

Leaving a legacy

So considering all those factors - the prices, the tickets, the teams coming here and the background - what will the legacy be of this event here in Seattle?

The question has garnered a variety of responses, most pointing to that while this isn't an inflection point for Seattle's place in the sport, it will carry an impact moving forward.

Mendoza immediately had a plausible answer. His hope is Seattle sparkles to the point FIFA decides for the 2031 Women's World Cup - where the U.S. is expected to co-host - that the city lands a marquee match.

"Here's a legacy, a far-out legacy from Fred Mendoza. I'm hoping that Seattle shines so well next month that FIFA grants us the final of the Women's World Cup in '31. Wouldn't that be a legacy?" he said.

As someone doing outreach in the community and at schools, former Sounder Brad Evans hopes greed isn't the lasting memory.

"All the good work that we do in the community to try to drum up interest in the Sounders, and the game, and women's soccer as well, and then you have this amazing event coming here and for 90% of the people that live in the Seattle area, it's not even close to accessible to be able to get inside these doors to watch it in person," he said.

Others were more pragmatic. Henderson thinks there could be bumps for the local MLS teams in markets hosting matches, including Seattle. Keller worries the expanded field could lead to more lopsided and uninteresting matches in the group stage and diminish the overall quality of the tournament and that's what could be remembered.

Krabill believes the tournament has the chance to solidify Seattle's place on the international soccer landscape.

"It's maybe that it establishes Seattle as an indispensable hub for soccer in the view of the rest of the country. I don't think it tips the scales in Seattle, because I think the scales are already pretty tipped," he said.

Hanauer's thoughts turned to his 10-year-old son. The owner quipped that in his lifetime he might never see a World Cup match played in his hometown after this year but hoped that his son - and others - can recognize what many hope is the communal trademarks of what a World Cup should be.

"Getting to experience this now I hope he comes out the other end with passion about soccer, but passion and love for what soccer and what bringing people together can do and the cohesiveness that sport can bring," he said. "Whether he's a giant soccer fan now or someday, I don't care as much about, but that he is a fan of community and what a big event like this can do, that's important to me."

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