The inside story of how Sporting KC pursued Cristiano Ronaldo. How close were they?

The idea started with one man’s suggestion and enough of an eff-it frame of mind that he shared it out loud.

Plenty more details on that are forthcoming in this column, but that’s how Sporting Kansas City began its month-long pursuit of 37-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the greatest soccer players of his generation, or any generation, for that matter. An ESPN/Taylor Twellman report Friday first put that information into orbit, and it prompted the same public reaction that it did privately in that room.

Huh?

Believe it, though, because it’s real. Or was real. Over the past 24 hours, The Star spoke with a handful of people inside a tight circle of those involved in a project they called “Triple Bank Shot.” One of them left one call with Ronaldo’s representatives optimistic enough that he told himself, This could happen.

This is the story of how Sporting Kansas City hatched and put into motion the idea to acquire Ronaldo, the most prominent athlete not simply in soccer but in the world. Let’s put some perspective on that part: Ronaldo has nearly four times the social media following of LeBron James. He has five times been named the men’s soccer player of the year.

Sporting KC, an American soccer club valued at $575 million, 11% the value of the most expensive club in the world and the one for which Ronaldo used to star, tried to sign that guy.

With Patrick Mahomes at the ready to help close the deal.

‘Project: Triple-Bank Shot’

In the early Sporting days, with original principal owners Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson, they developed a phrase for ideas that seemed so preposterous that they bordered on the impossible. Patterson would dub it a “Triple Bank Shot” idea.

He died in 2017, but the phrase remains ever-present, and it’s not usually meant to be flattering. It’s more like an eye-roll.

So before he presented this particular suggestion, Mike Illig, a Sporting co-owner, prefaced it by admitting the obvious.

This was, in fact, the Triple Bank Shot idea of all Triple Bank Shot ideas.

The proposal initially came up during a meeting between Sporting owners and top executives in October, intended to be the setting for an offseason blueprint. Mike Illig pointed out that Ronaldo was not exactly in good favor with his current club, Manchester United, and he might be looking for an out.

Why not make a play?

“From your lips to God’s ears,” another recalled replying.

He was serious though, and, at minimum, requested a conversation on the topic.

Why not MLS?

OK, sure, but as Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes put it: “I tend to think of myself as a pretty optimistic person, and I don’t focus on the can’ts and the negative aspects, but this was one of those deals where off the top of my head, I thought he’s a player that if he was coming to MLS, there would be Miami or L.A.”

It’s no secret that the L.A. Galaxy and Inter Miami had done their homework on the potential of acquiring Ronaldo should he want to make the jump to MLS, and getting a player of that notoriety to join one of those cities seems perhaps a bit more plausible, let’s say, than KC.

But Mike Illig pushed on. What’s the harm in setting up a meeting?

“If we’re going to do this,” Cliff Illig had eventually said, “Then let’s take a real shot at it. Let’s not just talk about it. If we’re not willing to take the shot, then let’s not talk about it anymore.”

From that point on, Vermes told The Star, “It took on real legs.”

Vermes had enough connections to request a meeting. When they secured one with some of Ronaldo’s top representatives, one source told The Star, “the first objective was not to get laughed off the call.”

The presentation was multi-faceted. They had to sell both the league and the city. They had to sell the on-field capability and the marketing potential. They had to sell the finances and the lifestyle.

They had to sell, to put it more succinctly, themselves.

At some point near the end of the meeting, as multiple Sporting executives recalled this weekend, an agent for Ronaldo said something to the effect of, “If he decides to come to the States, you’re everything that fits the mold for him.”

“Holy smokes,” one Sporting executive recalled muttering.

As they hung up that Zoom call, Ronaldo’s side requested a second meeting. And then a third. And then phone calls and WhatsApp text messages that kept the conversation alive for more than a month. Each time, the other end of the call grew in number, until eventually, Sporting surmised it had talked to just about everyone who might be involved in the final decision and most of them twice.

Except the player.

Which offered at least some mystery to it.

So did the money. Those involved would offer only vague references to the financial package discussed, even anonymously — saying it rivaled the one he eventually accepted instead to play in Saudi Arabia, which some have reported will pay him $75 million per year.

A different route to get there, though.

Needless to say, only a chunk of that money would have come from the club, though it would indeed have made Ronaldo the highest-paid player in MLS. Toronto FC pays Lorenzo Insigne $14 million.

The bulk of the offer, though, revolved around what their presentation called a “commercial package” that included the guarantee of other methods of revenue for the player — a percentage of certain sales, with the opportunity for the package to grow, for one example.

“Yeah, a lot of metrics and analytics being sent back and forth,” Vermes said.

As those conversations evolved, Sporting brought in help from the outside, including prominent agents, in their pitch, with the hope of illustrating what a move to North America might mean for Ronaldo and particularly his brand.

The league’s new TV deal with Apple, which will broadcast its game to more than 100 countries starting next year, played a significant factor.

“When we progressed to the commercial side, and what that might look like, that’s when it started to feel like there’s a possibility here,” Vermes said. “There was a lot of time invested — from both sides — and they’re not going to waste their time sitting down, having all these Zoom calls, going through all these different scenarios, if the player is not interested.”

Selling Kansas City

Let’s cut to the conclusion here for a moment: It didn’t happen. After a trying World Cup in which he was removed from Portugal’s starting lineup, Ronaldo’s agency informed Sporting KC he would not be coming to the United States, instead taking the lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia.

Sporting had been informed that if he had settled with a move to MLS, they would have been the choice.

But why?

The most famous soccer player in the world ... in Kansas City?

Throughout the process, Sporting had sought to use the market size as an advantage, not a hurdle, and they were informed it had become an attractive selling point.

“I don’t look it as a negative. I look at it as a positive,” Vermes said. “The negative is a lot of people just know about it. But when you know about it, it becomes a positive. It’s not like you’re trying to hide away from it. Once you have the ability to explain the city, then it took on a positive connotation with the player.

“He can’t go anywhere in those places. Here, he can live his life. He can go out. He can go eat dinner. He can have a life that he can’t have in other places. Which is a huge benefit.”

They had one example: Patrick Mahomes.

And they used it. Frequently.

One of the NFL’s most marketable players has signed on to make Kansas City his home for more than a decade, and he just so happens to own a small piece of Sporting KC.

The team’s principal owners had informed Mahomes of the potential addition, and the Chiefs quarterback’s response was simple:

“Let’s do it. What do you need from me?”

The plan from the Sporting end became to use Mahomes in something of a closing sale. If Ronaldo wanted to know what living in Kansas City might be like for something of his stature, whom better to ask?

What’s this mean for SKC in the future?

For more than a decade now, Sporting has been setting itself up for a pitch like this.

A new stadium in 2011. A world-class training facility ahead of the 2018 season. The World Cup is coming in 2026. The longest-tenured manager in MLS.

“That’s always been part of the long-term plan — to be able to use it to our advantage,” Vermes said. “I think this is a good example of us taking our shot.”

This one ultimately did not close.

To be candid, I mentioned to more than one person the possibility to simply just drumming up some publicity.

Will there actually be more shots, or is this a one-off?

“Does it mean we’re going to take more chances? The answer is yes,” Vermes said. “But obviously the situations have to make sense for both the on-the-field and the off-the-field aspects of that acquisition.

“In this situation, there’s the soccer side, and there’s the commercial side. When you go after that player, you know he’s going to give you something on the field, and you obviously pay for that, but you also know that off the field, he’s also paying you back. That’s why you can go after a player like that. That’s why each one of these deals is a case-by-case basis. It’s not one wand that covers all.”

Ronaldo is one of one, in other words. Or perhaps more like one of two, and the other isn’t coming to Kansas City.

But there’s an interesting unintended consequence of the Ronaldo pursuit. One source told The Star that Sporting has already been contacted by another European star who expressed interest in such a move.

The interest, I’m told, is mutual.

“Obviously we were heavily involved in trying to get the World Cup to Kansas City, and there’s more to it than that. Our objective is to continue to raise the profile of Sporting Kansas City, and also Kansas City as a soccer city,” Vermes said. “For us to keep doing that, we can’t stay within the bookends. We have to expand out of that, and there’s going to be different ways we do that.

“And one of those ways is going to be going after higher profile players as long as those situations fit with us.”