Chris Armas, the head coach of the Kansas City Current in the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League, had a distinctly cross-cultural upbringing.
Armas was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, N.Y., U.S.A. to a Puerto Rican-born mother and a first-generation Cuban/Italian American father. He describes his upbringing as “humble.”
“We always have worked hard,” he says. “Both my parents grew up in the Bronx and brought up a family of three boys. From then on ’till now, it was always work as hard as we can, fight for everything we could get and just take every opportunity that would come our way.”
‘BORICUA’ HOLIDAYS
In Armas’s family, the holidays always had more of a Boricua feel to them, featuring foods like Pernil, the slow-roasted pork shoulder his uncle would marinate for 24–48 hours with a garlic-herb mixture, and cook until the meat was falling-apart tender.
“Arroz con pollo, the rice and beans, the pastel, these delicacies that were Puerto Rican,” he remembers.
Salsa and merengue dancing and music were also prevalent. His parents met when they were 13 years old in school in the Bronx.
“My mom’s family really took in my dad and my dad’s family was in our life but the holidays were largely spent — my father almost it felt you would think he was Puerto Rican,” Armas says. “He would go to the Puerto Rican Day parade in New York City and totally rocked the Puerto Rican feel, because he loved that culture. He was brought up kind of in that.”
So, while Armas might be Cuban-Puerto Rican, “a lot of the feel was from the Boricua side.”
HAVING AN ACCENT
Born in 1972, Armas also remembers “a lot of discrimination for Spanish people and if you had an accent, you were considered lesser and my parents experienced that.”
Consequently, his parents only spoke English in the house.
“They spoke Spanish to each other when they didn’t want us to understand something or they’re having an argument or something,” he says, adding that his parents “didn’t want us to be held back.”
If you had an accent, you were considered lesser and my parents experienced that.
Armas and his siblings “experienced a little bit of that. And we got called certain things in school. Even my my brother and I. My brother was a fighter. He was a wrestler, so he’d get into fist fights over this stuff. I would just stay away from it.”
‘CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDER’
Armas says “there was always this sense of a chip on our shoulder and my parents had that and we ended up having that that you have to work harder for everything, that nothing’s going to be given to you nor should it be. You have to earn everything, fight for it.”
Armas was named head coach of the Kansas City Current on Jan. 7, 2026. Inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2025, he brings with him over three decades of playing and coaching experience at the highest level of the sport.
Regarded as the best U.S. defensive midfielder of his generation, Armas had a successful 12-year playing career in Major League Soccer with LA Galaxy in 1996-97 and Chicago Fire FC from 1998 until his retirement in 2007. He amassed 12 goals and 48 assists across 264 MLS matches and won the 1998 MLS Cup, 2003 Supporters’ Shield (highest regular-season points total) and four Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cups (1998, 2000, 2003, 2006). He is one of only five players in league history to have been named to the MLS Best XI five times (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003) and he is a six-time MLS All-Star (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004). In 2003, he was named the MLS Comeback Player of the Year after recovering from a season-ending injury sustained in 2002. He was also chosen as Chicago Fire FC’s MVP during their Shield-winning season that same year.
Nothing’s going to be given to you nor should it be. You have to earn everything, fight for it.
“For me, there was always another step,” he says. “There was always a door waiting for me to go through.”
As he got older as a player, Armas became one of the leaders of the team, eventually being named team captain. He found himself starting to think and talk “more like a coach, and you’re playing and talking like a coach out on the field. You’re an extension of the coaching staff.”
COACHING CAREER
Armas’ coaching career began in 2008 as an assistant for Chicago Fire FC before spending four years as the head women’s soccer coach at Adelphi University, his alma mater, from 2011-14. Under his direction, Adelphi had back-to-back Northeast 10 (NE10) Tournament final appearances in 2012 and 2013, earned its first NCAA Tournament berth in six years in 2013 and rose as high as ninth in the national rankings in 2014.
In 2015, Armas joined the New York Red Bulls in MLS as an assistant coach and the team won the Supporters’ Shield that year. Armas was appointed the Red Bulls’ head coach in July 2018, finishing the regular season with a 12-3-3 record as the club won the 2018 Supporters’ Shield and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. He was then an assistant coach for Manchester United (2021-22) and Leeds United (2023) in the English Premier League, even serving as co-interim head coach of Leeds United.
Most recently, Armas was the head coach of MLS’s Colorado Rapids during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. He led the Rapids back to the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs in 2024 and earned a third-place finish in the 2025 Leagues Cup while capturing back-to-back Rocky Mountain Cup titles.
Armas admits that soccer “has taken me a long way. But there’s a lot to it in terms of the foundation that my parents and their parents set that enabled us to open the doors and it was always about hard work, no excuses: Put your head down and just every single day to be the best you can be.”
During his 12-year professional playing career, “there was really no offseason,” in that for eight of those years, Armas was on the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT), getting to experience international football and playing in a variety of different countries.
“This was a whole ‘nother experience — experiencing different cultures,” he says.
Armas earned 66 caps and scored two goals for the USMNT between 1998 and 2005, and he was tabbed the U.S. Soccer Male Player of the Year in 2000. He was a key member of the USMNT squads that qualified for the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups — captaining the team on four occasions during those cycles — but untimely injuries kept him out of both World Cups as well as the 2000 Olympic Games.
As he grew up playing soccer — from a little kid to college to professional — “I loved my coaches,” Arms says. “They had such an impact on me. I revered them. I watched how they spoke, what they said at halftime, when they were up in front of the tactics board. They always impressed me so much.”
For Armas, every player has a unique “superpower.”
“Some are really fast,” he says. “Some can score goals. Some can run longer. Some are just more technical. Figure out with your coaches, your parents, yourself: What is your superpower in the sport?”
Check out Culturs’ interview with Armas below.
