US Soccers new 200-acre training facility world class in every respect

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga.— U.S.

Soccer Federation employees lined the walkway of the National Training Center on Thursday afternoon, giving the men’s national team a sendoff as it departed its first camp at the forever home the federation has always craved.To be pedantic, it would be wrong to call this camp the grand opening for the facility that sits some 20 minutes south of Atlanta’s airport, an area that straddles the line between suburban and rural.But it was certainly the grand unveiling.Funded in large measure by Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, whose name is on the building, Chick-fil-A chairman Dan Cathy, billionaire businesswoman Michele Kang and a series of USSF sponsors, the building is as impressive a soccer facility as there is in the United States, and arguably the world.Envisioned as a home not just for the men’s national team, but for every one of 27 national teams run by U.S.

Soccer — men’s, women’s, youth, beach, adaptive sport — as well as the business side of the federation’s operations, the 200-acre site includes 17 outdoor surfaces, 13 natural grass fields, two indoor surfaces and a shiny new building that, among other things, includes 23,000 square feet of glass.All this on land that, until ground was broken in 2024, was a vacant cow pasture.“Our previous sporting director [Matt Crocker] had a lot of connections with [England’s] FA and so we did look at St.George’s Park [England’s national training ground] closely,” Tom Norton, the facility’s general manager, told The Post.

“We also look at the places we’ve been, whether that be the location out in Carson, what we’ve got in Kansas City as well.All of those were inspiration, and then we also looked at things like Augusta National and Wimbledon as we talked about the inspiration for the look and the feel on the grounds.”The federation purposely didn’t take the players here when they held camp up the road at Atlanta United’s training ground in March so tha...