"I just thought they were like superheroes. They're on TV." That's eight-year-old Beckham, perched on a fence for three hours in Chattanooga, Tennessee, waiting for Spain's national team to emerge onto the pitch. When they did, he turned to his father and whispered: "Dad, they're real."
That's the World Cup 2026, and it hasn't even kicked off yet.
Thirty-two years after the United States last hosted football's biggest tournament, the country is doing it again — and the base camp assignments have produced some genuinely strange geography. Spain, one of the tournament favorites, is headquartered at a private boarding school on the Tennessee River. Iraq is training in a West Virginia mountain resort town with fewer than 3,000 residents. Germany has set up shop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where cobblestone streets now fly German flags and local bars are serving schnitzel sandwiches for the opener.
Why Spain Chose Chattanooga Over Chicago and LA
Spain had its pick. Higher-ranked nations selected base camps first from a FIFA-approved list spanning North America, and La Roja bypassed major cities to land at Baylor School — a 600-acre private academy — in Chattanooga. The logistics make sense: Atlanta, where Spain play two group-stage matches, is a short drive away. The airport is minutes from training. And Baylor's pitches passed FIFA inspection with flying colors.
To protect those pitches, Baylor's own players trained on artificial turf all spring. The seniors didn't complain. When 25,000 people enter a lottery for 1,000 tickets to watch a training session, you understand why the sacrifice felt worth it.
Germany's open practice at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem sold out in four minutes.
Spain's star winger Lamine Yamal — 18 years old and already the most watched teenager in world football — signed a 16-year-old goalkeeper's Barcelona jersey after practice. The kid told him in Spanish: "Watching you play gives me happiness." Yamal, Pedri, and Gavi doing their thing on a Tennessee boarding school pitch is a sentence nobody had on their 2025 bingo card.
What This Means Beyond the Novelty
Spain arrive as genuine contenders. Their odds reflect it, and their preparation looks unhurried and professional. The Chattanooga setup gives them consistency — same training ground, same hotel, easy travel to their group stage venue. That kind of stability matters in a tournament where fatigue and disruption can unravel even the best squads.
Germany, rebuilding under Julian Nagelsmann after their 2022 group-stage exit, have generated real local buzz in Winston-Salem. Sold-out practice sessions and a community that's bought in completely. Whether that translates to results on the pitch is a different question — but the environment is right.
Iraq's placement at the Greenbrier in West Virginia is the wildcard story. A historic resort that has hosted presidents and foreign leaders, now flying Iraqi flags alongside the Stars and Stripes. They're not expected to go deep in the tournament, but stranger things have happened when a squad finds a training camp that feels like a sanctuary.
Back in Chattanooga, Beckham went home clutching autographs and wearing a Spain jersey he'd slept in the night before. His father, Jaxon McClure — a Marine Corps veteran who grew up playing soccer with trash can goalposts and now coaches 850 children in the city — watched it all unfold.
"They could have gone anywhere in this country," McClure said of Spain. "And they chose us."
