For the English, it’s St. George’s Park. For the Italians, it’s Coverciano. The Brazilians call it Granja Comary.
If a country is a powerhouse of global football, or as Americans call it — soccer — its national team has a campus akin to a finishing school for the sport, complete with state-of-the-art health and fitness facilities and training grounds for both referees and players.
The United States doesn’t have one — but that will soon change.
The steel skeleton rising from the muddy Georgia red clay in Fayetteville may not look like much now, but by April 2026, it promises to be the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center.
“The training center will be more than just a facility; it will represent our commitment to excellence across the entire soccer ecosystem,” U.S. Soccer Chief Financial Officer Chelle Adams told reporters at an event dedicating U.S. Soccer’s partnership with Home Depot on Tuesday. “It will be the birthplace of our future champions,” she added.
Located a half-hour drive south of downtown Atlanta, the facility broke ground in May 2024. With a $50 million donation from Home Depot founder Arthur M. Blank toward the $228 million price tag, the site’s completion will mark the first time U.S. Soccer will have a centralized training facility for all 27 teams across the federation, including men’s, women’s, youth and para teams.
The facility will operate year-round, with a regular staff of at least 400, according to U.S. Soccer Chief Commercial Officer David Wright, who said the decision to put the epicenter of the sport in the South “made all the business sense.”
“But it’s also the right thing to do, and accessibility is going to be really important,” he said.
According to Adams, “very preliminary” talks are underway with officials to connect the center to Atlanta via some form of public transit.
“It’s something that we’re going to start exploring even more,” she said.
With 498 days to go before the first match of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup — co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico — is played, and Atlanta set to host eight matches, the campus is expected to be complete just two months before the tournament kicks off.
U.S. Soccer contracted Brasfield & Gorrie to construct the 200,000-square-foot facility, set on 200 acres. It will include 14 grass pitches, two turf pitches and an additional indoor turf pitch. That’s 17 pitches altogether. The English only have 14 pitches at St. George’s, if you were wondering.
