Top World Cup teams flock to stay in Kansas City—and it makes sense

England, the Netherlands and Argentina will use Kansas City as their base camp for this summer’s World Cup. (Illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)

On Wednesday, the English soccer federation confirmed one of the most exciting recent surprises in Kansas City sports news: The England national team will join Argentina in making the city its base camp for the 2026 World Cup.

Well, to call it a surprise might be a stretch.

At soccer fields, community events and sports bars around KC, I heard whispers of this going back to 2025. In fact, the rumors have been so long-standing that I was beginning to worry.

I had reason to doubt. (Doubting Thomas, indeed.)

It seemed improbable that the metro area would welcome two of the top four ranked teams in the world during the weeks surrounding the tournament.

The news improved again Thursday. The Netherlands will also be in Kansas City for the tournament. Yes, the same joyous fans who gave us this video before the European championships in 2024 will make KC their home.

Earlier this month, the world No. 1 Argentina confirmed their training grounds in Kansas at Sporting Kansas City’s facility and their base camp at the Savoy Hotel.

“Having World Cup champions in Argentina and England choose Sporting Kansas City training facilities as their base camp for FIFA World Cup 2026 is a tremendous honor that reinforces that Kansas City is not only at the heart of the game in this country but also a premier destination for elite international soccer,” Sporting Kansas City president and CEO Jake Reid said in a press release. (A disclaimer here: Reid is a family friend.)

Want to hear additional World Cup base camp rumors? You don’t have to listen too hard.

Perhaps the English team will be housed on the Kansas side of the state line?

Maybe the Netherlands will schedule a warm-up match here? That’s likely, according to reporting out of the Netherlands.

Regardless, our region should celebrate the accomplishment of having all of this talent in the heartland.

Consider it this way. For the purpose of seeding the World Cup, FIFA, the organizing body of the tournament and international soccer, grouped teams into four “pots.” (Yes, that is their word — conjuring visions of footballers being lumped into heaping cauldrons.)

If Kansas City secures the Netherlands as expected, our region would have three “Pot 1” teams: three of the top 12 teams. You would expect many fewer than that for one city, considering there are 16 host cities in the tournament.

Add to that, some teams aren’t even choosing host cities for their base camps. The Saudi Arabian team will stay in Austin, Texas. Uruguay selected the beach resort of Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, which sounds more like vacation than work to me.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City metro area has potentially landed three of the top 12.

This week’s press release from Sporting Kansas City described base camps as a “home away from home” that is “designed to provide a hub where teams will arrive ahead of their first match and will be available for those teams to return to between matches.”

How much time does the team spend in the base camp city? Almost the entire tournament. The team typically flies to out-of-town matches for one night away from base camp. After the match, they shuttle back to their base camp city to snuggle back into their familiar hotel.

And how much freedom will players have to explore the city? For many players — think Argentina’s megawatt star Lionel Messi — security holds them incredibly close, which only makes sense for safety.

During a recent visit to India, chaos broke out and an event was canceled after crowds surged at the chance to see Messi, even from hundreds of yards away. His personal security guard has risen as a social media celebrity, guarding the GOAT on and off the field.

Aside from Messi, other players will be tightly controlled. Also staying here in Kansas City, three of England’s national team players, Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, are among the 50 most marketable athletes in the world, according to SportsPro.

We shouldn’t expect to run into Kane, the star striker for England, in the line (pardon me: “queue”) for a Z-Man sandwich at Joe’s KC this June.

These men need crowd control.

The players’ peak performance also limits their public exposure. Their schedules often will be limited to sleep, team meals, training sessions and time with family.

Attracting teams to base camp in the Midwest required facilities, and contrary to what many Americans might assume about the overlap of Kansas City and the sport of soccer, the area boasts great training facilities.

Landing elite teams was a shared soccer project across the state line, with both Kansas and Missouri providing vital soccer facilities for the confirmed and projected World Cup teams.

England announced Wednesday that the team will train in Missouri at Swope Soccer Complex, a swath of fields on the east side of the city that many soccer kids (and their carpooling parents) know well from weekend soccer games and evening practices. It’s surreal that my son has played dozens of matches in the same complex that will host the Three Lions, as the team is known.

Argentina selected the Kansas-side training center of Sporting Kansas City, just across Interstate 435 from the Legends shopping and sports complex. It’s another location that some Kansas City soccer die-hards know well from youth soccer. Lionel: I am happy to recommend my favorite parking spot.

In 2018, that facility was opened as the U.S. Soccer National Development Center. (This spring, an additional training center and headquarters will open in Georgia.)

In Lawrence, a team will likely settle at Rock Chalk Park, the home of soccer for the University of Kansas. FIFA lists the Oread Hotel, perched at a high point of the campus, as a local option for a team based there.

The Netherlands will use the Riverside, Missouri, training grounds of KC Current, the professional women’s soccer team. This location is separate from CPKC Stadium, the first stadium built expressly for women’s professional sports.

This list of facilities — stadiums, training grounds, hotels and, yes, a new international airport — drew national teams to Kansas City.

Another factor must have been our central location. Map out the host cities for the World Cup and you find an outlier in the unlikeliest place: right in the middle.

Teams value short travel days to keep their athletes fresh, which is difficult away from the Midwest.

Atlanta, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Miami sit on the east coast. To the west, there is Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Cities in Mexico are so far south, and Canada so far north. Teams saw a city that featured less travel sitting right there in the middle: Kansas City.

For the World Cup, you might say that fly-over country has become fly-into country.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

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