Spain trains at a Tennessee boarding school as World Cup base camps transform small-town America

Spain’s national team has set up its 2026 World Cup base camp at Baylor School, a 600-acre private boarding academy on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, Tennessee — one of several unexpected American communities now hosting the world’s top football nations between matches.

The scene in Chattanooga captured something of the tournament’s broader mood. Eight-year-old Beckham McClure spent more than three hours perched on a fence waiting for the Spanish squad to emerge onto the training pitch, clutching a handwritten note addressed to Pedri and Lamine Yamal. “I love you and I look up to you,” it read. “Thanks for coming to my city. I hope you win the World Cup.” His father Jaxon, a Marine Corps veteran who grew up playing soccer with trash-can goalposts and named his son after David Beckham, watched on as his boy whispered: “Dad, they’re real.”

The appetite to see Spain train has been extraordinary. Around 25,000 people entered a lottery for just 1,000 tickets to watch La Roja practice at Baylor School. Downtown Chattanooga has leaned into the visit fully: a 144-foot underground waterfall beneath Lookout Mountain is illuminated in red, the Embassy Suites where the squad is staying is draped in Spain’s red-and-yellow Rojigualda, and giant banners reading “Bienvenidos a Chattanooga” greeted the team at the airport.

Local resident Skip Schwartz noted that so many people are wearing Spanish jerseys it has become impossible to tell tourists from converts. “You don’t know if they’re from Spain, hoping to get a glimpse, or they are locals who have bought into the La Roja bandwagon,” he said.

The story is similar in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Germany is based at Wake Forest University. Tickets to watch the Germans train sold out in four minutes. Cobblestone streets and old tobacco warehouses now sit alongside German flags and television crews, while soccer bar Small Batch Beer Co. has extended its hours and introduced a German-inspired menu of schnitzel sandwiches and sauerbraten. “It’s just fun to see everyone start to care about something they didn’t care about before,” said bar manager Savannah Lahey.

Perhaps the most striking pairing of team and location belongs to Iraq, whose squad is preparing in a mountain resort town in West Virginia with a population of fewer than 3,000 people — a reminder that the World Cup’s reach in 2026 extends well beyond the major host cities and into corners of America that have rarely, if ever, found themselves at the centre of global sport.