An 8-year-old boy named Beckham balanced on a fence for more than three hours outside a Tennessee school, clutching a handwritten note and waiting for Spain’s national soccer team to appear.
The note was addressed to players 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.”
When the players finally jogged onto the field, the boy’s eyes went wide. “Dad,” he whispered, “they’re real.”
His father, Jaxon McClure, a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in Chattanooga playing pickup soccer with trash cans as goalposts, was just as awestruck. McClure now coaches hundreds of local children and named his son after soccer legend David Beckham.
This summer marks 32 years since the United States last hosted the world’s largest sporting event, and several American cities have been designated as World Cup base camps — places where visiting national teams live and train between matches.
Spain, considered one of the tournament favorites, established its headquarters at a boarding school along the Tennessee River in Chattanooga. Iraq is training at a mountain resort community in West Virginia with a population of fewer than 3,000 people. Germany, meanwhile, has settled into Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where cobblestone streets and old tobacco warehouses now share space with German flags and roving television crews.
Back in Chattanooga, a 144-foot underground waterfall beneath Lookout Mountain has been illuminated in red, and the downtown Embassy Suites hotel where Spain’s squad is staying is draped in the team’s red and yellow national flag, known as la Rojigualda. When La Roja landed at Chattanooga Airport, giant banners bearing the players’ images and the message “Bienvenidos a Chattanooga” welcomed them to the city.
Chattanooga native Skip Schwartz noted that so many people are wearing Spanish jerseys around town that “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.”
Roughly 25,000 people entered a lottery for just 1,000 tickets to watch Spain practice at Baylor School, a 600-acre private academy serving students in grades 6 through 12. In Winston-Salem, tickets to observe Germany’s training session at Wake Forest University sold out in four minutes.
“It’s just fun to see everyone start to care about something they didn’t care about before,” said Savannah Lahey, who manages a soccer bar called Small Batch Beer Co. in downtown Winston-Salem. The bar has extended its hours for watch parties and put together a German-inspired menu featuring schnitzel sandwiches and sauerbraten timed to Germany’s opening match.
“It’s getting to make people feel at home, even when they’re not at home,” Lahey added.
In West Virginia, the Iraqi national team arrived at the Greenbrier, a storied resort that has previously hosted presidents and foreign dignitaries. Iraqi flags flew alongside the American flag to mark the occasion.
Teams selected their base camps from a list of FIFA-approved sites across North America, with higher-ranked nations getting first choice. Spain passed over larger cities — including Chicago and Los Angeles — in favor of Chattanooga, then partnered with Baylor School to build out a full training and media operation on the campus.
FIFA inspectors evaluated Baylor’s facilities in detail, including grass quality, drainage, and irrigation systems, according to the school’s operations and systems director Sam Green. To protect the pitches for Spain’s use, Baylor’s own players were moved to artificial turf for their spring training — a trade-off Green said graduating seniors accepted without complaint.
Spain’s daily training sessions take place on two grass fields tucked behind a tree line. The airport and the team’s downtown hotel are just minutes away, and Atlanta — where Spain is scheduled to play two group-stage matches — is easily accessible. After Spain’s first official practice, players reportedly headed to the campus pool to swim, relax, and enjoy themselves before returning to work.
For Schwartz, who now sits on Baylor’s board of trustees, Spain’s decision carries personal weight. He played soccer at Baylor in the late 1980s and early 1990s and helped lay Bermuda sod for a new soccer field during his time there. That field has since been replaced by an indoor tennis facility now serving as Spain’s media center, but the school has grown to include three soccer pitches and one of the region’s top programs.
“If somebody had told me then that 40 years later Spain would be using this campus as the foundation for a World Cup, I wouldn’t even have tried to fathom it,” Schwartz said.
Tina Ankar, a first-generation Palestinian American, said she became a soccer fan through the World Cup and her boyfriend, who grew up watching matches with his Mexican family. At Spain’s open practice, hundreds of fans chanted “Vamos, España!” after nearly every touch of the ball. Ankar found herself caught up in the excitement.
“I’ve got to watch these guys all the way to the end,” she said. “Now we really have someone to cheer on besides America.”
Before Spain’s first public practice, Baylor students sneaked into the locker room to photograph the freshly labeled stalls bearing the names of Spain’s top players, debating among themselves which star had ended up in “their” locker.
“I sat in that locker room almost every single day this spring,” said 17-year-old midfielder and graduating senior Heath Techasiriwan.
Techasiriwan, a Filipino American and lifelong Lionel Messi fan who cheered for Argentina during the 2022 World Cup, said there was no doubt where his loyalty lies this summer.
“Without a doubt, I’m cheering for Spain,” he said. “I can’t see players like Pedri, Gavi and Lamine Yamal literally right in front of me and not cheer for them.”
Goalkeeper Mathew Ramirez drives an hour each way from Calhoun, Georgia, to train at Baylor. He grew up watching FC Barcelona alongside his father, who emigrated from Guatemala, and plans to watch Spain’s World Cup games over carne asada with family and friends.
After one practice session, 18-year-old Yamal signed the 16-year-old goalkeeper’s custom Barcelona jersey. Ramirez told the star in Spanish, “Watching you play gives me happiness.”
Young Beckham, meanwhile, has been collecting autographs and taking selfies with players before heading home each day wearing the Spain jersey his father says he slept in the night before.
“Wait, Dad. They’re real,” Beckham kept saying. “Lamine Yamal is a real person. I just thought they were like superheroes. They’re on TV.”
Chattanooga has changed dramatically since the days when McClure played neighborhood soccer with makeshift goalposts. He now coaches around 850 children, and the city supports both a professional men’s and women’s team.
“They could have gone anywhere in this country,” McClure said of Spain’s decision to come to Chattanooga, “and they chose us.”
