Argentina Picks Kansas City, Kansas, for FIFA World Cup Base

The Argentine Football Association (AFA) announced that reigning FIFA World Cup champion Argentina will be based in Kansas City, Kansas, during this year’s edition of the tournament.

Lionel Scaloni’s team will set up at Compass Minerals National Performance Center, the training facility for Major League Soccer’s Sporting Kansas City, for its team base camp training site. The Sporting KC Training Centre opened in 2018 as the team’s official training ground and the $75 million facility features five fields, (three full-size natural grass fields and two synthetic turf fields), accommodations, a gym, sports performance lab, media studio and more.

Located in Kansas City, Kansas, the Sporting KC Training Centre is situated less than a mile from Sporting Kansas City’s home stadium, Sporting Park. The stadium was on FIFA’s list of pre-approved, venue-specific training sites to host training sessions for national teams playing in Kansas City during the FIFA World Cup.

However, the AFA has not yet confirmed the lodging facilities where the Men’s National Team will stay during the tournament.

It comes after backroom members of the national team organization inspected a number of potential base camp locations across the three host countries. In a statement, the AFA said that it had concluded that “Kansas City would be the ideal place to face the competition according to the distances between cities but mainly the comforts for the delegation.”

The Kansas City region has also been mooted as a base camp location for a number of qualified national teams, including England, the Netherlands and Algeria, which have not yet confirmed their final training camp or accommodation details themselves.

Argentina will begin its Group J campaign against Algeria on June 16 in Kansas City, before heading to Dallas for its final two group stage games against Austria (June 22) and Jordan (June 27).

Led by star man Lionel Messi, Argentina won its third men’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022, defeating France on penalties after a 3-3 draw in extra time. Argentina also won in 1978 and 1986.