U.S. Soccer’s National Training Center officially has its new home.
Trilith in Fayette County, Georgia has been chosen as the host site for the previously announced National Training Center, U.S. Soccer announced Thursday. The decision is the latest step of a project that was originally announced in September.
“We’re proud to be building a home that will support the future of soccer in America,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. “The National Training Center will help player development at the highest level and serve as a central destination to support and inspire players across the country as well as a hub of knowledge and resources for all our member organizations.
“Beyond its national importance, the National Training Center will be an institution firmly rooted in its community,” Cone added. “U.S. Soccer will work with local officials and corporate partners on the ground to engage the vibrant communities in Fayette County and the Metro Atlanta area to build new career pathways to sport, connect with fans, and grow the soccer community.”
Atlanta United and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank was previously announced as key contributor to the funding of U.S. Soccer’s project. Blank is slated to contribute $50 million towards the project, U.S. Soccer previously stated.
The facility will serve as headquarters for the USSF, creating a central hub for the entire soccer community, including coaches and referees, to access best-in-class training, technology and infrastructure to promote successful and sustainable playing environments throughout the country.
Initial design plans for the National Training Center include projections for over a dozen soccer fields and over 100,000 square feet of indoor courts for all 27 of U.S. Soccer’s national teams including senior women’s and men’s, youth and extended national teams. The center will also include 200,000 sq. ft. of high-performance facilities, locker rooms, meeting rooms, and headquarters space for all U.S. Soccer employees.
Local Atl news has been covering this. FYI, Fayette County isn’t Atlanta. I live in Atlanta, since the turn of the millennium, I’ve been here 13 years. I’ve worked in Fayetteville. It’s about 45-1hr w/ good traffic to Atl. Fayette County doesn’t produce athletes compared to the neighboring counties in the metro. Not even close! This seems to be for prep kids only and not for American kids who come from broken homes, drug addicted parents, trailer parks, projects/apartments or whose family is poor. All the team sports in America have athletes with these types of backgrounds, where they don’t come from prep academies. The athletic pool needs to have a wider net. American development is in the right direction at the moment. It will plateau sooner with ONLY upper middle class and rich kids participating.
With this project, it’s great to see capital investment being injected into the US Soccer community.
The article states, “The facility will serve as headquarters for the USSF, creating a central hub for the entire soccer community, including coaches and referees, to access best-in-class training, technology and infrastructure to promote successful and sustainable playing environments throughout the country.”
In 2018, US Soccer opened the National Development Center, in Kansas City, KS, and to the tune of $70M. That facility is top notch and is supposed to be “the center of coaching and referee development for US Soccer.” With it only being five years old, the facility is new and has all the necessary modern amenities.
With the new facility in GA slated to be built and opened in the next few years, what happens to the facility in KC? Is US Soccer rolling in that much dough, that they can move on from a five year old facility that cost $70M?
If so, why can’t / won’t they spend top dollar to conduct a thorough and detailed search for a top-tier USMNT HC, and in turn, pay top dollar to hire said HC with a top-tier salary?
Just asking…
Absolutely the best question I’ve seen on this site in quite a long time. Gregg is not the best that $ can buy by a long shot. He’s done a solid job but he has a ceiling and getting out coached in a 3-1 loss to the Dutch was a display of that ceiling. Any other nation that is serious about its football team moves on from Gregg. It’s not about a team feeling comfortable or good about each other it’s about growth and growth happens when people are challenged to come out of their comfort zone. Dest would be dealt with immediately not later on down the road.
people also forget we have a 2002 national training center in carson, at a cost of $130m. what i read is the KC thing is a grand total of 5 fields intended for coach and ref classes, cost of $70m, and having made that investment we set up the ownership such that we lease it and have, my guess, 15 years left. considering we are building a fed HQ building and these prior costs my guess is blank’s $50m is modest partial funding on this atlanta thing.
against these huge numbers you had people claiming if we paid more than GB’s wages the whole thing would financially bust. let’s be real, i think the idea there was hire a cheap men’s coach then match his salary with the women’s coach as their way of trying to avoid another equal pay suit. GB makes a fraction what JK did fwiw.
personally i think this is about having a shiny new HQ building to show off to VIPs in 2026 more than anything else. carson was better weather for summer camps for the actual soccer players (“near year-round playability” is amusing when they often hold summer training camps for age group teams), and you had a grass field pro stadium at the site.
clairefontaine in france has residential capacity. odd to pick an out of the way site, for team training camps, and not have some dorms. but they made sure they had the office building, tells me something.
if you’ve ever dealt with parking at a big field complex for a large tournament you might question the wisdom of having the office complex at the field complex. and the design i am looking at, i’m like, this is a bunch of fields carved from woods, where is the parking?
IV,
The facility / property in Carson is very nice, as well, but that is shared with multiple tenants, including the LA Galaxy, US Cycling, US Tennis, and the LA Galaxy academy. Plus, from a geographical standpoint, the location is not ideal for the player pool.
From what US Soccer has made public on their annual tax filings, Klinsmann was paid $1.475M in 2018, which is relatively on par with Berhalter’s salary in 2022, which was $1.3M, plus a $300K, for a total or $1.6M. Tax filings are not out for his current salary based on his rehire, but reports indicate a salary of $1.6M. That said, US Soccer didn’t low ball Berhalter, Crocker just hired / rehired the wrong HC. 🙂
I think there is a lot of validity to your third paragraph.
I agree with your fourth paragraph…that the facility is not scheduled to have dorms on site…especially, since this will be the home for YNT’s, as well.
also no one’s asking what blank gets for his $50m which my guess would be we share the facilities with united’s academy teams, who would get more of the yearround use. the various YNT age groups drop in every so often for camps.
Good question.
You’d like to think that they have already found future buyers or identified future uses for the KC facilities.
I’m not inclined to ever go easy on the USSF but whatever the real reason for why the USMNT does not have a “top tier ” manager is, it’s very probably not strictly about money. I’m certain that if Klopp or someone of that caliber was seriously interested, the money for them could be found.
I think the USSF are happy to settle for things the way they are.
The Women have a commitment to winning because it’s a tradition, an expectation, with them. They are also a team where investing money in an Emma Hayes, a top tier manager, is likely to yield results in terms of titles.
The Men on the other hand, are used to losing or settling for near misses. They have a tradition of doing just enough to get by or being “not bad for an American team.” And investing big money in, for example, a big time manager is not a guarantee of results.
The current player pool is not on par with the top contenders such as Argentina, Brazil, France, or Spain, etc.,etc. You don’t compare the USMNT to the 2010 and 2014 USMNT teams. You compare them to the current contenders and in that regard the gap is substantial. In 66 games, Gregg has yet to beat a so called “better” team in a competitive game.
That is pathetic. That’s what preparing for and playing weaklings on a regular basis does for this team.
They are soft. Soft teams give up cheap penalties to bad Wales teams and drop two vital points. Gregg may be a mediocre to average bad manager. But we’re unlikely to know how bad because they never get tested until they get to the World Cup. Or in this case Copa America.
Excellence and winning are expensive and hard to maintain. The fans do not expect that of the men like they do the women so they why kill themselves? MLS does not believe in it either. They are interested in putting on a good show, a good family experience that they can market. Garber is an ex NFL guy and it shows.
If they just put on a good show in 2026, the USSF will still make a ton of money.
V: if you’ve played soccer you’d agree with me that it’s a bad sign when you consistently can’t upset anyone any good. i get what you’re saying that we probably have less than some of the big name teams. but many teams via coaching can pull off random upsets. we used to sometimes beat italy their place, germany in a friendly, etc. our lack of top level success is “too” consistent and points to a lack of coaching quality.
people diss bradley but bradley beat peak spain and his tactics were designed to frustrate superior opposition. i think wanting to press skilled superior teams is childishly naive. it’s tactics designed to punch down and beat trinidad when that’s the least of our problems.
so sit down and sort out, what beats france? what beats argentina? that used to be the response to, i know on paper they are better, but maybe we can beat them with system.
Vacqui,
Very well said, and SPOT ON…all of it!
IV,
When Bob was around he got tons of flak for being a pinhead.
But he had that Spain game worked out perfectly.
And he got us to the final and we had a 2-0 lead on Brazil at halftime. Had we gone on to win that game I would have ranked it higher than what the 2002 WC team did because it was a major trophy at the time that we would have won by beating Spain ( a total monster at that time) and Brazil.
I’m still mad at Bob for not holding that 2-0 lead but anyone who tells you Bob didn’t know what he was doing is full of shit.
The following year in the 2010 WC, Spain lost their opening group game to Switzerland 0-1. The Swiss manager was the legendary Ottmar Hitzfeld:
“[Bradley] knew the only thing to do was to force the Spanish outside of their cherished zones,” coach Ottmar Hitzfeld told journalist Neil W. Blackmon at the time. “Usher them wide and make them play off the ground as much as possible. We felt we had a team that could replicate what the US had done.”… The recognised belief is that Bradley managed to extract a lot from a little – a theme of his career.”
Just let me know when someone that accomplished steals a page from Gregg’s USMNT notebook.
By the way here’s what Hitzfeld has done:
Grasshopper
Swiss Super League: 1989–90, 1990–91
Swiss Cup: 1988–89, 1989–90
Swiss Super Cup: 1989
Borussia Dortmund
Bundesliga: 1994–95, 1995–96
DFB-Supercup: 1995, 1996
UEFA Champions League: 1996–97
Bayern Munich
Bundesliga: 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2002–03, 2007–08
DFB-Pokal: 1999–2000, 2002–03, 2007–08
DFB-Ligapokal: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2007
UEFA Champions League: 2000–01; runner-up: 1998–99
Intercontinental Cup: 2001
Individual
German Football Manager of the Year: 2008[62]
IFFHS World’s Best Club Coach: 1997, 2001
World Soccer Magazine World Manager of the Year: 1997
UEFA Coach of the Year: 2001
European Coach of the Year—Sepp Herberger Award: 1997
European Coach of the Season: 1997
ESPN 13th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013[63]
World Soccer 17th Greatest Manager of All Time: 2013[64][65]
France Football 19th Greatest Manager of All time: 2019[6
In full disclosure, I should’ve added…I have been to the facility in Kansas City and toured it…it is top notch and it is shared with Sporting KC, as that is their current training facility. So maybe, once the new facility of US Soccer opens in Atlanta, Sporting KC, will be taking over the full facility in KC and they will be the only occupants.