INTERNATIONAL SOCCER
SFM: When looking at those sites, are you evaluating professional venues, colleges, high school or a mix of sites? Also, what type of existing infrastructure are you looking for? Appelfeller: Yes, we ' ve looked at everything from private high schools to Division I college to NWSL, USL and MLS facilities. We have looked at different sizes— some are two pitches, some are four pitches— and we determined which ones are the best of each site that we would want to use. There are a lot of factors that go into picking a good training site. Having a good pitch is one thing, but having good locker rooms, a good weight room, a really nice hotel nearby, and having something for the players to do in the city all factor into one big-picture package that we send out to the clubs and countries. The training pitches are extremely important, but they are just a small piece of the whole puzzle.
SFM: Do the base camps have to be in a certain proximity to where those teams will ultimately play? And what are the logistics for the venue-specific training sites? Appelfeller: The venue-specific training sites are within probably 20 minutes of the stadiums. For the team base camps, clubs or federations will choose those regionally knowing where their matches will be played. There is no distance that could be too close or too far away from those stadiums for a base camp, but it’ s not likely for a federation to choose a location that is a 5-hour flight from where they ' ll be playing their matches. Once they know which group they ' re in and where those matches will be played, they will identify where they want to train and they will tell us which options are best for them.
SFM: With the base camps not required to be in close proximity to the actual event venue, do you anticipate some crossover of base camp site selections from Club World Cup to World Cup 26? Appelfeller: It’ s two different tournaments, but in back-toback years. If you look at the tournament we have this summer, it is based heavily on the coasts. There are matches on the West Coast and there are matches on the East Coast, but there ' s nothing really in the middle of the country outside of Nashville and Cincinnati. The team base camp options we have on the East Coast and West Coast are options for 26 as well, and are in our brochure going out to the federations for next year. But, starting next year, there are a lot of options in the middle of the country— including in Mexico and Canada— that were not options for the clubs this year that will be options for next year.
SFM: How closely dialed in do the training pitches have to be to mimic the actual game sites? Appelfeller: That ' s probably the toughest part of the job we’ re trying to do— especially when locating different sites around the stadiums. The stadiums will have different types of grass depending on where they ' re at— whether it is bermudagrass or Kentucky bluegrass. The indoor stadiums will all be Kentucky bluegrass; but when we get outside of those stadiums, bermudagrass might be the preferred option for those areas. So, we ' re now trying to mimic the inside conditions to the outside world. We are doing a lot of detailed testing and looking at the numbers of how that surface will play. We are trying to mimic it as much as we can for what can we expect on ball roll, hardness, and what the sheer feel like. If we can get those numbers similar, then we think the playability is not going to change from outside to inside. One of the hardest challenges we have is figuring out how to make a bermudagrass surface outside of a stadium play the same way as a stitched bluegrass inside the stadium.
SFM: What type of equipment are you using to test each site? Appelfeller: We have a Clegg, we have a sheer tester, and we are checking moisture daily. We have a rotation of our staff going around to these sites every two to three days this summer taking readings, taking pictures, writing reports, and sharing them with the overall team so that we can make sure every training pitch is as similar to the stadiums as possible. It is a lot of reporting— numbers on top of numbers. Some of it makes sense to the naked eye, and for some of it you have to dig a little deeper to determine what is causing it to perform a certain way. sportsfieldmanagementonline. com July 2025 | SportsField Management
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