In the past few months, employees of the German Football Association (DFB) have been looking for a place in the United States that does not exist there. But because the team headquarters that the German national soccer team had on the Adidas site in Herzogenaurach during the 2024 European Championships has been repeatedly highlighted by coaches and players, the employees should also find a place like that on the other side of the Atlantic. And this Friday, five months before the first game of the World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico, the DFB announced that it had found him.
The American town of Herzogenaurach is called Winston-Salem. The DFB will set up its so-called team base camp during the World Cup in the city of 250,000 in the US state of North Carolina. The team around national coach Julian Nagelsmann will live in the “The Graylyn Estate” hotel and train at the Wake Forest University sports facilities. The “most important thing,” Nagelsmann is quoted in the DFB press release, is the proximity to the pitches.
One should not underestimate the choice of the World Cup venue
The university has “three football pitches in very, very good condition that meet all the demands we have from a sporting perspective”. About the accommodation he says: “With the Adidas Home Ground in Herzogenaurach, we as a team have found a place that allows us to come together again and again, but still has the necessary peace and quiet and retreat. We have now found this combination in The Graylyn Estate.” If you believe the national coach, a piece of Franconia has really been found for his players and him in North Carolina.
The choice of the German World Cup venue may have been exaggerated in retrospect because of the fluctuations in the German World Cup results (world champions in 2014, preliminary rounds in 2018 and 2022), but it should not be underestimated either. Especially not before this World Cup, which will be held for the first time with 48 teams and will therefore take even longer. And with these distances.
“A decisive factor”
In the preliminary round, the German team, which has done comparatively well, has to travel to Houston (June 14th against Curaçao), Toronto (June 20th against the Ivory Coast) and East Rutherford near New York City (June 25th against Ecuador). But because the distances to the venues will be so great, it was not only important to Nagelsmann that the distances at the training venue remain small.
The practice areas can be reached “on foot or by bike in less than ten minutes” – from his point of view “a decisive factor”. But the national coach also knows that in the end it will not be the short distances in Winston-Salem that will decide how far his team will go.
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