The back side of the new U.S. Soccer National Training Center outside of Atlanta.

U.S. Soccer/Garrett Rowland

For the first time in the 113-year history of the U.S. Soccer Federation the nonprofit owns a blade of grass. And it isn’t just one. U.S. Soccer cut the ribbon May 7 on the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center, a 200-acre complex outside of Atlanta featuring the group’s headquarters, 17 outdoor playing surfaces and a 200,000-square-foot indoor space.

This is the first time U.S. Soccer has had all its functions—from staff headquarters to its entire training and educational center to the home for every one of its 27 national teams, including its extended teams for disabled players—at one site, a massive undertaking that sent the federation scouring the country for the perfect location and then the right design to make it happen.

“We are trying to bring the entire soccer ecosystem together,” Tom Norton, general manager of the center, tells me. “It is not just a training facility.”

Previously based in Chicago, the move near the Town at Trilith mixed-use community south of Atlanta and about 20 minutes from the Atlanta airport will house roughly 400 staff members. When searching for a location, the federation looked for a place that could host soccer play year-round, was easy to travel to from throughout the U.S. and the world, enjoyed buy-in from the local community and offered the structure to support families of staff. With the donation of the land by Chick-fil-A chairman and Trilith Studios founder Dan Cathy and an additional $50 million in funding from Blank, who also owns two professional sports teams in Atlanta—the Falcons of the NFL and the United of the MLS—the site made sense.

From there, it was about creating a space for every piece of the country’s soccer needs. Sure, it’s about fields. But it’s also about high-performance training, medical and plenty more.

Outside, the hilly campus features 13 natural grass surfaces (35 acres of sod), two FieldTurf surfaces and two sand fields. Every field features identical top-end standards of stadium lighting with nearly a foot of underlayment below the turf. The fields at the bottom of the hill are designated for the youngest teams, while the senior national teams will use the two show fields at the top, creating a purposeful march up the hill as players progress through the system.

“It is aspirational as you come up the hill,” Norton says. “That is how we are going to use it. In the design concept we didn’t flatten it out but have the idea of coming up the hill and then at the top the show pitches will host matches and qualifying.”

The 200,000-square-foot indoor space features two indoor FieldTurf fields, but also 10,000 square feet of training and gym space, 19 meeting rooms, the headquarters’ offices and 20 locker rooms. There’s even a boot-drying room. Designed by Gensler, the goal was to create a structure that fit the regional landscape and matched the history of the federation. Norton hopes that in 10 years it looks like the site has been there for 100 years.

“The architecture of the National Training Center is intentionally restrained, shaped by timeless materials and a quiet discipline that creates a sanctuary for practice and performance,” Andrew Jacobs, Gensler principal and design director, tells me. “A unified material palette weaves the campus together, giving it a sense of permanence and identity that feels both grounded and aspirational. The buildings unfold as a series of interconnected volumes, framing movement and experience across the campus with a sense of rhythm and intention. Openness gives way to moments of focus and retreat, creating a balance that supports both the intensity of training and the calm required to perform at the highest level.”

The building features 116,000 bricks, 23,000 square feet of glass—now staff can look out and see soccer happening all around them—and 43,000 square feet of metal panels. The lobby stairs and walls feature stone quarried in Georgia and an observation deck for the show pitch highlights Douglas fir.

The design focus sets a standard of legacy. “It fits in the landscape, but is also grand,” Norton says. “We are going to grow and learn how the space works. We want to be classy and timeless and tell our story.”

Norton says the high-performance aspect of the center takes the best of sports and places it in one place, whether the weight room, the recovery spaces (sleep pods and hot-cold plunges, for example) and a growing partnership with Nike to place a research lab within the site. “The table is set for performance,” he says.

More than a headquarters, the building will serve as a home for conversations around soccer, whether education or training. As a nonprofit, the federation built in hospitality spaces for hosting donors and partners. That addition allows the site to host larger meetings or conventions. “We made sure it can accommodate coaching education and referee education,” Norton says. “A lot of that is interchangeable. We can hold coaching education in the same place as we hold a board meeting.”

Every element includes accessibility for the disabled national teams, including the sand fields, an indoor power wheelchair court and site accessibility with limited transitions. Norton says there were tears of joy from the extended national teams who have never had a facility purpose-built for them. Now they have a space they can compete at while inviting other nations to join them.

The new training center gives the federation the “flexibility to train when and how we want to train.” They control every variable. “Owning all that,” Norton says, “owning that all together allows us to standardize our development program and not worry about if the facility can handle it.”

That also means every domestic camp will be held at the training center for the 27 national teams and the coaching education system will move much of its licensure to the site. Referee training moves to Georgia and U.S. Soccer partners and donors can host events while the larger soccer community can rent space.

“We are in service to soccer to make sure the game is growing and make it the most popular participation sport in the country,” Norton says about the opening the center ahead of the 2026 men’s World Cup, the 2028 Olympics and likely the 2031 women’s World Cup in the U.S. “The ultimate goal is all of these things are happening at the same time. If there is a tournament, there is also referee education and coaching education. That is the unique thing this space gives. It is all here together.”

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