London, Jan 24 (IANS) The England football team is likely to be based in Kansas City during the FIFA World Cup 2026, with the Football Association (FA) formally requesting the governing body to provide Swope Soccer Village as the team’s primary training base for the tournament.

Swope Soccer Village, which is a state-of-the-art facility in Missouri, has been identified as England’s preferred daily training venue. While FIFA is yet to confirm the final base camps for participating nations officially, England is likely to get their favourable venue, as reported by the BBC.

England’s team have been drawn in Group L and will play their group-stage matches across multiple venues in the United States. England is scheduled to face Croatia in Arlington, Texas, on June 17, before taking on Ghana in Foxborough near Boston on June 23 and Panama in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on June 27. The team is expected to fly to each match venue and return to Kansas City following every fixture during the group stage.

Head coach Thomas Tuchel, who took charge intending to guide England to global success, will oversee the logistics-heavy campaign of the team. However, it remains uncertain whether England will continue to operate from Missouri if they advance to the knockout stages, as travel demands may influence a change in base.

Before moving to Kansas City, England will hold a pre-tournament training camp in Florida. The camp will include two warm-up matches, aimed at helping the squad adapt to local conditions and climate ahead of the expanded 48-team World Cup, which the United States, Canada, and Mexico will jointly host. The mega tournament will commence on June 11 with the final scheduled on July 19.

England enter the 2026 World Cup with a proud yet unfulfilled history on the global stage. Winners of the tournament in 1966 on home soil, England have since endured decades of near misses. Their best recent performance came in 2018, when they finished fourth in Russia, followed by quarterfinal exits in 2006, 2010, and 2022.

England also reached the semifinals of Euro 2020 and the final of Euro 2024, underlining their status as consistent contenders, but they are consistently facing losses in the final stages of the tournament.

–IANS

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