KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business, including preparations for FIFA World Cup 26, and eastern Jackson County, with a concentration on Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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While everyone around him was celebrating during the Final Draw, the man responsible for making Kansas City the de facto Base Camp Capital of FIFA World Cup 26 was managing a different emotion — disappointment.
The Kansas City soccer community’s bigwigs, its political leaders, KC2026 officials and local business leaders had assembled at No Other Pub, Sporting Kansas City’s bar inside the Power & Light District.
“That's the same place we were when they announced the host cities, and a lot of those same people were up there,” Alan Dietrich said. “... Everybody was just thrilled. They were thrilled with the matches that are going to be in KC.”
Argentina got drawn into a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium and the Netherlands, too. Kansas City’s quarterfinal could feature Lionel Messi and Argentina against Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal, a dream matchup.
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As wonderful as the draw was, it created real uncertainty for Dietrich in his role as executive director and consultant to KC2026 for base camps.
“In talking with KC2026, our goal was — two will be great for the city, three will be miraculous, we never thought about four,” Dietrich said.
This is the story of how Kansas City wound up with four base camps in the end anyway.
From England with love
Representatives of the English soccer federation had visited Kansas City in January 2025 and left impressed.
They came back in March 2025, and Thomas Tuchel brought his staff for a visit in June 2025.
The Three Lions were in love with Kansas City.
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England even floated the idea of signing a rental agreement to use Compass Minerals National Performance Center, Sporting Kansas City’s training center in Kansas City, Kansas, as its base camp last summer before FIFA shut down any preemptive, pre-draw arrangements.
It was beyond Dietrich’s wildest dream to think England, the birthplace of soccer, would base camp in Kansas City, even if he’s happy to call the region the Soccer Capital of America.
“When we realized, ‘Wow, England's not going to be playing here,’ I was actually texting with them at the time and just getting their reaction on what they thought,” he said. “It was, at that point in time, disappointing.”
After the draw on Dec. 5, teams had until Jan. 9 to submit base camp preferences to FIFA. Originally, the FIFA Men’s World Ranking was going to carry the most weight as a tiebreaker.
But after the Club World Cup experience last summer, FIFA decided to give more priority to teams with games in the base camp’s market.
Del azul celeste
Conventional wisdom was that Argentina, the reigning World Cup champions, planned to build a base camp in Miami, where Messi plays for David Beckham’s MLS franchise.
La Albiceleste, the team’s nickname because of the white and sky-blue stripes on Argentina’s flag, didn’t contact, much less visit, Kansas City prior to the draw.
Meanwhile, England landed games in Dallas, Boston and New Jersey.
“I figured Argentina was going to be in Miami,” Dietrich said. “And I figured the draw might box out England from Kansas City, so I was disappointed at that point in time.”
While it’s true that the draw all but ensured England wouldn’t get to use Sporting KC’s primary training facility, it actually supercharged Kansas City’s base camp hopes, even if that wasn’t immediately clear.
After being drawn into games at Arrowhead as well as in Dallas and Santa Clara, California, Argentina altered its plans to stay in Miami.
“They contacted us right after the draw and wanted to come out,” Dietrich said.
Sporting KC officials assumed it was perfunctory, with Argentina merely doing its due diligence after landing in Kansas City for its first game.
The quartet of Argentinian federation officials who came to town the week after the draw planned to rely on taxis to get around to all the base camp sites, including KU’s Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence, and other venues.
Dietrich suggested they just ride with him after the first stop at Compass.
“As we got to know each other and we're going to these different sites, I started to learn a lot more about the fact that they weren't tied to Miami like we thought — actually, like everybody thought,” he said.
Search for a solution
England’s interest in having a base camp in Kansas City never wavered, but the Three Lions also knew Argentina’s entry in the picture complicated things.
Argentina, which is ranked second and plays a game at Arrowhead, would have priority over England, which is ranked fourth and doesn’t, but there was an additional wrinkle.
The Netherlands, who are ranked seventh and play at Arrowhead, also had priority because both were Pot 1 teams.
Both La Albiceleste and Oranje were in position to pip the two professional soccer training facilities included in the official FIFA Base Camp Brochure, Compass Minerals National Performance Center and the Kansas City Current’s University of Kansas Health System Training Facility.
As Dietrich’s tour progressed, England wanted intel from afar: “They're texting me because they knew Argentina was coming to town. They were saying, ‘How did Argentina like Kansas City?’”
Messi and company like Kansas City enough, as we know by now, to snag it for its base camp, while the Dutch chose the Current’s facility over facilities in Dallas and Atlanta.
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“That one went kind of down to the wire in early January,” Dietrich said.
He believes Kansas City’s commitment to women’s sports was attractive to the Netherlands and may have tipped the scales.
“I do think that played a factor,” Dietrich said. “I think they liked the facility. It's a beautiful facility, and they came to really like Kansas City.”
With Algeria set to play two group stage games at Arrowhead, Rock Chalk Park became a natural fit, though no official announcement has been made yet.
But after nine visits to Kansas City, there’s nowhere else England wanted to be, despite missing out on the three official base camp options, which is when Swope Soccer Village came back into play.
Sporting KC trained there before Compass opened in 2018. It’s now home to Sporting KC’s second team and its youth academies.
England had dropped by on a few of the many visits to town.
“They had seen it before with me, and they were like, ‘Hey, let's revisit that; would you all consider that?'" Dietrich said. “We said, ‘Of course, we would. Yes, come on back. Let's take a look at it.’”
What is beyond ‘miraculous’
England’s ninth visit happened in late January, and they decided Swope would suit their needs in pursuit of the country’s first World Cup title since 1966.
In fact, the nation that birthed soccer has only won the World Cup once, but all English eyes will be on Kansas City when the Three Lions arrive in early June.
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Kansas City has the highest concentration of base camps for any region.
“We are the only region that has four, and we are the only city that has three in the top 10, so I'd say we earned that,” Dietrich said.
The field for FIFA World Cup 26 is expanding from 32 to 48 teams, which will be split into 12 groups of four teams.
The three host countries — Canada, Mexico and the U.S. — were considered Pot 1 teams along with the top nine teams in the world ranking.
Kansas City landed three of the non-host Pot 1 teams, or 33% of those available teams — an incredible achievement for Dietrich and KC2026, which makes the area the undisputed base camp champs.
“Now that I look back, I'm like, ‘Man, this all worked together for good,’” he said. “... Someone told me the other day that the selection of Kansas City by these teams proves that we're the Soccer Capital of America.”
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