After 113 Years, U.S. Soccer has a home: Inside the Arthur M. Blank National Training Center

The Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center officially opened in Trilith, Georgia on May 7, 2026, and if you’ve never been out that way before, the drive in is wildly lowkey. There aren’t signs pointing the way once you get off the main highway, and the area sits in a typical metro-Atlanta residential pocket northwest of Fayetteville where it’s fair to legitimately start wondering if your GPS is confused. Then the entrance comes into view, and once you turn down the main road, the scope of the entire facility instantly hits you in the face.

The trek to the center takes you up a slow incline off the main road, over a small bridge, and past manicured gardens before the more than 400,000 square feet of facilities come into view. It sits across a 200-acre campus, surrounded by more pitches than I could count from the parking lot (there’s 17 outside, for those inquiring minds). There’s a variety of turf, grass, beach, and full-size training fields around the actual building. The main building has a wall of vertical glass panels with the training center’s name above the entrance and a manicured lawn rolling out in front. It’s an awe-inspiring building, and it has a serious job as it puts U.S. Soccer squarely in the 21st century.

After 113 years of existing as an organization, this entire complex sets up U.S. Soccer with a home of its own…finally. And the word “home” was probably the word of the day, mentioned by a variety of people who contributed to this whole endeavor, including Arthur Blank, U.S Soccer’s JT Batson and Cindy Parlow Cone, and many others.

How this place came to exist in Atlanta is its own story. Arthur Blank got on stage during the ceremony and gave the full details as to how everything played out. According to Blank, MLS Commissioner Don Garber called him roughly three years ago about a project U.S. Soccer was working on related to an actual headquarters. They wanted to build a training facility, and Atlanta was one of the cities in the mix along with options in the Carolinas and elsewhere. During that same conversation, Garber explained to Blank that the federation had an office up in Chicago but didn’t actually have a true home. Blank compared it to having a house with no kitchen, which is a strikingly accurate way to put it for an organization that serves as the governing body in the United States for the most popular sport in the world.

When I arrived and stepped through the front doors, the first thing I saw on display was some of U.S. Soccer’s more prominent silverware. A handful of major trophies were sitting on wooden pedestals behind a velvet rope, quite literally the current Crown Jewels of the federation’s existence. The 2015 Women’s World Cup trophy from Canada was right there in the open, alongside the 2019 trophy from France and a couple of others. A few steps further into the building lies another wall of trophies built into the wall and lit up from behind, showing off the sheer breadth of what U.S. Soccer actually entails. CONCACAF beach soccer cups, futsal championships, IFCPF cerebral palsy soccer trophies, youth tournament silverware, and plenty more all sit together on the same wall. It’s a wonderful way to immediately show that this place isn’t just for the senior teams, it’s built specifically for every one of the national teams under the U.S. Soccer umbrella.

The foyer where the trophies were on display opens up into the cafeteria, which sort of doubles as the social hub of the building. There are full serving stations, a coffee bar, and big windows along the back wall that look directly into the indoor power and wheelchair soccer court. The placement is intentional, as anybody grabbing a meal can look up and see any variety of extended national teams training, which is a small but thoughtful detail for a building that’s designed to bring all 27 of U.S. Soccer’s national teams under one roof.

On the other side of the cafeteria is the entrance to the indoor training pitch, and this is where the scope of the place really starts to hit. It’s a full-size pitch, completely enclosed and obviously climate controlled, with a turf surface and ceilings high enough that it feels like an aircraft hangar. During the brutal Georgia summers, a place like this is an absolute game changer and is very similar to facilities at the University of Georgia and up in Flowery Branch for the Falcons.

Wrapping around the back of the building, you come up on the Nike High Performance Center a.k.a. the coolest themed gym I’ve ever seen. The whole space is fitted out with custom red, white, and blue squat racks and benches, all branded with the U.S. Soccer crest and the Nike swoosh. There are dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, and turf strips for sled work, plus an entire section of high-tech treadmills along the far wall. One of the rooms inside has a specialized treadmill surrounded by cameras at multiple angles, designed to break down running mechanics and injury risk down, in theory, before an actual injury occurs. Further down and tucked into the corner is a small kitchenette branded by Chobani where athletes can blend smoothies and grab snacks, with a fridge sponsored by Powerade.

A door on one side of the gym leads out to the training pitches in the back, while a door on the other side leads into the medical wing, which is where the recovery science equipment is on full display. There are massage rooms, hot tubs, what looked like a cold plunge, a sauna, and a full hydrotherapy area. Around a corner was perhaps my most unexpected room in the entire building: a sleep room with four enclosed nap pods, complete with the U.S. Soccer crest on the side. Why would they need these, you ask (because I asked, too)? National team players spend a lot of their lives traveling, and recovery science is a real edge at the professional level. The fact that there’s a dedicated room for naps implies how seriously this place takes the more mundane parts of being an elite athlete.

Down the main hallway from there are tons of locker rooms with the typical setup of showers and bathrooms, but with an eye towards accessibility.

Upstairs is where U.S. Soccer’s staff will actually work day to day. The whole floor is open and bright, with glass walls separating the meeting rooms, plenty of workstations laid out in different configurations, a small bar tucked into one section, and soccer books scattered around the seating areas. There’s a balcony that runs along the outside of the building overlooking the main training pitches, with tables and chairs set up so staff can work outside while watching whichever national team is running drills below. Anybody who’s been to Atlanta United’s Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground will recognize the layout. It’s a setup that makes the work feel connected to the sport, which is obviously the whole point.

The actual ribbon cutting ceremony took place inside the indoor pitch later in the day. The lineup of speakers was a mix of soccer leadership and the business folks who made the whole thing possible. JT Batson, the CEO and Secretary General of U.S. Soccer, opened by quoting Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who he said likes to describe Atlanta as a “group project.” Batson said he could think of no better way to describe how this facility came together, considering the list of partners, donors, government officials, and member organizations who all had a hand in the opening of this behemoth of a building.

The names on that list truly put the audacity of the project into perspective. Arthur Blank obviously was the lead donor with his name on the building, contributing $50 million toward the project. Dan Cathy and the Cathy family of Chick-fil-A donated the land the facility sits on. Coca-Cola is a founding partner with a $5 million grant from the company and the Coca-Cola Foundation. AT&T and Nike, plus a long list of additional partners and corporate sponsors, rounded out the extensive list. Dan Cathy spent a chunk of his time on stage talking about the symbolism of having Coca-Cola, Arthur Blank, and Chick-fil-A all converging on one project, which are three Atlanta business legacies that have been intertwined for decades.

Cindy Parlow Cone, the U.S. Soccer President and former U.S. Women’s National Team player, called this day a literal dream come true. She made it a point to recognize that Blank did far more than just write a check. According to her, he brought people and groups together, held them accountable, and joined the team in a hands-on way during the years it took to pull this off.

When Blank himself got on stage, he did exactly what Arthur Blank tends to do, which is lean into the human side of things and humbly refuse to take credit. He pointed to his son Josh, who started playing soccer at five years old for Concorde Fire, as the reason he ever cared about the sport in the first place. He talked about how Don Garber pulled him into the world of Major League Soccer in the early 2010s, and about meeting with Cindy and JT for the first time and committing to the project within five minutes of the meeting starting. Then, he closed with a comment that looks to the future of the training center and what it’s doing for the sport and the community.

When asked what he’d want to be true if everyone gathered back in this same building 10 years from now, Blank said he hoped U.S. Soccer would come knocking on his door many more times for additional ideas and additional ways to support the growth of soccer in this country. He said he wanted to look back in 10 years and say “we’ve added on this, we’ve added on this.” Not because growth for growth’s sake, but because of demand and because of how many young players were coming through the building.

The event ended with the proper ribbon cutting, complete with one of those giant pairs of scissors that always makes everyone look extra concerned while holding them.

It’s worth stepping back to think about what’s been happening in Atlanta soccer over the past decade or so. Atlanta United launched in 2017 and immediately set MLS attendance records, won an MLS Cup in 2018, and became one of the league’s most recognizable brands. Mercedes-Benz Stadium will host eight matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer, including a semifinal. NWSL Atlanta begins play in 2028 with a new training facility being built in Marietta. Now, U.S. Soccer’s national headquarters and training center is open in Trilith, less than an hour from Mercedes-Benz Stadium and from the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground (on a good traffic day, anyway).

The fact that Atlanta is becoming the de facto soccer capital of the United States isn’t a coincidence, nor is it an accident. AMBSE is showing the result of years of investment in a city that’s been willing to bet on the sport at every level. With the sad news of another iconic Atlanta philanthropist, Ted Turner, passing just a couple of days ago, it can’t be overstated how fortunate this city has been to have people like the Blank and Turner families investing in it.

For U.S. Soccer specifically, it’s such a historical moment that I personally won’t truly realize until well after I get this article published. Over the next several decades, the senior national teams will train at this facility. The youth national teams will train at this facility. Power and wheelchair soccer, beach soccer, futsal, and more, will all be under the same roof. Coaches will come through for education and certifications and referees will come through for development. A variety of organizations from across the country will use this place as a hub for whatever they need, so the investment isn’t really about one building sitting on what used to essentially be a cow pasture. It really is about every kid in this country who picks up a ball over the next 50 years having a place that exists specifically for them to grow into, and when you look at it that way, it’s totally understandable why JT Batson got emotional more than once when speaking today.

The staff there will hit the ground running, too, as the first events are already on the calendar. The AdaptandThrive Invitational arrives later this month, and the U.S. Men’s National Team will train at the facility at the end of May as they wrap up final preparations for the World Cup.

It’s truly wild to think the federation is 113 years old, almost half the age of the entire country, and it now has a home for the first time right here in our own backyard.

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