FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — For 25 U.S. soccer players, the 2026 World Cup journey began this week in the “City That Never Sleeps.” Manhattan’s breathtaking skyscrapers appeared outside airplane windows, then swallowed the players as they gathered for a roster reveal. On Tuesday afternoon, the Brooklyn Bridge was their iconic backdrop as Fox unveiled them as America’s World Cup team.Then they boarded a bus, crawled through New York’s concrete jungle to an airport, flew to Atlanta, and rode south toward another America.They rumbled down two-lane roads, through a carved-up pine forest, past long driveways and single-family homes, some ultra-modern, some deserted. They zipped past farmland and horses, or perhaps cattle, depending on which route they took away from spotlights. In darkness, Americans flags, yard signs supporting Republican politicians, overgrown fields and pickup trucks whizzed by.And then, at last, they arrived in the town of Trilith, which used to be wheat fields. A decade ago, it didn’t exist. Then it rose from nothing around the largest movie studio outside Hollywood.Now, it’s home base for the U.S. men’s national team as it begins World Cup preparations — because a couple miles up the road, off Veterans Parkway in Fayetteville, Ga., is perhaps the most impressive soccer facility in the world.U.S. Soccer’s new national training center, which opened earlier this month, will host the USMNT’s pre-World Cup training camp through next Thursday. The roughly $250 million campus features more than a dozen locker rooms and pitches, a court and a gym, conference rooms and hospitality areas, plus workspace for the federation’s hundreds of staffers.“The facility itself is incredible,” U.S. midfielder Tyler Adams said Thursday. “I mean, this is what the national team has needed for a really, really long time.”