football360.com.au<\/a>, the midfielder \u2013 who is now a free agent \u2013 described his experience at the club and the training setup that will now form the headquarters for the nation\u2019s 2026 World Cup campaign.<\/p>\n\u201cThe weather is going to be amazing,\u201d Armenakas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not going to be in extreme heat. It\u2019ll be warm, but it\u2019s not going to be humid like it would be in Florida or something like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe facilities for me, (they\u2019re) the best in the league for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazing gym setup, a lot of space, physio rooms, meeting rooms. It\u2019s the old Oakland Raiders training facility, so you can imagine the locker room space and the meal areas and stuff like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got all the equipment you need for the gym, all the space you need, multiple football fields, the grass is in great condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless you\u2019re training at LAFC\u2019s facility, it\u2019s going to be hard to beat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s Oakland Roots, but the facilities are amazing. I think they did the right thing by choosing that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big sports town, you get the support from the locals because you\u2019ve decided to use their facilities as well. I think it\u2019s an amazing setup that will be good for the community and also good for the Socceroos.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cThey have everything; you want the ice baths, the spa, the saunas, the jacuzzi setups, you want the big locker room space, you want a space where they can get out of the hotel and stay there for a little while longer and have their meals and table tennis and pool tables and, you know, the soccer tennis tables and stuff like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have all of that to relax a little bit. Beautiful trees, you can go for walks\u2026 sometimes after training, I\u2019d bring my dog down and walk him as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOther than that, I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to be wanting to do much else other than be focused on the World Cup. Obviously it\u2019s very important, but they have everything they need there. It\u2019s not like they\u2019re going to go wanting and not have anything available for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not going to have to go externally to look at how can we get this done? They have everything on site. So I think they\u2019ll feel at home and comfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing that will probably be difficult is the traffic in California is sometimes tough. depends where they\u2019re staying and time of day that they\u2019re leaving, but they should be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oakland may end up being Armenakas\u2019 last USL stop, having also spent time on the books of Phoenix Rising, Loudoun United and Memphis 901 FC.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old departed the club at the end of the 2025 campaign and is now on the look out for a new club, following an experience that delivered more special memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking at some options in and out of the US and then Oakland came,\u201d he explaiend of how he ended up there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew they were kind of restructuring the team and trying to get some new players and they wanted me to be a part of that. And it looked like everything was cool. California, great weather, close to San Francisco.<\/p>\n
\u201cA beautiful stadium now moving into the Coliseum where there\u2019s history there and I love my American sports with the NFL and the baseball, so to be a part of that was amazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHome openers (were) like close to 30,000 people in the Oakland Coliseum so it\u2019s amazing, blacked out with the Oakland jerseys and seeing people with my name on the back. It was pretty cool and my family there for that first game was pretty nice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOakland is a sports city through and through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re a sports team, it doesn\u2019t matter what type of sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s sad to see a lot of the teams pack up and leave. I understand the money side, going to Vegas or Sacramento now with the baseball team, but they love their teams through and through even the Roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA big sports city, if you play bad, they\u2019ll let you know but, they\u2019ll show up\u2026 and have a lot of soul, a lot of culture and they care a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The only Australian to previously call the Socceroos\u2019 upcoming World Cup base home has given a ringing endorsement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,8450,141404],"class_list":["post-343944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-roots","tag-panos-armenakas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}