As the 2026 FIFA World Cup comes to a close, Orange County is reflecting on the last time it was home to the U.S. Men\u2019s National Soccer Team\u2019s home base.<\/p>\n
Irvine welcomed the USMNT as they settled into Great Park as their home base for the tournament. But in 1994, when the World Cup was last in the U.S., the team\u2019s home base was in Mission Viejo.<\/p>\n
Still affectionately known as the \u201cWorld Cup Field,\u201d children continue to play on the same field where the 1994 men\u2019s team practiced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the kids play here, they can say, \u2018I played on the same field as the World Cup (team),\u2019\u201d said Robert David Breton, who was the mayor of Mission Viejo in 1994.<\/p>\n
To commemorate the field\u2019s ties to the historical, global event, the city renamed the street it\u2019s on to World Cup Street. Breton said he made it his mission to have the U.S. men\u2019s team train on his home turf.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018You bring the team here and they\u2019ll feel like they\u2019re in their hometown,\u201d the former mayor said.<\/p>\n
News of the quiet Orange County suburb becoming the team\u2019s training ground made national headlines that put Mission Viejo on a spotlight.<\/p>\n
Marcelo Balboa, a defender for USMNT\u2019s 1994 team, said he has fond memories of the training field.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving together, eating together, we would go hang out together all the time,\u201d Balboa said, adding that he and his teammates became close in the short amount of time they spent together.<\/p>\n
Balboa said he\u2019s proud to see the sport he loves continues to attract new fans around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the 2026 FIFA World Cup comes to a close, Orange County is reflecting on the last time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,13784,611,5393],"class_list":["post-404752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mission-viejo","tag-orange-county","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404752","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=404752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}