England are set to launch their bid to win the World Cup at a place where many a set of travellers come to dream by playing pre-tournament friendlies in Tampa and Orlando, the home of Disney World.
The FA is eyeing the two cities as locations for warm-up games having long had plans in place for Thomas Tuchel to take his squad to Florida for a training camp before the finals begin on June 11.
The England head coach is keen to use the Fifa window for pre-World Cup fixtures, running from June 1 to 9, to play two matches against testing opposition in American conditions. Miami and Fort Lauderdale were originally considered but the favoured option now is to play in Tampa and Orlando, which are only 80 miles apart, and train in or near one of those cities.
No fixtures or venues are confirmed but Orlando has the Inter&Co Stadium, a modern 25,500-capacity venue that hosted games at last summer’s Club World Cup. It is home to Orlando City, the Major League Soccer team. Their star player is Croatia’s Marco Pasalic, who could face England in their opening World Cup finals match in Dallas on June 17.
In Tampa there is the famous Raymond James Stadium, built for the Manchester United owners, the Glazer family, for their Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL team. A 69,218-capacity venue it has hosted three Super Bowls but also football, with the US men’s team and Inter Miami playing there in recent years.
The two cities’ proximity is an attraction and there are a range of good practice facilities England could use. In 2001 Celtic had a successful mid-season training camp; playing in Tampa and training at Disney’s Wide World of Sport Complex, in Orlando, where the squad raved about the surfaces and conditions.
The weather in Orlando and Tampa is also more predictable than in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area of Florida, which is prone to summer storms.
While playing near the home of Mickey Mouse may lead to certain inevitable, corny jokes about England and World Cups, avoiding Miami would allow The Three Lions to avoid bad memories.
Sterling was sent off against Ecuador in Miami during a warm-up for England’s ill-fated 2014 World Cup campaign
RICHARD HEATHCOTE/GETTY
Roy Hodgson’s England had a training camp and warm-up matches there before their miserable 2014 World Cup campaign — England were knocked out in a record six days — and the games in Miami’s Sun Life Stadium were full of bad omens.
In the first, a 2-2 draw with Ecuador, Raheem Sterling was sent off and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain suffered a knee injury that left him playing no part in the World Cup finals in Brazil. In the second match, an utterly grim stalemate against Honduras, there were farcical scenes as the game was delayed for 40 minutes because of a thunderstorm.
England will begin their build-up to the summer’s World Cup — held in the US, Canada and Mexico — with friendlies against Uruguay and Japan on March 27 and 31 respectively. They are in the last World Cup section to kick off, group L, and after facing Croatia in Dallas, play Ghana in Boston on June 23 and Panama in New Jersey on June 27.
They are pushing to make Kansas City, in Missouri, their base for the group stage of the tournament but must wait for Fifa to rule on which countries are allowed to train where. Argentina and the Netherlands are also keen to use Kansas City, favoured because it is no more than five hours from the majority of tournament venues, with a decision expected by the end of the month.