The World Cup kicks off on Thursday with a game between Mexico and South Africa.
Egypt’s national team landed in Spokane this week before their first match against Belgium on Monday in Seattle. Today at noon, the team is opening up their training session at Gonzaga University to a few lucky fans who won free lottery tickets.
The World Cup is the most watched—and therefore probably the most anticipated—sporting event on the planet. But if you were surprised you didn’t know global superstar Mo Salah was coming to Spokane until a few weeks before the tournament, you’re not alone.
“From what I've gathered, this World Cup has been some of the latest selections for sites that they've had," said Gonzaga’s facilities director Rob Kavon. “Lumen Field, once they got selected as one of the host sites for the matches—then what FIFA does is they request that there's so many training sites around the competition site. We have one of the few higher level grass playing surfaces in the state of Washington.”
Grass is really important to FIFA. Game pitches and training fields have to be grass.
“We were contacted, I believe, in February," Kavon said. "The Egypt delegation came and toured our facilities in early March."
Egypt wasn't the only team eyeing Spokane. Kavon said he was in touch with the Qatar national team as well.
"They ended up canceling at the last minute," he said. "I believe that most of their matches are in the Midwest, or potentially in the South. Our training site was a little bit too far away for them.”
Training sites, also called base camps, are homes away from home for national teams while they compete in the World Cup. Egypt’s three group stage games are in Seattle and Vancouver. Between those matches, they’ll stay at Northern Quest Resort and Casino and train at Gonzaga.
But the university wasn’t immediately sure they wanted to be a base camp.
"We went back and forth on it," he said. "Our first priority is our soccer teams. With their competition season being in the fall, it makes it really hard for us to have a lot of activity on our field in the summer times.”
Again, it’s all about grass.
“Grass in the Northwest is really, really challenging, especially when we play all the way into the first part of November," Kavon said. "So having as little use as possible and being able to rehab and renovate and do what we need to do in the summertime is really important for us.”
But in the end, excitement won out.
“It's pretty prestigious to get selected and to be put on an international stage, really, saying that we've hosted international soccer teams on our field," he said.
Plus, the university did end up getting state and FIFA dollars to upgrade its pitch.
“We took out all of our grass that we had and laid new sod down just the spring in preparation for the FIFA team," Kavon said. "The grass is actually the same grass that they installed in Lumen field. There's a company out of Moses Lake that did both of the projects…So our surfaces is definitely international soccer standards now.”
The other major lift was upgrading security. Kavon says his team is working with everyone from local agencies to the FBI and Homeland Security to make sure the campus was safe—safe from malicious attacks, but maybe even more so from excessive adoration.
“I would say, mostly it's—and I hate to say this—but the diehard fans," Kavon said. "International soccer like this is on such a high level that and it's watched by so many millions of people. These athletes are celebrity level."
It’s just today at noon that a few lucky fans will get to be somewhat up close and personal with the Pharaohs.
"They're here to do a job, they're here to compete in the World Cup and be focused on that—on the international stage, that's a huge thing. There's a lot of national pride that goes with it," Kavon said. "So we're trying to create that environment where they have the least amount of distractions as possible.”
