IRVINE, Calif – The big orange hot air balloon emblazoned with the U.S. Soccer logo, visible from miles and miles away, is a dead giveaway, but the Great Park lives up to its name. The signage, courtesy of the men's national team's staff, helps but does not prepare you for what you're actually about to see, a reminder that the public park is a decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station. The pathway lined with palm trees is a welcoming sight, but soon, there is a hangar with a plane inside on the left that's open on the weekends for public viewing. Beside it to the right is a carousel that plays something along the lines of the Plain White T's early-aughts hit "Hey There Delilah" when in operation.
Then you find yourself along a walkway with a timeline of historical events dating back to 30,000 BCE and building up to present day, mixing in regional touchpoints with global events. The last 30 years or so dot the walkway past the carousel, forcing you to ask yourself: Who knew the Irvine Spectrum Center, the city's mall that is a hit with teenagers, was opened mere months after apartheid came to an end in South Africa? Six minutes after the first sight of palm trees, the fences lined with black tarp are a dead giveaway – the U.S. men's national team are afoot, continuing their World Cup preparations inside a secure perimeter.
Three long weeks and a successful group stage campaign later, the USMNT will vacate a World Cup base camp that has offered them exactly what they needed from fanfare at their opening training session to a smattering of pristine training fields, the Santa Ana Mountains in the horizon. It has been a peaceful spot for the U.S. team to get down to business in the circus of a World cup on home soil, a perfect complement to the team hotel roughly 20 miles away on the Pacific coast, scenic sunrises and sunsets available to them on the regular.
The one thing Irvine, nestled inside Orange County, is missing, though, is a sense of World Cup fever.
Any reminders that the world's biggest sporting event is taking place mere miles away begins and ends with the hot air balloon – which, for what it is worth, has a perfect shot of the training fields the USMNT uses. Irvine is upper-middle-class suburbia, southern California edition. Things are spaced out just far enough to need a car just about everywhere. Office complexes fill in much of the most visible parts of town. Strip malls of unique splendor are where you might find the city's best eateries, and most inexpensive ones. Lush greenery surrounds as many buildings as possible, keeping them as shrouded from the sidewalks or the pedestrians that may very occasionally find themselves on those paths.
A sense of community, or the vague suggestion that people actually live here, though, is hard to find. Congregations of people descend upon the Irvine Spectrum Center, the most upscale of shopping centers in Irvine but with plenty of so-called regular options for the quote-unquote average consumer – there's a Target at one end and a P.F. Chang's at the other. Otherwise, signs of life are hard to find outside of the businesses that find themselves in Irvine. What appears to be a quick walk to a nearby coffee shop is actually a confusing journey into one of Irvine's many office complexes, all of which are surprisingly hard to get to by foot. The corners are all enclosed by well-manicured shrubbery, a pedestrian instead forced to find a random opening in the middle of the block to get there.
If people are taking in the World Cup, they are doing so privately. Few people have acknowledged the USMNT's existence in Irvine; most of the people who have stumbled into the Great Park while the team is in session have wondered what exactly is going on, the big orange hot air balloon not enough of a clue. There are not all that many people to speak of, either, since the team mostly trains on weekday mornings.
The only exception to the rule is the occasional viewing party in a different pocket of the park, where Mexico fans gathered on Thursday to catch their group stage finale against Czechia, a 3-0 win. El Tri have been one of the few constants of many World Cup experiences – no matter the place, there is someone wearing a Mexico kit waiting to be found, even in desolate Irvine.
It comes somewhat surprising for a soccer hotbed of sorts, the place lined with soccer fields, even those the USMNT had no need to use. Two-time Women's World Cup winner Julie Foudy is from nearby Mission Viejo; Jurgen Klinsmann, a World Cup winner with Germany and later the U.S. men's national team coach, laid down roots in Newport Beach. Irvine's landscape seems to be at fault here – there are few natural places to convene in a planned city, few things feeling genuinely authentic. The buildings are all designed to look similar if not the same, the office complexes are minimalist shades of white or built around curtain wall buildings. Everything else is some shade of terra cotta, a play on Mediterranean architecture that does not register as real even for those who have never visited the region.
The city ultimately lacks personality. How could it, then, inhabit the spirit of the World Cup?
There is nothing usual about the walk to the USMNT's training site, but there is also no shortage of charm. Irvine, though, is a place to leave quickly if the World Cup is what you are chasing; the USMNT's brief stop in Seattle for their 2-0 win over Australia only highlighted that, a walkable city with World Cup fever at every turn. It has its perks for the U.S. team, who live and breathe the World Cup to the point that they need not chase it. Once the rest of us leave the Great Park, though, it is when the humdrum nature of Orange County's sleepy suburb really kicks in – and makes you feel as far away from a tournament on home soil as possible.
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