Spain at a Tennessee boarding school, Iraq in a rural West Virginia town: Where World Cup teams live

In the shadow of Tennessee’s Signal and Lookout mountains, 8-year-old Beckham balanced on a fence for more than three hours, gripping a handwritten note and waiting for Spain’s national team to emerge.“I love you and I look up to you,” the note addressed to Pedri and Lamine Yamal read. “Thanks for coming to my city.

I hope you win the World Cup.”As the players ran onto the field, his eyes grew wide.“Dad,” he whispered, “they’re real.”

The scene was equally incredible to his father, Jaxon McClure, a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in Chattanooga playing soccer with trash cans for goalposts, now coaches hundreds of local children and named his first child after one of the sport’s greatest stars, David Beckham.This summer — 32 years since the United States first hosted the world's biggest sporting competition — Chattanooga is among several cities established as World Cup base camps, where visiting teams live and train between matches. Spain, which is among the favorites to win the tournament, has set up camp at a boarding school on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga; Iraq is in a mountain resort town in West Virginia with fewer than 3,000 residents; and Germany is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where cobblestone streets and tobacco warehouses share space with German flags and television crews.

Southern hospitality on displayA 144-foot (44-meter) underground waterfall beneath Lookout Mountain is lit up red and the Embassy Suites in downtown Chattanooga, where the Spanish team is staying, is adorned with Spain's red and yellow flag, known as la Rojigualda. Giant banners featuring Spanish players and declaring, “Bienvenidos a Chattanooga” greeted La Roja as the team arrived at Chattanooga Airport.Native Chattanoogan Skip Schwartz said so many people are wearing Spanish jerseys that “you don't know if they’re from Spain, hoping to get a glimpse, or they are locals who have bought into the La Roja bandwagon.”

Around 25,000 people entered a lottery for 1,000 tickets to watc