by the Chattanooga community<\/a>, they still find themselves on foreign soil for an extended period \u2014 in a city with only one tapas restaurant.<\/p>\nThat is why Spanish officials spent a small fortune on banners, billboards and murals. The team\u2019s base camp at Baylor School, a college preparatory school with pristine playing fields and scenic vistas of the Tennessee River, now has a touch of Madrid.<\/p>\n
Visitors are greeted by a large mesh sign with the phrase \u201cSelecci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola de F\u00fatbol\u201d in gold letters. Practice fields are fenced in by vinyl banners with phrases including \u201cSomos Espa\u00f1a, Somos Equipo\u201d (\u201cWe are Spain, We are a team\u201d). At the nearby indoor site, which houses high-end fitness equipment, massage tables and meeting rooms, the walls are adorned with team logos.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more of the same at the downtown Embassy Suites, where the squad is staying for the month. Team-branded banners cover an eight-foot-high security fence. Larger-than-life photos of the players line the hotel\u2019s interior. There are Spanish-language signs in the lobby and hallways.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re spending three weeks in the same room, you need to feel comfortable,\u201d Karanka said.<\/p>\n
The task of designing, producing and installing all that signage \u2014 a total of 57,000 square feet of material, nearly enough to cover every inch of an American football field \u2014 fell to SpeedPro Chattanooga, a family-owned company that specializes in large-format printing projects.<\/p>\n
For SpeedPro, the outsize endeavor was a two-month sprint.<\/p>\n
It started in early April, when the Spanish federation submitted a query through SpeedPro\u2019s website, said Chad Mize, who owns the business with his wife, Elizabeth, and his brother, Kyle.<\/p>\n
Days later, federation representatives paid a visit to the SpeedPro office. On a screen, they presented a 200-page PDF file that included photos of the Baylor campus and the nearby Embassy Suites. It came complete with precise measurements and the types of signage they wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018This will be a heavy lift, but we can do it,\u2019\u201d Mize recalled telling the federation.<\/p>\n
The job was SpeedPro\u2019s largest undertaking since it opened in 2024. All 10 employees pulled 60-hour weeks for six weeks, Mize said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our printers basically running 24\/7,\u201d Mize said. \u201cIt was never, \u2018We want less.\u2019 It was always, \u2018We want more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
They just made the deadline: Mize said he was hanging signs at the hotel at 4 a.m. on the day of the team\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n
He and his wife felt a unique connection to the project. Their two daughters, Zoey and Sophia, played soccer at Baylor School, and their son, Thomas, is a rising sophomore there. All three children helped out, Mize said. The family is now invested in Spain\u2019s success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel like we played a small part in all this,\u201d Mize said. \u201cWe want them to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tim Kelly, the mayor of Chattanooga, started working toward bringing a World Cup team to the area as far back as 2023, when he told Chris Angel, Baylor\u2019s head of school, that the campus could serve as a base camp.<\/p>\n
Kelly explained that each of the 48 teams in the tournament would need a North American training site for the month of June 2026. Kelly very much wanted Chattanooga to be in the mix, but felt that the only way to make that happen would be to enlist Baylor School, which \u201coffers this incredible, idyllic isolation that teams in training love,\u201d he said in an interview. After touring the campus last year, Spain was sold.<\/p>\n
Early on, the team decided to turn it into a home away from home \u2014 which, according to Mize, meant spending \u201chundreds of thousands of dollars\u201d on the signage.<\/p>\n
SpeedPro\u2019s work isn\u2019t finished. Once Spain moves on, Mize and his colleagues will strip the banners and murals from the school and dispose of them.<\/p>\n
By the time students arrive in late summer, there may be no sign that a World Cup favorite was ever there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The people in charge of the Royal Spanish Football Federation wanted the 26 members of Spain\u2019s national team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21046,21044,1743,17,21045,21043],"class_list":["post-47079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-chattanooga-tenn","tag-signs-and-signage","tag-soccer","tag-spain","tag-spanish-language","tag-world-cup-2026-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}