US Soccer might be gone, but Lakewood Ranch remains a soccer destination

No destination is quite like Premier Sports Campus when it comes to local soccer.

Established in 2011, it has a sprawling reach — 23 fields across 140 acres of grass. The playing surface is pristine.

That constitutes an ideal layout for youth tournaments and camps alike. But the crown jewel is a 3,500-seat stadium, which has proved attractive to more than a few elite events.

From Nov. 3-9, the stadium hosted the American Conference college women’s soccer tournament for the third consecutive year. Memphis, the No. 3 team in the country, was among that group of participating NCAA Division I squads.

The Elite Clubs National League — a top-level amateur youth soccer program — will host a boys event there from Jan. 3-5, as well as two girls events from Jan. 10-12 and Feb. 27-March 1. The Sarasota Paradise players will play their inaugural professional season beginning in March 2026 within the stadium’s confines.

U.S. Soccer, which forms the teams that represent the country in international competition, is the highest of the high in terms of domestic organizations for the sport. There was a time when it, too, sought out PSC.

“That stadium was built to host these high-end events at the youth level, because it attracted people to the area,” said Antonio Saviano, the executive director of Florida Premier FC SWFL. “When we hosted U.S. Soccer, in what we used to call the U-17 International Friendlies, you couldn’t even walk in the stadium. It was packed.”

Saviano was at the forefront of the effort to build the stadium. He served as the general manager of PSC from 2013-2019 and stayed on through Manatee County’s purchase of the facility from Schroeder-Manatee Ranch in Dec. 2017.

Under his watch, the Nike International Friendlies were held on site every November from 2011-2019. That event regularly pitted the U-17 Men’s National Team against opponents across the globe. 

Christian Pulisic even played at Premier in 2013 and 2014. He’s now the fifth all-time leading scorer for the U.S. Men’s National Team.

“There's so much history on that grass," Saviano said. "Some of these players are playing in England, they're playing in Germany, they're playing in Italy — all over the place,” Saviano said. “They came all through the Premier Sports Campus at one point.”

Turkey and the Netherlands came all the way to Lakewood Ranch in 2019 to compete. A year prior, it was Brazil, Portugal and Turkey which made the trek.

But the Nike-sponsored event, first held in 2001, didn’t survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It hasn’t been staged since its 2020 cancellation.

Aside from a U-20 Women’s National Team pre-qualifying training camp here in January 2020, U.S. Soccer has been absent from Premier.

“It’s a little bit strange,” Saviano said. “I remember when I was with SMR — the company that built that place — we even had multiple meetings about trying to actually have U.S. Soccer here as an anchor.”

A concerted effort to centralize operations is a major reason for its disappearance locally. The organization broke ground on the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center in Fayetteville, Georgia on April 8, 2024. 

Designed to house all 27 national teams, the new headquarters boasts 12 outdoor fields and 200 acres of facilities. It’s scheduled to open in April 2026, and as the first ever national training center for the organization, could dramatically change how team schedules are built.

U.S. Soccer is headed in a direction where a return to Lakewood Ranch appears less likely. Sending national teams to Florida just won’t make as much sense with a state-of-the-art facility in Georgia.

“U.S. Soccer has also evolved a lot in the last year… so I think it's a complex reason why it kind of moved away from Premier,” said Marcus Walfridson, the CEO and founder of the Sarasota Paradise. “We know our job is to bring more professional soccer here. Then the county is working on bringing more tournaments, so it's a good balance from that perspective.”

Not only is there high demand surrounding the stadium, but there’s a premium associated with it. Manatee County has different price tiers for prospective users, divided by non-profits and for-profits. Non-county teams hoping to rent the space are also considered differently.

Florida Premier FC SWFL — a semi-professional team — has yet to use the stadium, though Saviano said talks with the county are ongoing. It's budget simply isn’t big enough to make Premier a full-time home.

That being said, U.S. Soccer’s financial resources dwarf those of any local club or program. And if national soccer officials are worried about Premier's facility quality, that really shouldn't be a concern.

The Paradise front office is making nearly $400,000 in upgrades to the stadium ahead of its first professional season with the intention of improving the game-day experience. Walfridson said that includes a video board, air-conditioned tents, field-side seats, seats with mobile seat-backs and a container suite.

Still, the Nike International Friendlies remained in Lakewood Ranch for nine years despite no locker rooms and only a couple thousand seats. Infrastructure isn’t what attracted prestigious competition.

“It’s the playing surface. The fields are immaculate,” Saviano said. “That's a laser-level facility. There is no crown over the fields — it’s completely flat, because it has an underground system where it drains the water every time it rains.”

The means are there for U.S. Soccer to eventually make a return to Lakewood Ranch. Whether it actually will depends more on how it views the other venues at its disposal.

That’s something PSC can’t hope to control.