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The Ivory Coast national football team (yes, soccer team for us Americans) will soon be setting up its base camp at Chester’s Subaru Park for the FIFA World Cup. As a tune-up ahead of the tournament, they’ll play the Philadelphia Union’s second team Monday night.
Philly’s Major League Soccer team announced Wednesday that Côte d’Ivoire — also nicknamed “Les Éléphants” — will face the Union II in a scrimmage on Monday, June 8 at 7 p.m. and also hold a community training session on Friday, June 12 at 6:30 p.m. Both events are free and tickets can be claimed on the Union’s website.
The community training session precedes the U.S. national team’s first game of the tournament on that day, against Paraguay in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. The Union are hosting a free watch party for that game at its Union Yards event space which you can grab tickets for here.
Union president Tim McDermott called the events a “meaningful moment” for the team, the city of Chester and the region.
“As one of the world’s top national teams prepares for the FIFA World Cup 2026, we’re proud to play a role in that journey and create exceptional opportunities for supporters to experience the game at its highest level,” he said.
Ivory Coast’s players and delegation are set to arrive in the U.S. on Saturday and will be staying at a hotel in Wilmington. The team chose Chester and Delaware as its base camp site back in February.
Being close to Philadelphia makes sense for the Ivory Coast since they play two of their three group stage matches at Lincoln Financial Field, which is now temporarily labeled “Philadelphia Stadium”: the first against Ecuador in the stadium’s opening game on June 14 — two days after the community training session — and then against Curaçao on June 25. The team’s non-Philly game is against Germany in Toronto on June 20.
The World Cup begins on June 11, and Philly is hosting six of the 104 games, including a round of 16 knockout game on the Fourth of July.
Ivory Coast is the only team with its base camp in the Philadelphia region and the Union is one of 12 Major League Soccer teams hosting World Cup teams this summer. Four teams have chosen base camp sites in New Jersey: Brazil at the New York Red Bulls facility in Morris Township, Haiti at Stockton University, Morocco at the Pringry School in Basking Ridge and Senegal at Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus.
Les Éléphants has been a continental powerhouse with three Africa Cup of Nations championship wins, most recently in 2023. The team reached the quarterfinals in this year’s cup, losing to the eventual fourth-placed team Egypt. The team is currently ranked 34th in FIFA’s global rankings.
The nation first qualified for the World Cup in 2006. This summer’s tournament will be its fourth appearance, and the first time back after failing to qualify for the last two iterations in 2018 and 2022. The team’s best finish was 17th place in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. “Les Éléphants” have yet to progress past the group stage of the tournament.
