RENTON — In a few weeks, the fields of the Virginia Mason Athletic Center will be filled with tackling dummies, blocking sleds and massive 300-pound individuals shoving one another around as fans watch from the berm.
For the past week, those same fields have been lined for soccer, with goals pulled out of storage, auxiliary locker rooms readied, and an Italian flavor added to the football centric building.
Inter Milan wrapped up a week using the Seahawks training facility as its temporary home on Tuesday with a final training session before concluding the FIFA Club World Cup group stage on Wednesday night against Argentine powerhouse River Plate at Lumen Field.
The legendary Italian side and runners-up in this year’s UEFA Champions League turned the football fields of the Seahawks home into the soccer fields of the Nerazzurri for the past week, choosing to make the Seahawks facility their training base after concluding their games in Los Angeles.
VMAC looks a little different right now as the training base for Inter Milan. pic.twitter.com/BedQf3dnhf
— Tim Booth (@ByTimBooth) June 24, 2025
Making that happen is a process that started roughly six months ago and brought a major international soccer club back to the shore of Lake Washington for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a training center that provides us with everything we need, so it’s really great,” Inter Milan’s Matteo Darmian said before Tuesday’s training session.
The first communication between the franchises came shortly after the first of the year. Inter Milan began the tourney in Los Angeles and set itself up at UCLA to begin with, but with the final two group games in Seattle, they wanted a set location to be able to set up for the better part of a week.
River Plate made arrangements with the Sounders to use their training facility just down the road in Renton, leaving the Seahawks as the next obvious option.
“Our facility over the last 17 years, we’ve hosted a variety of international soccer clubs as they’ve played international friendlies at Lumen Field, and so I think we have a great reputation for, obviously, having a first class facility and take great care of the teams when they are here,” said Seahawks vice president of finance Peter Fonfara, who also overseas operations at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center.
For the Seahawks, there aren’t major operational changes needed. Inter Milan used an auxiliary locker room and athletic training facilities in the building, had full access to the weight room and of course, the practice fields.
Other than lining the fields for soccer, the only significant change was making sure the grass was watered right before the start of practice.
“When it came down to it, the stars aligned. It worked well for our football schedule. It worked well for our overall kind of facility schedule as well,” Fonfara said. “They came on in and they’re really doing what they need to do on the day-to-day basis to prepare for the matches. And we’ve got people assisting them, kind of making sure if there’s anything that they need in their areas.”
This isn’t a first for the Seahawks serving as the home to an international soccer team, but it’s been a while. The facility played host to Chelsea, Manchester United, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur from 2009 to 2016 when the clubs played a series of friendlies in Seattle, mostly against the Sounders.
The last club to borrow the Seahawks space before this past week was Borussia Dortmund before a midseason friendly against the Sounders in 2019.
Inter Milan’s arrival provided a little taste of having soccer back around the building, but for now, that’s it. The Seahawks aren’t likely to be a practice facility during the FIFA Men’s World Cup next year because of their own use of the building for their offseason program.
As of now, the only two locations in the state being considered for potential base camps are the Sounders facility in Renton and Gonzaga University in Spokane. Both the University of Washington and Seattle U are expected to be practice fields for teams coming into Seattle.
Fonfara also highlighted the opportunity for the business and operations sides of the two organizations to chat and see how things are done on different continents in different areas of sport.
“It’s always fun, just from the opportunities for knowledge on both sides,” Fonfara said.
Inter Milan (1-1-0) vs. River Plate (1-1-0)
Time/place: 6 p.m., PT Wednesday at Lumen Field.
TV: TNT and DAZN.com
Series history: First meeting
Win and advance … or just scoreboard watch
It’s a precarious spot for both River Plate and Inter Milan. The winner is guaranteed a spot in the knockout round of the tournament as the group winner.
Beyond that, there’s a whole bunch of uncertainty as a draw could leave one of the teams out of the tournament depending on what happens at the Rose Bowl between Monterrey and Urawa Red Diamonds.
There are a whole bunch of tiebreakers that could come into play depending on the final scores of the two matches if River and Inter play to a draw and Monterrey wins by a certain margin over Urawa. It could potentially come down to a random draw.
However it plays out, all three clubs are likely to be doing a fair bit of watching the scoreboard as the final minutes are ticking away both at Lumen and the Rose Bowl.
“The rules are the rules,” River Plate coach Marcelo Gallardo said via an interpreter. “We knew them beforehand. You might agree or disagree, but this is a FIFA tournament and has these rules which are what they are,”
Tim Booth: Tim Booth covers the Kraken and other sports for The Seattle Times. Email him at tbooth@seattletimes.com. On Twitter: @ByTimBooth.