England players were appearing at a community event in Kansas City on Saturday evening when urgent weather warnings sounded. The open training session was ended prematurely as a tornado warning was issued.
Severe Weather Disrupts England's World Cup Preparations
The Three Lions have relocated to Kansas City after their early camp in Miami. However, preparations for their first game with Croatia were impacted by the severe weather warning. Thomas Tuchel's players had an open training session before notification was sent to everyone in the local area.
The notification read: “Critical. Imminent Threat Alert. National Weather Service: SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 9:00 PM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE 80 mph winds. Take shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. For your protection, move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building. A Tornado Watch remains in effect until 1100 PM CDT for northeastern and east central Kansas…and west central Missouri.”
Wails heard across the city heralded a chilling warning to locals and World Cup tourists alike: duck for cover, with dangerous and wild weather imminent. Fans that may have hoped to spend their Saturday at the FIFA Fan Festival in Kansas City had their plans cut short, with the venue closed by 5pm after warnings of severe winds of up to 80 mph coming through from America's weather bureau.
England will train as normal at Swope Soccer Village today, but their schedule moved from the morning to the late afternoon. The whole metro city area remained under a tornado watch warning until 11pm local time, but for football fans the damage had already been done. Mass power outages interrupted streams of the Scotland game and festivities came to abrupt ends across the state capital of Missouri, with tourists and locals alike told to shelter in place.
The US National Weather Service has now confirmed two tornadoes touched down in the Kansas City area by just before 9pm, with more than 68,000 homes now without power as a result. First responders are now racing to make neighbourhoods safe with reports of downed power lines and fallen trees across the city.
That resulted in screenings of Scotland's World Cup opener against Haiti being called off. John McGinn scored the only goal of the game as the Tartan Army toasted their first victory in the tournament for 36 years. Fox's broadcast of the game saw the match pushed to a small panel on the screen as an urgent weather notice was issued.
Scotland's historic win was missed by some thanks to inclement weather. The weather is just the latest disruption to a so-far bumpy start to the 2026 FIFA World Cup for England, with the Three Lions finding themselves to be the victims of theft last Friday. Their base was raided of its training equipment, including boots and official tournament balls, with the stolen goods since recovered. Tuchel's England will open their World Cup campaign on Wednesday with a game against Croatia in Texas, before facing off against Ghana and Panama in the Group L schedule.
