The United Kingdom's Football Policing Unit will deploy three officers to the United States to accompany England fans at the 2026 World Cup after American authorities declined to fund a larger contingent. The deployment is 37 spotters fewer than the UK sent to the 2024 European Championship in Germany, where the host country covered the costs.

National football lead Chief Constable Mark Roberts said the reduced numbers reflected the position taken by U.S. authorities. "In Germany we sent 40, because that was the ask of the Germans and they funded it," he said. "In this case the Americans are not are sold on the idea of the mobile delegations. They're not funding it, so it'll be a smaller deployment."

Roberts said an ideal UK police delegation at each match would include two officers at the stadium, two in the city centre and two at transport hubs, with between six and ten officers considered the optimal number on the ground. Six spotters were deployed at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and 16 at the World Cup in Qatar.

"We would like more [officers]," he said. "If there was more there we could try and reduce the risk and make it a bit easier for everyone, but it is what it is and we'll clearly do the best we can with the resources we deploy."

He said the smaller team would constrain operations across multiple sites. "But if we want to monitor fans leaving the city centre and then be there to receive them at the ground, you can't be in two places at once. So it limits our ability to do that," he said. He added: "We're not criticising that, it's their operation, they'll police it. We see the benefit of spotters, as I think most of the European countries do, because it gives us the opportunity to have a greater coverage of really good experienced people who will liaise with the supporters and the FA."

He said briefing American forces was a central purpose of the deployment. "I think one of the key reasons we're so keen to send a team out there is that it gives us the opportunity to brief local law enforcement," he said. "There are 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the US, so they will have had different exposure to crowds managing things." He said: "The behaviour of our fans in tournaments over recent years has been pretty well exemplary, so we start from a good place." He also said: "We know fan behaviour. The States isn't necessarily a football fan culture in the same way. It's very different."

On Thursday, the UK Football Policing Unit said between 12,000 and 15,000 England fans would attend each of England's three group matches in Dallas, Boston and New Jersey, including 3,000 to 4,000 members of the official England Supporters Club at each game.

Thomas Concannon, leader of the Football Supporters' Association England fan group, said the figures were lower than anticipated. "We probably would have wanted that to be a bit higher," he said. "It feels like those numbers are a little bit disappointing given the excitement that was building up. We thought there would be more…but given the costs it's still a brilliant number of fans that have dedicated themselves to go." He pointed to the expense of travel and tickets: "When you look at the sheer cost of it there will have been a lot of people priced out of it. We're really disappointed that the cost of attending games is as high as it is."