A drone controlled by an unidentified party flew over the U.S. men’s national team training session on Tuesday in St. Louis, where the group is preparing for Wednesday’s Concacaf Gold Cup semifinal against Guatemala.
Members of U.S. Soccer’s staff are in the process of identifying the drone, according to ESPN. The USMNT had three drones of their own to record their training session but the fourth drone came as a surprise, later landing outside the fenced perimeter and near a broadcast compound at the training site.
It was not the only disruption during the USMNT’s training session on Tuesday, with a group of people reportedly being caught filming the team before being asked to stop. It is currently unclear if the two incidents are related.
The USMNT will face Guatemala at St. Louis’ Energizer Park in the Gold Cup semifinals on Wednesday, targeting their first appearance in the final since winning the competition in 2021. Guatemala, meanwhile, will play their first Gold Cup semifinal since 1996 and hope to reach the final for the first time in the team’s history.
Drones, a surprise Concacaf staple
While teams are more likely than they once were to use drones to record their own training sessions, there have been stories of teams from North America using drones to spy on their opponents.
The most notable among them is the Canada drone scandal that rocked the 2024 Olympics, which later led FIFA to dock the women’s national team six points and resulted in then-head coach Bev Priestman being fired from her post. The team had used drones to watch opponents’ training sessions for years, per reports, in a practice introduced by John Herdman, formerly the head coach of both Canada’s women’s and men’s national teams from 2011 to 2018. According to TSN, Herdman was heard discussing the practice as early as 2016 at the Concacaf U-17 Women’s Championship.
Herdman received a written admonishment in May following a disciplinary hearing in front of an independent commission.
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