United States men’s national team administrator Sam Zapatka arrived in Doha, Qatar on Friday, Jan. 3 in preparation for January training camp.
It was his first trip on the job.
U.S. Soccer’s standard procedure on training trips abroad is to send an advance team two days prior to the team’s arrival to get connected with local officials and set up the training grounds.
For the 2020 January training camp, that team consisted of three staff members: Zapatka, U.S. Soccer’s veteran manager director of administration Tom King and team equipment manager Kyle Robertson.
On the 13-hour flight from Chicago to Qatar, Zapatka, King and Robertson heard the news quickly spreading across the world: a United States drone strike in Iraq killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, among others.