Two United States (US) men\u2019s national team staff members were suspended by FIFA for the team\u2019s World Cup round of 16 match against Belgium on Monday.<\/p>\n
Team manager Sam Zapatka and US Soccer Federation vice president of security Frank Pannell weren\u2019t allowed at the match, multiple media outlets reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
FIFA reportedly handed out the suspensions pregame on Monday without specifying an exact reason.<\/p>\n
The US Soccer Federation also didn\u2019t address the cause behind the punishment, though it did say it was unrelated to the federation\u2019s work that resulted in Folarin Balogun\u2019s red-card suspension getting pushed back.<\/p>\n
According to ESPN, the two were sanctioned regarding a violation of FIFA match protocols as well as people having access to areas where they shouldn\u2019t have been. Per the report, no physical dispute occurred.<\/p>\n
Balogun started on Monday, a match the US lost 4-1 to Belgium.<\/p>\n
Front Office Sports reported that the cause of the two suspensions might have been Balogun coming back onto the field on July 1 to celebrate the United States\u2019 2-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif.<\/p>\n
Balogun was sent off for a bad tackle in the second half of the Bosnia game, and players who receive a red card are not allowed to return to the pitch during or after that contest.<\/p>\n
Per multiple media outlets, Zapatka joined US Soccer in 2015 and has been in his current job since 2020.<\/p>\n
In an April article, Seton Hall University newspaper The Setonian wrote that Pannell previously worked for the Secret Service, the CIA and in the private sector.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21069,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-39113","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Balogun was sent off for a bad tackle in the second half of the Bosnia game.","published_date":"","news_description":"Balogun was sent off for a bad tackle in the second half of the Bosnia game.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39114,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39113\/revisions\/39114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=39113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}