England using military technology to help Thomas Tuchel win the World Cup

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Martin Macdonald | Writer

Content writer covering football, formula 1 and movies

Paranoid England have set up advanced security protocols for their training camp in North America for the 2026 World Cup.

The Three Lions squad, led by Thomas Tuchel, will soon travel to their training camp in Kansas City and the German is apparently concerned that rival nations may want to have a peek at his coaching methods and how England intend to set-up during the World Cup.

With that in mind, there will now be several high-tech security protocols in place to stop interference from the outside world.

"Hunter-catcher" drones, sometimes used by the military, guns with jamming signals and other anti-spying tech will be used. According to the Sun, the FBI are concerned that some individuals may be using drones to spy on footballers.

Previous World Cups have had issues with spying, with accusations of underhand tactics surfacing on multiple occasions. At the 2018 tournament in Russia, Sweden were forced to apologise after being caught spying on South Korea’s training sessions. Meanwhile, during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, France raised concerns over potential surveillance when drones were spotted hovering above their training ground.

Kansas City police are aiming to prevent similar threats England's 2026 World Cup camp by deploying “hunter-catcher” drones, designed to take to the skies and capture hostile drones using nets.

Tom Adams, a former FBI anti-drone specialist, said drones have become a “weapon of choice” due to their low cost and ability to evade traditional security systems.

Now overseeing protective measures at the World Cup base, Adams added: “In these situations, you can’t immediately determine the intent behind a drone — whether it’s malicious or someone attempting to make a political statement. It’s a highly dynamic and challenging aspect of modern security

“You could have to make a decision in seconds. Now we have to add the sportsmanship threat to the drones — we wouldn’t have thought of that initially.”

Similar tech was used by Adams before to protect the skies at the Super Bowl.

He said: “We will have drone detection technology to detect drones in and around the airspace of a protected venue, using radar and cameras and other technology.

“Then there is defeat technology, which might be a hunter-catcher drone that flies up and captures the drone in a net. A non-kinetic option could be radio-frequency jamming, or some technologies can take over a drone and make it land in a specific location."

Tuchel himself confirmed the security measures for throughout the tournament after revealing his 26-man World Cup squad.

"We will have security there and we will build a bit of protection," he said.

"Because, of course, it’s crucial if you train the day before a game and you do your team build-ups, you do your set-pieces, you finalise penalties … you don’t want the opponent to know. It just gives you a crucial advantage.

"So we’re trying to be as private as possible”.

England are sharing their base in Kansas City with the Netherlands, Algeria and Argentina.