For a few weeks, guests at Chateau de Pizay had an extra rule to follow. The 11th-century estate, deep in French wine country, was serving as the US team's 1998 World Cup base and players received instructions that went beyond how to navigate their way out of Group F. Specifically? Don't venture into the tree line behind the chateau.'They told us there's an [army] regiment sleeping there – as long as we're at the World Cup,' ex-USA striker Brian McBride recalls. 'We just thought: "Oh well, we're really secure,"' McBride tells the Daily Mail.It wasn't until years later that McBride heard something about a World Cup security threat. 'We didn't know exactly what it was,' the 53-year-old says. He's not alone.Even now, nearly three decades on, most people know only fragments of the truth. Some players remained oblivious until the Daily Mail peeled back the curtain for them on the Al-Qaeda terror plot that nearly caused bloodshed on the pitch and sought to cause a 'nuclear holocaust to rival Chernobyl' in western Europe.It was masterminded by Osama Bin Laden and came perilously close to going as planned. His targets? The England team, the USA team, the US Embassy in Paris, the US consulate in Marseille… and a $4.1billion nuclear power plant in western France. 'I had no clue', ex-USA defender Marcelo Balboa says.The plan, outlined in a little-known 2002 book, 'Terror on the Pitch,' involved terrorists from Algeria's Al-Qaeda-affiliated Armed Islamic Group (GIA), sleeper cells and a series of coordinated attacks planned for June 15, 1998: David Beckham was among the targets of Osama Bin Laden's 1998 World Cup plot The USA team including Brian McBride, left, stayed at Chateau de Pizay during the tournament