Canadian soccer chiefs on Friday pleaded with FIFA not to deduct points from their women’s Olympic football team as a drone-spying scandal led to head coach Bev Priestman being dramatically kicked out of the Paris Games.
Canada Soccer chief executive Kevin Blue said Canadian players had not seen any footage produced by the drone used to spy on a New Zealand training session and should not be punished by global governing body FIFA.
Reigning Olympic champions Canada defeated New Zealand 2-1 in their opening match of the women’s football tournament on Thursday despite the turmoil around the squad. Canada Soccer announced early on Friday that English coach Priestman had been suspended with immediate effect after initial investigations into the scandal revealed drone-spying that pre-dated the Paris Olympics.
Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive David Shoemaker said separately on Friday that Canada’s victory at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics might also have been stained by spying tactics.
Priestman’s departure came a day after assistant coach Jasmine Mander and analyst Joey Lombardi were also sent home for their roles in the scandal.
Blue told reporters there had been “frankly unacceptable shortcomings of ethical incidents” by members of the Canadian coaching team.
However, he pleaded with FIFA not to slap Canada with a points deduction, which could potentially blow a hole in the defence of their Olympic crown.
“The players themselves have not been involved in any unethical behaviour,” Blue said. “And frankly we ask FIFA to take that into consideration if contemplating any further sanctions.
“Specifically we do not feel that a deduction of points in this tournament would be fair to our players.”
Blue said preliminary investigations had unearthed indications of what appeared to be “systemic ethical shortcomings” but was unable to clarify how long Canada’s coaching staff had been using drones to spy on rival training sessions.
“I received new internal information from internal sources that gave me reason to think further about the potential that this type of behaviour was systemic,” Blue said. “Concrete information I received on Friday made me consider the possibility that this matter is much more extensive.”
Asked if the tactic had been used at last year’s Women’s World Cup, at which Canada failed to progress from the group stage, Blue said he was unable to say at this stage.
“This is all happening in real time,” he said. But Canada Olympic chief Shoemaker said “there now appears to be information” that suggested illegal drone spying may have been used in Canada’s upset gold medal in Tokyo three years ago. “It makes me ill,” Shoemaker said. “It makes me sick to my stomach to think that there could be something that calls into question one of my favourite Olympic moments in history - that women’s team winning that gold medal against all odds in those Covid restrictions.”
Canada Soccer chief Blue was adamant that none of Canada’s players had access to the footage obtained in France.
“I am stating right now that the team has not seen any of that footage,” he said.
Canada’s players had insisted they were innocent of wrongdoing after their opening victory over the New Zealanders.
“There was a lot of emotion, frustration and humiliation because as a player, it doesn’t reflect our values and what we want to represent as competitors at the Olympics,” defender Vanessa Gilles said.
“The Games represent fair play. As Canadians, these are not our values or those of our country. We are not cheats. It was very hard but we knew how to be united.”
