NICE, France – This last week-and-a-half of drone scandal and sanctions in France has felt like years for Vanessa Gilles.
Still, she keeps finding ways to keep the Canadian women’s soccer team alive and kicking at the Olympics. The centre back scored her second straight game winner with a well-timed header off a Jessie Fleming free kick in the 61st minute to beat Colombia 1-0 Wednesday at Allianz Riveria stadium in steamy Nice.
The defending champs (3-0) will take on world No. 4 ranked Germany (2-1) in a quarterfinal match Saturday in Marseille.
“A lot has been taken away from us as players that have nothing to do with any of the actions that we’ve been talking about,” Gilles, the 28-year-old from Ottawa, said. “The one thing in our grasp is the pitch. That’s something they can’t take away from us – as much as they tried. Sticking together and knowing (what) we can control (and) if we go on believing that, the world’s our oyster.”
The match was played about seven hours after Canada’s appeal to reduce FIFA’s six-point group stage penalty for illegal drone spying was dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ad hoc division in Paris. At the same time, the FIFA world body released a damning report detailing how suspended Canadian head coach Bev Priestman had emailed a Canada Soccer human resources consultant that spying “was always done” by the top 10 teams in the world and it was “the difference between winning and losing”.
Canada joined Spain and the U.S. as the only teams with three wins but finished with just three points because of the upheld penalty. That meant scraping into second place behind group winner France (2-1), who knocked off New Zealand in their finale.
“We still believe the sanction was unjust, unfair and unprecedented,” Gilles said. “We didn’t gain any advantage in any of the games moving forward and we showed that. We were able to win all three without a head coach (and) without any sort of advantage. It’s a lot of uncontrollable and incomprehension. We really don’t understand. We haven’t got any explanation as to why six points. The appeal, as well, we haven’t been given any (reasoning).”
Wait till they read FIFA’s latest report.
Gilles scored the winner in the 102nd minute against France Sunday when the impact of the sanction was still raw. The team learned about the appeal decision through a group text and was gutted again, but it wasn’t the same sort of shock.
“We felt it was out of our control,” Fleming, the Canadian captain, said. “Of course, we had our hopes up a bit. But considering the events of the last week, we weren’t getting our hopes up too much.”
They achieved their goal of getting through into the knockout stage – something they failed to do at the women’s World Cup last year. They did it by playing back-to-back win-or-go-home games.
“It definitely was the most unique group stage I’ve ever played in,” Fleming said. “We handled it really well. It was a tough situation and we got out of it. I’m just proud of the team. These are the games our players love to play in and we’re just really excited to play them (for another chance at a medal).”
FIFA expects to read the report of Canada Soccer’s external investigation into the spying controversy when it is completed and, of course, reserves the right to look at more penalties down the road. But Gilles thinks that the players have been punished enough for three coaches being implicated in using drones during New Zealand training sessions.
“That was really not the decision we thought it would go through given all the proof we had no knowledge and gained no knowledge,” Gilles said. “FIFA decided on something and moving forward, they set an example and teams that get caught doing the same will get deducted 66 per cent of their points or more.
“The example is set and there’s no excuse for FIFA to be giving any other sanctions (to Canada) in that.”
The Canadians caught a couple of breaks heading into the contest. Colombia’s Mayra Ramirez, a Chelsea striker, served the final of her two-game suspension for a late red card in the opener against France while Catalina Usme, who scored in the opener, was nursing an injury suffered in pre-game warmup.
Canadian striker Evelyne Viens called every day at these Olympics a roller coaster of emotion and bashed the playing surface in Nice.
“We never know what to expect,” the 27-year-old Quebecker said. “We have so many curve balls coming at us. Six points down, we come to this field and sorry, this field was terrible. It was bouncy, probably the worst field we played on and we find a way to shrug.
“It’s been a week.”
So what was learned through this experience so far?
Nothing new, according to Viens.
“I just know this team is special and I’m proud to be part of it,” she said.
It has felt at times like the Canadians are part of a ‘Ted Lasso’ script.
“It would’ve been nice to have Ted Lasso around this week,” Gilles said. “Andy (stand-in coach Andy Spence) does have sort of a humour (like the main character of the fictitious Apple TV+ soccer hit). Ted always says to believe till the end and we’ll be keeping that moving forward.”