NICE, France – The Canadian national women’s soccer team head coach told an external human resources consultant who works with Canada Soccer in March that spying on opponents is something the team has “always done” and it was “the difference between winning and losing”.
Bev Priestman’s emailed comments came after a team’s performance analyst told her he was uncomfortable with spying for “moral and reputational reasons”. The coach wrote to the consultant that same day espionage is “something the analyst has always done and I know there is a whole operation on the men’s side with regards to it.”
That information was included in a document posted on FIFA’s website Wednesday supporting the world body’s reasoning behind the six-point penalty levied to the Canadian team during the group stage of the Olympic tournament, the one-year suspensions to Priestman and staffers Joey Lombardi and Jasmine Mander and a CAD $313,000 fine.
Canada’s appeal to reduce the six-point penalty was dismissed by the Court for Arbitration for Sport’s ad hoc division hours before their do-or-die group stage finale against Colombia Wednesday in Nice. FIFA detailed three instances of Canada Soccer being informed of the prohibition of illegal spying at the Olympic tournament and that Lombardi confessed to flying the drone twice over New Zealand practices.
FIFA wrote that the use of prohibited technology in this way results in negative publicity, damage to the sport’s reputation and gives rise to the perception soccer is not sufficiently regulated or safe, which erodes the public trust. The chair of the FIFA appeals committee felt the penalties would serve as a “necessary deterrent” for all nations who would think about such unacceptable conduct and that it would prevent Canada Soccer from ever doing it again.
Canada Soccer said in a statement it was “disappointed with the appeal decision and continue to believe its players should not have been unnecessarily punished for actions that were not their own”. The national organizing body committed last week to an independent external review and has retained independent workplace investigation expert Sonia Regenbogen of Mathews, Dinsdale & Clark, LLP to commence focusing on the Olympic Games incident.
The scandal started after New Zealand complained about a drone being flown over a practice session July 22 at the Auguste Dury training field in Saint-Etienne. After Lombardi was arrested, police found footage of a practice from two days earlier that the analyst told an officer and FIFA he didn’t share because it was judged to be of poor quality.
The coach of Ontario’s National Development Centre team was charged with flying an unmanned aircraft in restricted space and was given an eight-month suspended sentence, according to The Globe and Mail.
Canada Soccer forwarded those emails to FIFA and also offered it believes the spying program began with former women’s and men’s national team coach John Herdman. Priestman, who is from the same English town as him, worked as his technical assistant and assistant coach for five years.
Herdman discussed the scandal last week, agreed to co-operate with Canada Soccer’s independent investigation and told the media his teams never spied on competitors at the Olympics or World Cup.
Priestman offered an apology Sunday through her lawyer and also agreed to cooperate with the investigation. But the federal government also announced it wants to withhold some Canada Soccer funding related to the three suspended coaches’ pay through Sport Canada.
Even with the penalty, Canada’s women’s team advanced to the Olympic quarterfinal with a 1-0 win over Colombia Wednesday in Nice. But it is going to be extremely difficult to put this scandal behind them.
FIFA concluded that it expects Canada Soccer to provide it with the results of its third-party investigation at its conclusion in order for the organization to be able to assess and decide whether further action “is necessary and appropriate”.
That means a second look at Canada’s gold medal performance in Tokyo is not out of the question if drone usage was in play.