FIFA has announced a six-point penalty for Canada’s Olympic women’s team amid an ongoing scandal over the usage of drones to spy on opponents.
In addition, head coach Bev Priestman and assistants Joseph Lombardi and Jasmine Mander were all hit with one-year bans.
The scandal exploded into view this week when the New Zealand Olympic committee publicly accused Canada of using a drone to spy on a training session.
In response, Canada apologized and announced that Lombardi and Mander had been sent home for their role in the spying. On Thursday, Priestman was also sent home after she was suspended by Canada Soccer.
Canada won its Olympics opener 2-1 over New Zealand on Thursday, but the defending gold medalist now faces a difficult path to advancement after the six-point penalty.
Canada now sits with minus-3 points after one game, making three points the maximum the team will be able to achieve. Wins over France and Colombia are likely required to give the team a chance.
A ‘systemic’ problem
Though the incident at the Olympics was the catalyst for the scandal, the issue of Canadian teams spying on opponents with drones is much more widespread then one tournament — or one team.
On a call with media on Friday, Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said that using drones to illegally spy on opponents has been “systemic.”
“The more I learn about this specific matter, the more concerned I get about a potential long-term, deeply embedded systemic culture of this type of thing occurring, which is obviously completely unacceptable,” Blue said.
Blue also said that Canada’s men’s team attempted to spy on opponents during the Copa América this summer, though he insisted that head coach Jesse Marsch was unaware until after the fact.
A bombshell report from TSN this week said that Canada’s women’s and men’s national teams have routinely been spying on opponents for years.
Another report from TSN said that in 2021, then-men’s national team head coach John Herdman showed his team illegally obtained footage of a Honduras training session prior to a World Cup qualifier.
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