Canada’s Olympic soccer spying scandal explained: What we know, who’s involved and what's next (2024)

Canada’s women’s soccer team entered the Olympics as the reigning gold medalist and the No. 8 team in the world.

Yet its Paris Games began with an accusation of spying on New Zealand, a team ranked 28th that has won only two Olympic matches in its history.

Soccer’s world governing body FIFA then handed Canada coach Bev Priestman a one-year suspension, deducted six points from the team’s Olympic group-stage total and issued a fine. Canada’s appeal against the points deduction was unsuccessful.

How did we get here? Here’s what we know so far…

How did this start?

New Zealand team staff members noticed a drone flying above their practice in Saint-Étienne, France, on Monday and notified police. Law enforcement tracked the drone back to its operator, Joseph Lombardi, an “unaccredited analyst” with the Canadian women’s team, the COC said.

The “unaccredited analyst” distinction is only important from an Olympics perspective, with the number of accreditations limited for national teams to use. Lombardi is listed on Canada Soccer’s staff as the National Development Centre Ontario and Women’s U-20 Director.

The Canadian Olympic Committee said Wednesday that a separate drone incident at New Zealand training — on July 19 — had come to light. The COC confirmed Lombardi used a drone “to record the New Zealand women’s football team during practice.”

The COC apologized to New Zealand’s players, federation and the International Olympic Committee, saying it was “shocked and disappointed.”

Canada removed Priestman from the team for the rest of the Olympics on Friday morning after learning of drone use against opponents that predates the Summer Games.

“Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” Canada Soccer CEO and general secretary Kevin Blue said in a statement. “In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend women’s national soccer team head coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review.”

Timeline of events

The New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) issued a complaint Monday about a drone being flown over its women’s soccer team’s practice. Police tracked the drone back to a staffer with the Canadian women’s soccer team, and fallout of the incident has been fast.

On Tuesday, Priestman said she would remove herself from managing the team during Thursday’s game against New Zealand, while COC CEO and secretary general David Shoemaker clarified Wednesday that she would remain in her role as coach for the rest of the tournament.

Later Wednesday, FIFA confirmed its disciplinary committee had opened investigation proceedings, as incidents represented a potential breach of FIFA and Olympic football’s fair play regulations. The IOC previously said it “welcomes the actions” the COC took earlier in the week following the initial drone complaint, which included the Canada Soccer staff undergoing “mandatory ethics training.”

On Thursday, Canada beat New Zealand 2-1 in its opening Olympic game.

On Friday, Canada Soccer CEO and general secretary Kevin Blue addressed reporters to provide an update on further actions taken by the federation. Blue revealed that based on his preliminary conversations and investigations, he was not facing an isolated incident but a much larger pattern that extends across both the women’s and men’s national teams.

On Saturday, Canada was docked six pointsfrom the team’sOlympic group stage total and issued a fine, while Priestman was suspended for football for a year.

On Sunday, Canada won again, beating host France 2-1. Canada sports minister Carla Qualtrough said the government is “withholding funding relating to the suspended Canada Soccer officials for the duration of their FIFA suspension.”

On Monday, Canada appealed the points deduction to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and on Wednesday, sport’s highest court announced it had upheld the decision, just eight hours before Canada’s final Olympic group game against Colombia.

Does this go beyond the Olympics?

On Friday, Blue addressed reporters to provide an update on further actions taken by the federation. While an update on Priestman’s status was expected, instead Blue revealed that based on his preliminary conversations and investigation so far, he was not facing an isolated incident but a much larger pattern that extends across both the women’s and men’s national teams.

“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,” he said.

Notably, Blue said that men’s national team coach Jesse Marsch was made aware of an attempted use of a drone at Copa America after the fact, and that Marsch denounced its use to his coaching staff.

“My current understanding is that the fact pattern of that instance is significantly different than what occurred here, especially as it relates to the potential impact on competitive integrity,” Blue said.

Canada Soccer will undergo its own investigation into the use of drones and surveillance across the entire program, though Blue did not have a timeline for the investigation — or for any potential outcome for WNT head coach Bev Priestman. Ahead of the call, Canada removed Priestman from the team for the rest of the Olympics.

“Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” Blue said in a statement. “In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend women’s national soccer team head coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review.”

It also emerged Canada used a staffer to observe a United States men’s training session ahead of a scrimmage in January 2021, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation.The friendly match contained only 12 senior U.S. players — all fromMLSteams — and Under-23s.

Then on Wednesday, FIFA published evidence which “shows an analyst resisting a request from Ms Priestman to engage in flying drones for ‘scouting purposes'”. This, the FIFA report added, “call[ed] into question whether this practice had been systemically embedded in the culture of the women’s national team”.

The email exchange from March 20, 2024, showed an analyst, whose name has been redacted, writing to Priestman to say: “In terms of the ‘spying’ conversation, I came off the meeting with clarity that you understood my reasons for me being unwilling to do this moving forward”.

On the same day, Priestman emailed the human resources department for advice. She wrote: “It’s something the analyst has always done and I know there is a whole operation on the Men’s side with regards to it.”

How does this affect the players at the Olympics?

Blue said multiple times on the call that he felt the players on Canada’s WNT should not be punished as they had no role in the use of a drone by Canada’s technical staff.

“Specifically, we do not feel that a deduction of points in this tournament would be fair to our players. particularly in light of the significant and immediate steps we’ve taken to address the situation,” Blue said.

Those hopes were dashed Saturday when FIFA issued its announcement about the six-point deduction, which severely hurts the team’s chances of a second gold medal. There was another blow then Canada’s CAS appeal failed on Wednesday.

While the players in France have expressed their own frustrations with the situation, Canada’s Olympic win in Tokyo has now also been called into question.

Stephanie Labbé, Canada’s starting goalkeeper during the team’s 2020 Olympic gold medal run, defended herself and her play Friday, saying her success came from studying game tape and making “educated guesses”.

if anyone wants to speak about pks. i studied HARD the night before every match. Watched video of players taking pks in national team and club games. Made my own educated guesses based on that info. NO DRONE FOOTAGE was watched. Do not confuse great goalkeeping with cheating.

— Stephanie Labbé (@stephlabbe1) July 26, 2024

Ultimately, while players were likely entirely unaware of this systemic use of surveillance, they unwittingly benefited from it — and it’s the same reason why FIFA is investigating Canada on fair play grounds.

It was unfair to Canada’s players if they received an advantage from the program, and it was unfair to their opponents at the same time. The players are not at fault, but they have been drawn into this either way.

Who was punished and how?

In addition to Priestman, Lombardi and Jasmine Mander, an assistant coach who oversees Lombardi, were sent home from the Olympics.

Without naming him, a Saint-Étienne prosecutor said a 43-year-old Canadian man received an eight-month suspended sentence in French court for filming the two training sessions, according to the Associated Press.

On Wednesday, COC CEO David Shoemaker said that they had offered legal support and consular services to both Lombardi and Mander, as well as offering mental health support to the entirety of Canada’s Olympic delegation.

Priestman had said Tuesday she would remove herself from managing the team during Thursday’s game against New Zealand, while Shoemaker clarified Wednesday that she would remain in her role as coach for the rest of the tournament.

“We thought about all repercussions for Bev,” Shoemaker said ahead of Friday’s decision. “At the end of the day, the drone footage related to the filming of two New Zealand practices remained in the hands of the pilot of the drone.”

“I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program,” Priestman said before her removal. “Accordingly, to emphasize our team’s commitment to integrity, I have decided to voluntarily withdraw from coaching the match on Thursday. In the spirit of accountability, I do this with the interests of both teams in mind and to ensure everyone feels that the sportsmanship of this game is upheld.”

The decision was then taken out of Priestman’s hands when FIFA gave her a one-year ban.

Who is Bev Priestman?

The 37-year-old has been with Canada Soccer as the women’s national team head coach since October 2020, departing her previous role as an assistant coach with England. She guided Canada to their gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. The team underperformed at the 2023 World Cup, exiting in the group stage.

Earlier this year, she signed a contract extension with Canada Soccer to keep her in the role through the 2027 World Cup.

Who are Jesse Marsch and John Herdman?

Marsch has been the coach of Canada’s men’s team since May, becoming the first American to coach Canada. He oversaw the team during the 2024 Copa América, during which Canada advanced out of Group A and reached the semifinals, where they fell to eventual champion Argentina. Marsch has been linked to the open coach job for the U.S., but said he had no interest.

John Herdman was both Priestman’s and Marsch’s predecessor, as Herdman coached Canada’s women’s team from 2011 to 2018 and then coached the men’s team from 2018 to 2023. The women’s team was coached from 2018 to 2020 by Kenneth Heiner-Møller, another assistant to Herdman, before Priestman was hired.

Herdman also served as men’s national director starting in 2021 and led the men’s team to its first World Cup in 36 years in 2022.

Herdman’s connection with Priestman goes back decades, as Herdman was her youth futsal coach when Priestman was 12. Herdman also oversaw Priestman when she coached Canada’s U17 and U20 women’s teams from 2013 to 2018.

Prior to coaching Canada, Herdman was coach of New Zealand’s women’s national team from 2006 to 2011, guiding the team to Women’s World Cups in 2007 and 2011, as well as the 2008 Olympics.

On Friday, Herdman — now in charge at Toronto in MLS — said of the spying controversy: “I’ll help Canada Soccer where I can with that review, but I’m highly confident that in my time as a head coach at an Olympic Games or World Cup, we’ve never been involved in any of those activities.”

What’s the French law about drones?

Due to strict European regulations that have been in place since 2021, drone hobbyists are barred from flying the aircrafts over people and can not share images or recordings without the other party’s consent.

Drones have been a story across the Paris Games, with French prime minister Gabriel Attal saying last Tuesday that an average of six drones per day have been intercepted at Olympic sites, mostly from tourists trying to capture footage of the spectacle.

Teams were given guidance that use of drones in any capacity, including to record their own training sessions for internal video reviews, was forbidden according to a source with knowledge of Olympic football protocols that was not authorized to speak on record.

What are some other notable sports cheating incidents?

• New England Patriots: The Patriots were accused by the New York Jets in 2007 of videotaping the Jets’ defensive signals using team cameras in unauthorized locations in a scandal dubbed “Spygate.” The NFL docked New England a first-round pick and fined coach Bill Belichick $500,000.
• Houston Astros: The Astros were involved in a sign-stealing scandal that resulted in team members being disciplined for illegally using cameras to steal signs from opposing teams in 2017 and 2018. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich’s reporting, the team used a camera in center field to pick up the pitcher’s signal from the catcher, and relayed that to batters with various cues, including banging on a trash can.
• Michigan football: A Michigan sign-stealing scandal dominated college football headlines in 2023. Michigan was accused of physically sending people to games of its opponents with the intent of collecting strategic information that the Michigan football program would otherwise not have access to, such as signals and play calls that are not shown on the TV broadcast or in other game film.
• 2014 World Cup: As France prepared to face Brazil at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, France men’s manager Didier Deschamps reported a sighting of a drone above their practice. It was never discovered who it belonged to.

(Top photo of Bev Priestman: Omar Vega / Getty Images)