Canada Soccer insiders say its culture problem runs deeper than drones

Tucked into the green hills of east-central France, the Stade Auguste Dury is a quiet, out-of-the-way kind of place, a perfect setting for soccer teams to practise with few distractions. But four days before the opening of the Paris Olympics, there was an unusual sound, high above the pitch, that made players on the field stop in their tracks.

The national New Zealand women’s team was practising throw-ins when defender Rebekah Stott heard a distinct buzzing overhead, and, as a drone enthusiast, recognized it almost immediately. It was the high-pitched whirring sound of a four-propeller drone that someone was using to surreptitiously film their practice.

“I hear this noise,” she later told The Women’s Game podcast, “I look up to my left, and sure enough, there’s a fricking drone there.”

Within minutes, French police were pursuing the mysterious device. It led them to a parked rental car, where they arrested Joey Lombardi – a 43-year-old Canada Soccer staffer. Three days later, he was sent home from Paris, along with his boss, the Canadian women’s assistant coach Jasmine Mander. Head coach Bev Priestman soon followed, and all three are now serving one-year bans from FIFA for their role in the cheating scheme.

Not since sprinter Ben Johnson was caught doping at the 1988 Games has Canada suffered such an international embarrassment at the Olympics. The Canadians had been explicitly told by Paris organizers not to use drones because of terrorism concerns, and they did it anyway. That decision cost the women’s team six points in Paris and a $315,000 fine.

Instead of gathering information on their opponent, the drone incident turned the camera on Canada Soccer itself. A four-month Globe and Mail investigation into the unravelling of the women’s program, which included interviews with dozens of people who worked, advised and played for the national federation or its coaches, along with reviewing text messages, e-mails, videos and board records, found there were much larger problems than spying.

And these problems were unfolding during a period of turnover in the leadership ranks of Canada Soccer, which saw four board chairs between 2020 and 2024 – Steve Reed, Nick Bontis, Charmaine Crooks, and Peter Augruso – as well as four CEOs: Peter Montopoli, Earl Cochrane, Jason deVos, and Kevin Blue. (This list doesn’t include Alyson Walker, who was named the new CEO on Dec. 22, 2023, only to have the organization announce a month later, on the day she was to start, that she would not be taking the job.)

The investigation showed a national soccer federation that failed to act on the warning signs of a women’s program in crisis, or prevent spying practices that began years earlier, under previous head coach John Herdman. The Globe also learned some of the details of two confidential workplace investigations in 2023, both conducted more than a year before the Paris Olympics, that documented the dysfunction inside the women’s program, sparked by internal allegations the team had become a toxic workplace for staff.

The drone-spying scandal has shaken the national soccer federation and tarnished the reputation of a women’s program that had been a jewel in Canadian sport – winning three Olympic medals in 10 years, including gold at the Tokyo Olympics, and produced Christine Sinclair, the world’s all-time leading scorer in international soccer.

The Globe found no evidence that players were shown footage of opponents’ practices, but it was gathered to help coaches strategize for their games, five sources said. In a report released last week, which was triggered by the scandal in Paris, lawyer Sonia Regenbogen specifically focused on the “use of drones for surveillance of opponents,” but The Globe found that the tactics used to spy went far beyond drones.

Many people approached for this story said they worried that speaking publicly about the problems inside the organization would hurt their ability to get a job in soccer in this country given its control over the sport. Those who did speak said there was little room for dissent inside the organization. The Globe is not naming them because they feared professional repercussions.

Muneeza Sheikh, a lawyer for Ms. Priestman, declined to comment. Dean Crawford, a lawyer for Ms. Mander said the allegations she directed spying efforts are inaccurate, but declined to elaborate. “At a high level, I can tell you that the allegations made by others to you about Ms. Mander’s involvement in various attempts to obtain surveillance of opponents are not accurate,” Mr. Crawford said.

Canada Soccer, which represents Canada at the sport’s highest level and is the national governing body for the game, receives federal funding from taxpayers through Sport Canada. It gave $3.8-million in 2023, and more than $5-million in 2022.

A motion by the NDP to further probe the spying scandal, which would have compelled Canada Soccer’s coaches to testify before a parliamentary committee, was supported by the Conservatives, but voted down in October by the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois.

What wasn’t publicly known at the time was Canada Soccer had previously commissioned the two third-party investigations after staff complaints of a toxic work environment that centred on Ms. Priestman and Ms. Mander. The second of those, led by Ottawa lawyer Erin Durant, found staff and contractors had concerns about being asked to secretly observe opponents’ practices.

Canada Soccer acknowledged in statements that it commissioned Ms. Durant’s 2023 report but declined to identify who had received a copy. It says a review of official minutes shows the report was never submitted to its then board of directors. Instead, in a statement, spokesperson Paulo Senra pointed to former “executives” at the organization who “fell short” of the disclosure obligations the organization is now implementing.

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At that time, the interim chief executive officer of Canada Soccer was Jason deVos, a former player with the men’s national team. In an e-mailed statement, he told The Globe he could not discuss Ms. Durant’s findings because of confidentiality issues, but said they were treated with “the seriousness and diligence they warranted,” and said he introduced policy changes as a result.

The Globe reported on Friday that Ms. Durant’s investigation did not find a breach of the code of conduct, but it did make recommendations on how to improve the culture within Canada Soccer.

Seven former employees, analysts and coaches who spoke to The Globe described a culture under Ms. Priestman and Ms. Mander that promoted winning at all costs and rewarded unquestioning loyalty, during a period of high turnover in the years since the Tokyo Olympics. One analyst left after complaining about being told to spy, according to two sources. Another, who spoke to the Globe, said they refused to spy and departed. A third who said he didn’t want to spy did not accompany the team to Paris, according to a Canada Soccer staffer.

The workplace investigations also probed a team culture that included mandatory drinking sessions the night before games – “staff socials” for coaches and staff, but not players. A text message reviewed by The Globe showed that in February, 2023, Ms. Priestman complained that attendance was slipping at the socials. Called Match Day Minus One events, five sources said, these gatherings featured drinking, sometimes to excess. Two said staff had sex toys thrown at them, and three said they were asked sexually explicit questions as part of party games.

In response to questions about The Globe’s findings, Mr. Senra of Canada Soccer said in a statement that the organization has introduced reforms and should not be defined by the actions of individuals who are no longer involved with it.

“New leadership and a full commitment to excellence with integrity, transparency, and accountability in every area of operations and governance will continue to renew the public trust,” Mr. Senra said.

In October, 2020, at age 34, Ms. Priestman was thrust into the national spotlight as the new coach of the senior women’s team.

She and Mr. Herdman had been linked since 1998, when Ms. Priestman attended, as a child, Brazilian-style training he was running in Consett, a working-class town in northeastern England. By 2009, they were reunited when Ms. Priestman joined Mr. Herdman in New Zealand as head of women’s soccer. After he became head coach of the Canadian women, she joined him in Canada again, as a technical assistant, in 2013.

They worked together until 2018, when Ms. Priestman was named assistant coach of England’s women’s national team. When she returned to Canada as head coach in 2020, she had become what Ms. Sinclair later described in her memoir as a more “commanding coach.”

“[I want] to put Canada back on that podium and change the colour of the medal – that’s the goal,” Ms. Priestman promised, shortly after her hiring. Canada had taken bronze in both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

Within a year of her hiring, some staff said they grew concerned about off-field behaviour that occurred at both the youth and senior levels of the women’s program, including pregame gatherings that some said made them uncomfortable.

Two videos reviewed by The Globe show Canada Soccer employees participating in these parties the night before what one source said was an international match in February, 2023, doing conga lines and singing karaoke in bathrobes. In a third video, from June, 2022, Ms. Priestman is seen dancing as the clock approached midnight, the night before an afternoon game against South Korea. Two sources said she would sometimes organize early morning runs for staff the next day.

Staff who worked for multiple head coaches said that, although drinking after a big game was considered normal on previous teams, it was never allowed the night before those matches.

In her report, Ms. Regenbogen found staff felt uncomfortable spying on opponents but “did not feel they could challenge the authority of the head coach.” Canada Soccer says this pressure to cheat was a “symptom of a difficult and unacceptable past culture within the national teams.”

In its submissions to FIFA, Canada Soccer blamed Mr. Herdman for starting its drone spying program. The coach did not participate in Ms. Regenbogen’s investigation and the soccer federation says it is initiating a disciplinary procedure against him based on what it calls “potential violations of the Canada Soccer Code of Conduct and Ethics.” If he declines to participate in that process, he could face sanctions up to permanent suspension from working in soccer in this country. Mr. Herdman, the current head of coach of Toronto FC, the city’s Major League Soccer club, has not commented publicly on the Regenbogen report. A spokesperson for TFC says the organization is conducting a review of the report’s findings.

Mr. Herdman has declined to address specific questions about spying. But when the Paris story broke in July, he told reporters he was “highly confident” no one on his staff used drones to spy for Canada at the biggest tournaments, including the Olympics and World Cup.

When the Canadian women’s soccer team won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, it seemed like all the right pieces had fallen into place. Led by Ms. Sinclair, their legendary captain, and Ms. Priestman, the head coach, the team went unbeaten over five matches. Then, they defeated Sweden in penalty shootouts, the first time a Canadian soccer team had won a major world tournament.

But the good feelings around the team would fade quickly. The players and Canada Soccer would soon be embroiled in an acrimonious labour dispute over pay. That led to a strike by the players and public hearings in Parliament. The team went into the 2023 World Cup among the favourites, but crashed out in the group stages.

Behind the scenes, Ms. Mander’s rise within the organization was causing tension. She started with Canada Soccer in 2021 as a performance analyst, but her portfolio grew over time.

Three former staffers said she berated them and left them in tears after being scolded in private meetings. Seven sources, including staff and players, told The Globe they witnessed her publicly upbraid staff on the team. One former staffer said Ms. Mander gave her panic attacks. Ms. Mander’s lawyer, Mr. Crawford, declined to address questions about this alleged behaviour in his responses to The Globe.

Ms. Mander had a polarizing history in soccer. She was released from her team at the University of British Columbia after her rookie season. A confidential document prepared by UBC coaching staff, obtained by The Globe, listed alleged behaviour – a negative attitude, resistance to participating in team activities and training, and creating divisions within the team – as examples of conduct that preceded her release.

Ms. Mander appealed the decision to the university’s athletic director, who declined her appeal, according to a summary of the director’s decision, obtained by The Globe. Ms. Mander was allowed to return under a new coaching staff in 2015, the same year UBC won the national championship. The next year she was made a captain of the team.

In response to questions about her time at UBC, Ms. Mander’s lawyer, Mr. Crawford said: “She looks back at her time with fond memories. She captained the team in 2016 and maintains a strong relationship with many UBC alumni.”

Once she was a coach with Canada Soccer, Ms. Mander became the target of other complaints. In 2022 as an assistant coach with the national U-17 team, Ms. Mander was accused of telling staff not to look at their e-mail before a match, to avoid potential positive COVID-19 tests that would have sidelined players, according to two staff.

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In September, 2022, Ms. Mander instructed a contract analyst to spy on Australia ahead of Canada’s match against the Matildas, according to a person with direct knowledge of events. The same source said in February of 2023, at the SheBelieves Cup in Orlando, Fla., Ms. Mander instructed the analyst to record drone footage of a U.S. training session, which he refused to do. After this refusal, the analyst was told his services would no longer be needed at the next tournament, the Women’s World Cup in Australia, two sources say.

At that same tournament, Andy Spence, another assistant coach, told staff he’d been asked by Ms. Priestman to find out where the Americans were holding a closed-door practice, according to texts reviewed by The Globe. Mr. Spence did not respond to e-mailed questions about the text exchange.

After Ms. Priestman was sent home from the Paris Olympics, Mr. Spence was appointed as her interim replacement.

This week, Canada Soccer announced Mr. Spence would not be coaching the next two scheduled matches, against Iceland on Nov. 29 and South Korea on Dec. 3, but he would return to the team for the following FIFA competition window, in February. Canada Soccer did not specify his upcoming role.

Coaches also turned to Mr. Lombardi for spying, records and interviews show.

On July 29, 2023, Mr. Lombardi texted a co-worker that Ms. Priestman wanted him to do more advance “scouting” of the Australians, who were doing closed-door training in Brisbane ahead of the World Cup. The Canadians were staying in Melbourne, more than 1,700 kilometres away. Mr. Lombardi boarded a flight, according to text messages reviewed by The Globe.

But in March, 2024, months after the Durant report identified concerns about spying, Ms. Priestman was still pushing analysts to spy. Documents Canada Soccer submitted to FIFA show the head coach forwarded an e-mail to Mark Thompson, a human resources consultant, complaining, in a March 20 e-mail, that a Welsh player analyst named Morgan Drew had refused to spy for “moral” reasons.

Mr. Drew declined to speak to The Globe. A former Canada Soccer employee said working for Canada Soccer was a “dream job” for Mr. Drew, but he complained after being told to fly a drone over the Costa Rican team during the Concacaf Cup in February, 2024.

In the e-mails that were released by FIFA, Ms. Priestman asked Mr. Thompson what she could do “from a HR stand point” about her request for Mr. Drew to spy. ”I know there is a whole operation on the Men’s side with regards to it,” she wrote. Mr. Drew left the federation some time after the incident. That e-mail chain was forwarded to chief operating officer Mathieu Chamberland, the documents show. Canada Soccer declined to discuss this incident and Mr. Chamberland did not respond to questions.

Kevin Blue, the former chief sport officer of Golf Canada who began his job as Canada Soccer’s general secretary and CEO on March 14, told The Globe he first learned of that e-mail chain, as well as spying within the federation, when the matter blew up at the Paris Games. In June, 2024, shortly before the team shipped out for Paris, Mr. Thompson oversaw three workshops that one attendee said tried to address some of the tensions inside the women’s program.

In February, 2023, as the turmoil inside the women’s team grew, Canada Soccer turned to safe sport consultant Allison Forsyth, a former Olympian, to bring the federation’s complaint management system in line with the standards of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner. She declined an interview, but said in a text message she believes the culture inside Canada Soccer is improving.

“I can share we are working diligently to foster a productive safe culture,” Ms. Forsyth wrote. “Culture is the grey zone of safe sport, but the most important thing.”

A month after Ms. Forsyth was brought on, another firm, Embaarq HR, was hired to investigate specific allegations of sexual harassment and workplace toxicity from staff, related to Ms. Mander’s behaviour and the more explicit elements of the staff socials, according to one of the complainants.

Within weeks, however, that investigation was compromised when lawyers for Ms. Priestman obtained information on confidential complainants. It’s not known how that happened, and Embaarq has not responded to interview requests.

Mr. deVos told a staff member he was furious about the breach, according to materials reviewed by The Globe. Three staffers said once the head coach knew who had complained, the complainants were excluded from meetings and communications.

In August, 2023, Mr. deVos was directly made aware by a staffer of just how bad they believed things had become inside the women’s program. The staffer complained that Ms. Priestman had promoted her wife, Emma Humphries, as head coach of the U-17 team, and said spying had become a common practice in that program, too.

At a team meeting in May, 2022, Ms. Humphries said she intended to utilize spying as a tactic, according to two people who were in the room. By that August, at a U-17 tournament in the Dominican Republic, Ms. Mander was sending texts to team staff trying to arrange a discreet way to get into an opponent’s practice, without tipping off the Dominican liaison provided to the Canadian team.

In April, 2023, Earl Cochrane, the then chief executive who had green-lit the Embaarq HR investigation, surprised staff by announcing he was leaving the federation.

Around that time, after the Embaarq probe fell apart, Canada Soccer turned to Ms. Durant, a former competitive softball player who specializes in sports law. Starting in May, 2023, she and her staff began interviewing people inside and outside the organization.

In December, 2023, five months after the report was completed, Mr. deVos told the board he was developing a human resources handbook that contained new policies that should be used to update the code of conduct and ethics for all staff.

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No one who was in a leadership position at Canada Soccer when the Durant report was commissioned by the federation’s management and external legal counsel has responded to questions. The board’s president in 2023, former track star Charmaine Crooks, did not respond to interview requests inquiring about the workplace investigation. All 14 current board members, including eight who served as volunteer directors for the federation in 2023 – Paul-Claude Bérubé, Kelly Brown, Brian Burden, Orest Konowalchuk, Dominique Gregoire, Don Story, Dale Briggs and Stephanie Geosits – also did not return requests for comment.

Canada Soccer’s Risk Management Policy, which it posts on its websites, says: “The Board of Directors are ultimately responsible for identifying, evaluating, and managing risks for Canada Soccer.”

Canada Soccer says the board did “not condone any form of surreptitious surveillance,” but acknowledges it needs to do a better job of evaluating its directors and providing them with more governance training.

Although the popularity of soccer has exploded in Canada in recent decades, Canada Soccer acknowledges its governance training was inadequate. Canada Soccer’s volunteer board is made up of people with backgrounds in law, accounting, sport and academics, tasked with overseeing a $37-million organization. They meet six to eight times per year, with a few more meetings for committee work.

The organization says from now on, everyone who works with its national teams will undergo sport administrator training, a common practice in the NCAA, the U.S. college athletics organization, to improve their ability to establish proper controls and boundaries for coaches.

One former Canada Soccer board member, who left before the Durant report was finished, said it was unrealistic to expect a group of volunteer directors to be able to properly monitor problems inside the women’s program. Their skill sets were better suited to growing the game’s popularity, handling financial issues and working on World Cup hosting bids – things he argues the board did very well.

The board had limited access to soccer operations, he said. Instead, executives in Canada Soccer’s management are in much closer contact with the senior teams, and are better suited to keeping tabs on culture, he said. Still, the Durant report and the spying scandal that followed clearly highlight the need for more training of board members, he said.

The former director said too much is being made of the spying scandal, arguing it’s a common issue across international soccer.

In interviews with The Globe, five staffers who have worked with other soccer organizations said they don’t believe such spying is widespread.

Whether it is common or not, it is unethical and not a good reason for doing it, said an expert.

“The argument that ‘Everybody’s doing it,’ is a remarkably common justification for unethical behaviour in sports,” said Max Bazerman, an ethicist with Harvard Business School.

In an organization with poor ethical culture and little oversight, cheating is almost encouraged to happen, he said. Employees often have little choice but to go along with it.

“If you had a staff member come in and say: No, I’m not willing to spy or cheat for Canada, it’s pretty clear they would not be able to keep their job with this organization,” Prof. Bazerman said. “It’s clear that the people meant to be supervising these coaches were not paying attention.”

As for the players, many of them have said they never saw evidence of spying or have declined to publicly comment. A gold medalist from the women’s team in Tokyo said she blames Canada Soccer for ignoring red flags in the program that are now tainting their success on the field.

In Paris this summer, with their backs against the wall after FIFA’s sanctions, the women won all three of their group stage games and made it to the quarter-final against Germany, but came up short in the penalty shootout. For the first time since Beijing 2008, the Canadians left the Olympics without a medal. The women were visibly crushed. Worse, they feared the scandal would continue to haunt their achievements.

“I really hope our reputation is not damaged,” the star forward Evelyne Viens told the Footy Prime podcast one week after the Games. “We don’t play for the money. We play for our badge and representing our country and making people proud. So I just really hope that people of the world don’t think we’re cheaters.”

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