Canada's head coach Bev Priestman walks along the touch line prior to the first half of international friendly action against Mexico in Toronto, on June 4. The COC removed Priestman from the Canadian Olympic team Friday morning.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Canadian Olympic Committee removed Bev Priestman, the head coach of the women’s national soccer team, from the Canadian Olympic team early Friday morning after Canada Soccer said new information had come to light regarding the previous use of drones against opponents.
The sports-spying scandal threatens to stain the team’s defence of its gold medal from the Tokyo Games and will prompt sharp questions about its previous achievements.
“Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” Kevin Blue, the CEO and general secretary of Canada Soccer, said in a statement issued early Friday morning. “In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend women’s national 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.”
The disclosure is another development in a story that has spiralled into an international incident after news broke earlier this week that a member of Ms. Priestman’s staff had been arrested by French police for flying a drone over a pair of New Zealand team practices.
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Analyst Joseph Lombardi, a long-time staff member of Canada Soccer, who piloted the drone, was given a suspended sentence by French authorities. He was sent home, as was his manager, assistant coach Jasmine Mander.
Assistant coach Andy Spence will lead the Canadian women for the remainder of the Paris Games, which officially open Friday. Mr. Spence oversaw the squad’s 2-1 victory on Thursday over New Zealand in their first game of the Olympics, which Ms. Priestman volunteered to sit out in what she described as being “in the spirit of accountability.”
During a video media conference on Wednesday, David Shoemaker, the CEO and secretary-general of the COC, said he was satisfied that Ms. Priestman was not connected to the spying.
“I was persuaded by the fact that Bev Priestman had no involvement, no knowledge in the incident,” Mr. Shoemaker said. “Those who had the direct involvement in the incident we removed from Team Canada.
“There is no room for that in Team Canada. It doesn’t conform to our standards of fair play and our values at the Canadian Olympic Committee.”
He added that, if new information were to come to light, “I guess we reserve the right to impose further sanctions.”
FIFA, the sport’s worldwide governing body, said its disciplinary committee has opened proceedings against all three individuals and Canada Soccer. The International Olympic Committee is also investigating.
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On Wednesday, Mr. Shoemaker also disclosed that he had been informed New Zealand Football had registered a complaint with FIFA and had asked that Canada not be awarded any points from the match if it were to win. FIFA did not comment on the request.
Canada Soccer did not divulge any details about the previous use of drones under Ms. Priestman, who has been the head coach of the Canadian women’s senior national team since October, 2020, and whose contract was extended through the 2027 Women’s World Cup. But the team has had an uneven track record since winning gold at the previous Summer Olympics, held in 2021. It failed to get out of the group stage at last summer’s Women’s World Cup and has struggled to focus on its on-field play amid a long-running dispute with Canada Soccer, which prompted hearings on Parliament Hill.
It is unclear how much useful information the team could have gleaned from surveillance footage, beyond what they might have learned from studying tapes of their opponent’s previous matches. But soccer teams are notoriously cagey about divulging strategy. During one media event Canada Soccer held before the Women’s World Cup, staff members aggressively flushed a handful of reporters and photographers from the sidelines of a team practice, after they had apparently got too close for comfort to the whiteboards on which assistant coaches were drawing up plays.
Soccer is such a fluid game that studying set plays such as corner kicks would be one of the few areas that might yield useful information. On Thursday, New Zealand’s lone goal against Canada came on a corner kick.
No. 8 Canada will meet second-ranked France on Sunday in Saint-Étienne before facing Colombia on Wednesday in Nice.