Canadian players react after losing a women's quarterfinal soccer match against Germany at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 3 at Marseille Stadium in Marseille, France.Daniel Cole/The Associated Press
There are three ways you can squirm out of a sporting scandal – explain your way out of it, lie low long enough that everyone forgets about it, or win. The third way is best.
The third way solves every problem from caught cheating to maybe killed a guy. But if you killed a guy, you’re going to have to win multiple Super Bowls.
The Canadian women’s soccer team found themselves in an unusual scandal situation over the course of their Olympics. Since they were caught cheating before the competition began, and may have cheated in others previously, winning alone wouldn’t do it. They had to win the right amount.
Losing in the quarter-finals of the Olympics to Germany in a game they should have won but were pipped on penalty kicks, is the Goldilocks result for this team. Not too much. Just enough.
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Had they lost to begin with, the tide of national embarrassment would have washed over them. Nobody likes a cheater, but everybody loves to hate a cheater who gets karma’d. Had Canada given up that opening-round game to France and been eliminated early, their detractors would have set upon them.
Instead, they won where losing would have been easier. They’d done all the things athletes say once the mics are hot – they’d come together; they were galvanized; they’d been resilient.
But had they won again on Saturday, that would have created a whole new set of problems. Next up – America.
Canadian players react after losing a women's quarterfinal soccer match against Germany at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 3 at Marseille Stadium in Marseille, France.Julio Cortez/The Associated Press
Most of Canada’s opponents have thus far kept mum on the scandal. Maybe that because they’re cheating too (disgraced coach Bev Priestman’s assertion in her smoking gun e-mail). Maybe it’s because they don’t need the hassle. And maybe it’s because no one’s asked them.
The outlier is America. U.S. Soccer was in there like a dirty shirt as soon as it broke.
In a conspicuously detailed story – but entirely off the record – by ESPN, the case was laid out: everybody knows about Canada and the way it does things, but since we’re hosting the World Cup together in 2026, it’s not worth rocking the boat.
That’s an impressive level of cynicism, which gives the whole thing the ring of truth.
Canada Soccer has a different definition of the truth than the rest of us
Over their time in France, the Canadian women’s players have continually repeated how unbalanced they were by the revelations, and how distraught. Players such as Vanessa Gilles and Janine Beckie painted the picture of a collective breakdown. In Beckie’s words, the soccer team went to “a dark place.”
Imagine today that instead of heading home, Canada was standing between the United States and a gold medal that program needs more than it wants. There are two days until the semi-final. That’s a lot of time to scroll your phone. An excellent opportunity for the U.S. to send Canada back to that dark place.
Lindsey Horan of the United States holds her team's pennant before the quarterfinal women's soccer match between the United States and the Japan at the Parc des Princes at the 2024 Summer Olympics, on Aug. 3, in Paris, France.Aurelien Morissard/The Associated Press
It’s easy to do – just drop a few texts and the result will be more anonymously sourced stories. Maybe stick a few players in it this time. Go after one of the big names from the past. Get a few men’s players involved.
That starts the news cycle all over again. More questions in mixed zones. More discombobulated news conferences. Another struggle to tear the microphone out of Canadian Olympic Committee CEO David Shoemaker’s hand, lest he begin to reminisce about his favourite medal moments again.
If the Canadian women beat the U.S., then they are in the gold-medal game. Maybe now, seeing as their perfidy is about to be rewarded, all those thus-far-silent opponents have something to say.
If they win a medal, new questions start getting asked. When was the last time someone was penalized in an Olympics for cheating and still stood on the podium? Is this right? What else is Canada up to?
Most of the rest of the world has heard this story and doesn’t much care. It was a couple of daily Olympic headlines in a blizzard of others. Plus, it’s Canada. Give them a shout when an interesting country does something.
But if it’s Canada standing up there congratulating itself on a medal it stole from everyone else?
‘Stole’ wouldn’t be the word I’d use, but someone would. A week from now there will still be a lot of reporters in Paris, and all of them will by then be bored to tears of another good-news story.
Now suspended coach Bev Priestman of Canada takes photos on the pitch at Geoffroy-Guichard Stadium ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, on July 23 in Saint-Etienne, France.Silvia Izquierdo/The Associated Press
All that has been avoided by a sudden lack of resilience. Thanks to the players’ co-operation, Canada Soccer has been able to tourniquet off its big problem.
Everything we already know about this scandal suggests we are only seeing part of the iceberg. The other, bigger part – the one that sinks ships – is still below the water.
This thing went on for more than a decade, involved dozens or hundreds of people, not all of whom worked at Canada Soccer or in soccer, period, many of whom are now flung around the world in different jobs, none of whom seemed to have their Op-Sec up to CIA levels.
Watergate was seven guys who didn’t own cellphones and look how that turned out. You’re not keeping this a secret. The real fear must be that spying on opponents is the least of it. That’s how most conspiracies go.
Now it’s a race. Who will get to the truth first – the lawyers hired by Canada Soccer or the media?
This will be a timed trial. The closer whatever revelations are to come are to World Cup 2026, the more damaging they will be.
Once this all comes out, they’ll ask everyone at Canada Soccer to meet in the courtyard so that they can burn the whole thing to the ground without fear of injury. By that point, Canada may be in a rearguard action trying to hang on to the medals it won in Tokyo 2020, Rio 2016 and London 2012.
The worst of Canada’s women’s soccer team disaster is yet to come.
But thanks to the Canada’s women’s soccer team, not today.
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