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The Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team got caught using a drone to spy on Olympic opening-round opponent New Zealand earlier this week.
As a result, head coach Bev Priestman issued a formal apology and was sent home from the tournament altogether.
But as it turns, the defending Olympic gold medalists had been spying for years, and the operation extends beyond just the women’s team.
Rick Westhead of TSN in Canada reports that both the men’s and women’s soccer teams have been filming closed-door practices for years, including prior to the 2021 gold medal match in Tokyo.
“The filming also included at least one training session before a women’s national team game against Panama in July 2022, when Canada was attempting to qualify for the Women’s World Cup in Australia,” a source told Westhead. “In that case, the source said, a Canadian contractor was caught attempting to film a private Panama training and a complaint was made by the Panamanian Football Federation to Canada Soccer and to Concacaf, the soccer confederation that governs the sport in North and Central America and the Caribbean.”
Canadian analyst Joseph Lombardi was caught using a drone to spy on two of New Zealand’s closed training sessions prior to a match against the Kiwis on Thursday. Canada beat New Zealand 2-1 in their Olympic tournament opener.
French police caught Lombardi retrieving a drone that had been flying over the New Zealand team’s training. Police then retrieved footage of a second New Zealand training session from the drone and also obtained text messages between Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander. The text messages reportedly showed that Mander was aware of Lombardi’s activities.
Canada Has Lengthy History Of Alleged Drone Use To Spy On Opponents
“The players are benefitting from the coaches cheating,” former player Amy Walsh said of the incident. “There’s a certain amount of blind trust players have that coaches are doing things the right way and this is the ultimate betrayal.”
Priestman took over managing the Canadian women’s team in 2020.
But former men’s coach John Herdman was caught allegedly doing the same before a match against the U.S. in 2019. The USMNT won that match 4-1.
In 2021, Honduras stopped a training session when a drone was spotted before a match against Canada.
“I’d imagine there’s probably a lot of people in Canada that fly drones, I’m sure,” then-Canada coach John Herdman said at the time. “And when a big team like Honduras turn up I’m sure people are probably interested in what they’re doing when they come into our country. So I know for sure we won’t be heading into people’s countries too early because with drones these days, people can obviously capture footage. You’ve got to be really careful. So yeah, you got to be careful in CONCACAF. It’s a tricky place.”
A source told Westhead that this is a deep-rooted issue in Canadian soccer.
“In a couple of scenarios, people have been pushed and have been told, ‘You have to give 110 percent and this is part of the job so if you don’t feel comfortable with doing this, you do not have a place on the team’,” the source said. “It’s not something that’s talked about and it’s not something there are a lot of text messages about because of how sensitive this is. Some of the people who have had to do the filming or review the filming have said to a few staff members how uncomfortable it was for them.”
Both Canada’s men’s and women’s national teams have seen unprecedented success in recent years.