Canada Soccer has suspended Canadian women’s national team head coach Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Olympics as the fallout from the team’s spying scandal continues.
Assistant coach Andy Spence will lead the team for the remainder of the Games in Paris. Priestman’s suspension will remain in place until the conclusion of an external review by Canada Soccer into the spying scandal that has rocked the early days of the Olympic Games.
Kevin Blue, CEO of Canada Soccer, said in a statement that “additional information” about spying against opponents that predates the Paris Games led to the decision.
“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 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 scandal broke on Tuesday when the Canadian Olympic Committee announced that a “non-accredited” member of Canada Soccer’s support team had been detained by French authorities in Saint-Étienne for allegedly using a drone to record New Zealand’s women’s soccer team during practice.
On Wednesday, assistant coach Jasmine Mander and Canada Soccer analyst Joseph Lombardi were sent home from the Olympics after two accusations of spying were made by the New Zealand team.
Additionally, at that time, Priestman announced that she would be excusing herself from Canada’s game against New Zealand, which Canada won 2-1 on Thursday.
“First of all I’d like to apologize,” Priestman told CBC Olympics on Wednesday after the announcement. “As the leader of this program, I’m ultimately accountable. Personally, It’s really important to me to take this moment to show strong leadership and to represent the values of this country, the team and myself. I’ve done that because I really care about sportsmanship, integrity and to be honest the players who are taking the field.”
Early Thursday evening, TSN’s Rick Westhead reported that the Canadian men and women’s national teams “have been engaged for years in efforts to film the closed-door training sessions of their opponents.” According to Westhead’s report, one instance of spying by the women’s team came ahead of a match against Japan at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, a tournament in which Canada won gold.
FIFA announced on Wednesday that it had opened an investigation into the matter.
Priestman, 38, has been head coach of the Canadian women’s team since October of 2020, succeeding Kenneth Heiner-Møller in the role.
