NICE, France — When the Canada women’s soccer team took the field for warm-ups ahead of Wednesday’s final game of the group stage at the Paris Games, it was three-time Olympian Janine Beckie who led the team onto the field. She raced from its sideline to the opposite side, where a smattering of fans sat.
The players threw their hands into the air, acknowledging their friends and family. It’s what they do every pregame, but Wednesday night it felt more emblematic. It wasn’t just an acknowledgment. It was a message: It’s us. That’s all we’ve got.
This is a team that has fought its federation over the years. Now, the mole was in its own house. Its staff had betrayed them as a winding saga of spying unfolded before the Olympic tournament began.
So, what did that leave the players? Themselves and their families. Their island. Their bubble, as they’ve called it over this past week and a half. As they’ve spent the past eight days learning about actions others have taken and hearing about decisions made regarding their status and future, the bubble got smaller and tighter. But with the contraction, the plan never changed — win all three games of group play and good things can still happen for the reigning Olympic gold medalists. As the days crept, they focused on the 90 minutes that mattered most. They reminded themselves it was the only time they could take back some of their power.
The focus never changed. It didn’t change when a Canada staff member was found to have used drones to spy on New Zealand ahead of the tournament. It didn’t change when head coach Bev Priestman voluntarily sat out of the first game, or when she was sent home and handed a full-year suspension after Canada Soccer found additional information “regarding previous drone use against opponents.” And it didn’t change when the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the Canadian Olympic Committee’s appeal of the six-point deduction by FIFA, forcing players into a must-win situation six hours ahead of their final game against Colombia.
“Our performance is the one thing that is in our control in all of this,” Beckie said. “And in a situation where everything else is out of our control, what we do on the field, how we prepare, what performance we put out there is the single thing that’s in our control and every single person in that locker room has done everything they can to give the best version of themselves to this team and across these three games we’ve seen every person step up. It’s incredible what this group continues to give each other.”
Team Canada celebrates after winning the Women’s Group A match against Colombia. (Photo by Marc Atkins, Getty Images)
On Wednesday night in Nice Stadium, that’s exactly what Canada did against Colombia. In an evenly-contested match that didn’t see a goal for 60 minutes, it was Vanessa Gilles — hero of the upset over host France — who once again found the back of the net. The 1-0 advantage over Colombia would end up being enough. But it’s far from the full story.
When the final whistle blew, players fell onto the field and burst into tears. A mix of joy and relief (and, probably, anger) all at once. Three games. Three wins. Three points.
It was a win over Colombia, but also one over every other person and situation that put hurdles in front of them.
“We defied the odds. I truly don’t believe there’s any other team in the world that could’ve done what we did under these circumstances, and I just feel really proud,” Beckie said. “They take six points and we got nine. That was enough for us.”
The situation the players find themselves in was not of their creation, even though they may have unknowingly benefited from it. On July 22, New Zealand women’s national team staff members reported an unknown drone flying above their training session before the start of the tournament — kicking off what has been a remarkable run of new reports and details about a systemic reliance on surveillance of opposing teams.
An unaccredited analyst, Joseph Lombardi, was detained by local police after being tracked down as operating the drone. It was discovered he had not filmed the Ferns’ training session once, but twice.
As the drone use became public knowledge, Canada Soccer and the Canadian Olympic Committee attempted to get ahead of any sanctions by sending home Lombardi and the assistant coach he reported, Jasmine Mander, and Priestman removed herself from coaching the opening match against New Zealand.
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Bev Priestman previously led Canada to an Olympic gold at the Tokyo Games. (Photo by Omar Vega, Getty Images)
It would be nowhere near enough, especially once FIFA stepped in. Based on a quick-turn investigation of solely what happened at the Olympics, the international governing body — in charge of the operation of the football tournament at the Games — handed down year-long suspensions for Priestman, Lombardi and Mander; a hefty fine; and docked Canada six points from their group stage tally.
Even as Canada’s federation and Olympic Committee pledged to appeal, the players picked up one win, then another. Then, finally, their third win. Enough to qualify the team for the quarterfinals.
On Wednesday night, when Gilles finally exited the pitch, legs wrapped in ice (“it’s just old age,” she joked), she was exhausted. Ninety minutes at 85 degrees can do that to a player. But the last eight days took their toll on the 28-year-old, too.
“Coming into this tournament, our first goal was to make it out of the group stage and we accomplished that now. We made it a bit more interesting,” she said, then paused.
“It was made a bit more interesting than we would’ve liked,” she clarified.
Canada won all three games of the group stage to advance to the 2024 Olympic quarterfinals. (Photo by Marc Atkins, Getty Images)
The tense change matters. The passive voice matters. The players feel they’ve done nothing to deserve the penalty from FIFA, nor the dismissal from the CAS. The road was made harder, but not by the players themselves. While they do what they can on the pitch for 90 minutes, there’s another mess to be cleaned up back home by others.
The federation is now confronted by a large-scale scandal engulfing their senior national teams only two years from co-hosting the 2026 World Cup.
The full report issued by FIFA’s appeals committee chairperson provided the greatest look yet into the scandal, revealing a damning picture of Canada’s use of drones to surveil opposing training sessions. Emails between an unnamed analyst, head coach Priestman and a human resources person for Canada Soccer revolved around a reliance on spying. Priestman described in one correspondence something that “can be the difference between winning and losing.”
While the heat’s on the women at the Olympics, Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said based on preliminary conversations, there was “a potential long-term, deeply embedded systemic culture” of surveillance of other teams. And Canada Soccer essentially communicated the same to FIFA. While FIFA’s report did not include any names, it shared what the federation told them, which was “a practice started by one person – (redacted) – and continued by Bev Priestman. It was not facilitated by the federation.”
John Herdman, the head coach of Toronto FC, was head coach of the women’s national team from 2011 to 2018 before taking over the men’s national team from 2018 to 2023. In a press conference last week, when asked about the Olympic drone scandal, he replied, “I’ll help Canada Soccer where I can with that review, but I’m highly confident that in my time as a head coach at an Olympic Games or World Cup, we’ve never been involved in any of those activities.”
On Wednesday, Canada’s federation announced Sonia Regenbogen of Mathews, Dinsdale & Clark, LLP, will lead the review, starting with what happened in France before moving to historical occurrences.
In the meantime, the players of Canada’s women’s national team refuse to stop winning. Their title defense continues.
“A lot has been taken away from us as players that have had nothing to do with any of the actions,” Gilles said. “The one thing we can control, the one thing that is in our grasp is the pitch. That’s something that they can’t take away from us as much as they tried.”
(Top photo: Tullio M. Puglia/Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)
