Canada Soccer Coach Likely Fired Amid Olympic Cheating Scandal ‘Disgrace’

Getty Canada soccer coach Bev Priestman (left)

By most measures, it was an expected result in the opening of pool play for Team Canada’s defending gold-medal champion women’s soccer team, as they downed New Zealand, 2-1, in the Paris Olympics. But by another measure it might well have been the end of what many see as the height of the program in Canada’s sporting history.

Bev Priestman, the coach who has led Team Canada for four years and coached the gold-medal winning team in Tokyo, has been suspended and, now, sent home amid a drone-spying scandal that has unfolded in the past week, casting a pall on the team’s accomplishments. The Canadians were caught earlier flying a drone over a New Zealand practice.

In the process, yet another ugly underbelly of international soccer has been exposed, the blurry lines between gamesmanship and cheating left to be debated in its wake.

Priestman claimed that she had no knowledge of the fact that two of her backroom coaches had flown a drone over the practice of New Zealand’s team, essentially throwing two staff members under the bus. But Canadian Olympic Committee CEO David Shoemaker said on Friday that new information showed it was likely that Priestman did, in fact, know about the drones.

And that should be it for Priestman, who is likely to be fired.

Canada Soccer Drone Scandal Dubbed ‘Disgrace’

That’s the thrust of the view from Bruce Arthur, respected columnist at the Toronto Star, who wrote yesterday:
“The Bev Priestman era is almost certainly over, and effectively the John Herdman era as well, even though it was a golden era in the sport. Those two coaches rebuilt the game in this country in ways nobody had imagined. This is a lousy ending.”

Hardman had been the coach of Canadian women’s soccer before Priestman, and moved over to coach the men’s team for the past four years.

Priestman had originally sat out the New Zealand game on a voluntary basis, but it became more of a mandated basis as new information emerged, and she was suspended.

The two coaches implicated in the scandal were sent home, too.

As Canada’s National Post reported: “There was no head coach as Priestman sat out the game. Lombardi — a performance analyst for Canada — and Surrey’s Jasmine Mander, an assistant coach, also weren’t present, having been sent home for their roles in the disgrace.”

Bev Priestman ‘Highly Likely’ Knew of Cheating

Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue said in a press conference, “One of the key pieces of information was the conclusion from Canada Soccer that [Priestman] needed to be suspended based on their accumulation of facts.

“I’ve seen some of the information they have, and we gathered some additional information ourselves that made me conclude that she was highly likely to have been aware of the incidents here.”

But while there have been calls for the Canadians to withdraw from the tournament, Shoemaker said that was not in the cards.

“I’m comfortable with the team competing as it is,” Shoemaker said. “We’ve made decisions as it relates to the ultimate sanction we have, participation on Team Canada here in Paris at the Olympic Games, that we get to nominate athletes and coaches to Team Canada and we get to remove them.”