Canada’s Olympic women’s football team have been deducted six points and their coach Beverly Priestman suspended for a year after a staff member used a drone to spy on a rival team at the Paris Games, FIFA said on Saturday. Canada’s football association was “responsible for failing to respect the applicable FIFA regulations in connection with… the prohibition on flying drones over any training sites”, FIFA said. It also handed down a fine of 200,000 Swiss francs ($226,000). The ruling is a hammer blow to Canada’s hopes of defending the Olympic title they won at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
It leaves them on minus three points in Group A before they play hosts France on Sunday in Saint-Etienne.
They beat New Zealand 2-1 in their opening game on Thursday but the deduction means they now face having to win their next two matches to stand any chance of reaching the quarter-finals.
Analyst Joey Lombardi was sent home after being given a suspended eight-month prison sentence for flying the drone over a New Zealand training session ahead of the game.
Assistant Jasime Mander was also sent home, while Priestman withdrew herself from the game against New Zealand and was later suspended by Canada Soccer.
Like Priestman, Lombardi and Mander were also suspended by FIFA from “any football-related activity for a period of one year”.
“The officials were each found responsible for offensive behaviour and violation of the principles of fair play,” world football’s governing body said.
The 38-year-old Briton Priestman was in charge of the Canada team that won gold in Tokyo in 2021, when they defeated Sweden on penalties in the final.
Canada Soccer chief executive Kevin Blue had tried to convince FIFA not to punish the team, saying the players had not seen any footage produced by the drone.
“The players themselves have not been involved in any unethical behaviour,” Blue told reporters on Friday.
“And frankly we ask FIFA to take that into consideration if contemplating any further sanctions.
“Specifically we do not feel that a deduction of points in this tournament would be fair to our players.”
Canada’s players had insisted they were innocent of wrongdoing after their opening victory over the New Zealanders.
“There was a lot of emotion, frustration and humiliation because as a player, it doesn’t reflect our values and what we want to represent as competitors at the Olympics,” defender Vanessa Gilles said.
“The Games represent fair play. As Canadians, these are not our values or those of our country. We are not cheats.”
Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive David Shoemaker said separately on Friday that Canada’s victory at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics might also have been stained by spying tactics.
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