Canada women advance in Olympic soccer as emails show their coach supported spying

PARIS — The Canadian women's soccer team advanced to the quarterfinals of the Summer Olympic Games soon after FIFA publicly released a damning email exchange between the team's suspended head coach, Beverly Priestman, and an unnamed employee who objected to spying.

Canada is defending the Olympic gold medal its women's team won at the Tokyo Games in 2021. And they are doing so without Priestman at the helm, after an email from March demonstrated her knowledge of and commitment to the practice.

The emails released Wednesday by FIFA were included as part of a formal dismissal of Canada's appeal of a six-point penalty levied by the federation on the Olympic team as punishment for the spying. FIFA also upheld a fine of about $228,000 on the Canadian Soccer Association.

In March, after Canada's Olympic opponents were announced, an unnamed employee of the Canadian women's team, a performance analyst, emailed Priestman to follow up about a conversation between the two about preparations for the tournament.

"As discussed yesterday, in terms of the 'spying' conversation, I came off the meeting with clarity that you understood my reasons for me being unwilling to do this moving forward," the employee wrote.

Among the reasons for the objection, the analyst wrote, was that they were "morally" opposed to the request.

Afterward, Priestman forwarded the email to an unnamed human resources representative in order to ask for advice on how to handle the employee's objection to spying.

"It's something the analyst has always done and I know there is a whole operation on the Men's side with regards to it," Priestman wrote. "It can be the difference between winning and losing and all top 10 teams do it."

In its correspondence with FIFA, Canada Soccer said it believed that the use of drones to observe opponents' practices stemmed from a single employee, who began the practice on the women's team before moving over to work with the men. The employee's name was redacted in the public release of the emails.

"In other words, this was a practice started by one person — [name redacted] — and continued by Bev Priestman. It was not facilitated by the federation," the federation's officials told FIFA.

The Canada scandal began when Joseph Lombardi, an analyst for the Canadian team, was arrested in France last month after he was found flying a drone over a training session of the New Zealand soccer team, which had been the first opponent scheduled to play against Canada in the Olympics.

Afterward, Lombardi, a second team official, and Priestman were suspended by Canada Soccer, then banned for a year by FIFA from working in the sport. Canada's government also pulled funding to Canada Soccer for the three positions. Lombardi also received an eight-month suspended sentence by French authorities.

In a statement to FIFA, Lombardi claimed that the spying was a decision he made on his own, in order "to impress" the staff of the women's program. No other staff members ever reviewed the footage, he said. "From a personal perspective, being held in police custody and imprisoned for the past three days was the worse [sic] experience of my life," Lombardi added.

As punishment for the use of the drone, FIFA had assessed a six-point penalty on the women's team during its Olympic run — a major setback that meant Canada would need to win all three group stage games to advance. With a 1-0 win over Colombia on Wednesday, Canada did just that. The team will next face Germany in the Olympic quarterfinals.

"We haven't slept in the last three days. We haven't eaten. We've been crying," said player Vanessa Gilles after the team's win over France earlier this week. "We're not cheaters. We're damn players. We're a damn good team. We're a damn good group, and we proved that today."