Canada sends home two women’s soccer coaches as Spygate scandal rocks Olympics after drone discovered

It might be the other kind of football, but the same type of scandal has followed some 17 years later.

Ahead of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, two Canadian women’s soccer coaches have been removed from the organization after two separate incidents of a drone flying over New Zealand’s training sessions.

Canadian team soccer analyst Joseph Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander will no longer be part of the staff during Olympic competition, while head coach Bev Priestman voluntarily will not coach in the team’s first match against New Zealand on Thursday, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced Wednesday morning.

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“On behalf of our entire team, I first and foremost want to apologize to the players and staff at New Zealand Football and to the players on Team Canada,” Priestman said in a statement. “This does not represent the values that our team stands for. I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program. … In the spirit of accountability, I do this with the interests of both teams in mind and to ensure everyone feels that the sportsmanship of this game is upheld.”

According to reports, New Zealand team officials filed a complaint to the International Olympic Committee after noticing that Lombardi was controlling a drone, theoretically to record or watch the team’s practice from Saint-Etienne on Monday.

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At that point, Lombardi was detained by French authorities.

The COC’s official statement also mentioned that a “second drone incident” occurred at a New Zealand practice on July 19.

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Beyond the aforementioned disciplinary measures, the COC shared that Team Canada’s coaching staff will undergo “mandatory ethics training,” and that an ongoing review in collaboration with FIFA is still underway, leaving the potential for further punishment.

The controversy evokes memory of “Spygate,” one of the more infamous scandals in recent sports memory.

During the 2007 NFL season, New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 — and the organization was stripped of its first-round draft pick — after it was revealed that the team had filmed Jets’ coaches defensive signals during their Week 1 matchup.

Having won its first gold medal in 2020, Team Canada begins its defense against New Zealand — marred in scandal and without its head coach — on Thursday at 11 a.m. ET.

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