While the 2024 Paris Olympics’ opening ceremonies aren’t until Friday night, competition has already began in some sports. One of those is soccer, and the women’s soccer tournament already has a scandal underway. That would be from the Canadian team (the defending Olympic champions) using drones to spy on two of the New Zealand team’s training sessions ahead of their tournament-opening match Thursday.
That saga has already led to analyst Joseph Lombardi and assistant coach Jasmine Mander (oddly enough, her brother is a physiotherapist for the New Zealand team ) being dismissed from the team, and to Lombardi receiving a eight-month delayed sentence from the French government for violating drone laws. It’s also led to FIFA and IOC investigations, as well as a Canada Soccer one. And it’s led to head coach Bev Priestman (who insisted she didn’t order the spying) choosing to not coach the Canadian team’s opening match amidst all the controversy here. Here’s the prosecutor’s statement on the arrest and sentencing of Lombardi, translated by Devin Heroux and the CBC Sports team:
Unsurprisingly, this made many think of former Michigan Wolverines’ football analyst , sometimes Cameo figure and Barstool Sports guest , and upcoming documentary star Connor Stalions:
On a more serious front, though, there are definitely issues here. Beyond the violations of French law (and the suspended sentence that led to for Lombardi), this kind of observation of training sessions is specifically banned by FIFA. And that has New Zealand officials already calling for FIFA sanctions on the Canadian team. This also has people looking back at past drone accusations around Canada, particularly from Honduras ahead of a September 2021 match, which then-head coach John Herdman downplayed at the time :
Honduras stopped a training session ahead of its World Cup qualifier against Canada after spotting a drone above the field, according to reports in Honduran media.
“I’d imagine there’s probably a lot of people in Canada that fly drones, I’m sure,” Canada coach John Herdman said Wednesday. “And when a big team like Honduras turn up I’m sure people are probably interested in what they’re doing when they come into our country. So I know for sure we won’t be heading into people’s countries too early because with drones these days, people can obviously capture footage. You’ve got to be really careful. So yeah, you got to be careful in CONCACAF. It’s a tricky place.”
We’ll see what all comes of this. But it’s certainly fascinating to have the reigning Olympic women’s soccer champions facing a spying investigation before this tournament even kicks off. And it will be interesting to see what kind of media coverage this gets. That may be perhaps especially interesting to track on English-language U.S. broadcaster NBC given the long-running questions about their ability to do serious off-field coverage at the Olympics, but also given the well-established U.S.-Canada women’s soccer rivalry.
It’s also notable to see that amidst the wider conversations about spying scandals in sports. Those go well beyond Stalions and have been a topic of debate for more than a century , but they’re in a particular limelight at the moment. And this case may add to that.
[ Canadian Soccer Daily ]
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