Tribunal denies Canada’s appeal as Priestman email details ‘a whole operation’ of spying

A Court of Arbitration for Sport tribunal has ruled against Canada Soccer after the federation and the Canadian Olympic Committee appealed a six-point penalty assessed because a member of the women's soccer team's coaching staff was caught using a drone to spy on New Zealand's practices before the start of the Paris Games.

“While disappointed in the outcome of our appeal, we commend the players for their incredible resilience and grit over the course of this tournament, and look forward to cheering them on in today’s match against Colombia,” the Canadian Olympic Committee wrote in a statement Wednesday morning.

FIFA ruled over the weekend that Canada Soccer would receive the point deduction, and a fine of about $320,000. Three of the program’s coaches – head coach Bev Priestman and assistants Jasmine Mander and Joseph Lombardi – were suspended for one year. 

A document posted on FIFA’s website detailing the sanctions against the coaches outlines how Lombardi was caught by French police after flying the drone over New Zealand team’s practice on July 22.

After Lombardi was arrested, police searched his hotel room and also found footage he also filmed of New Zealand’s July 20 practice. Lombardi told police and FIFA that he did not share the footage he filmed with any Team Canada personnel or players because the filming was of poor quality.

Lombardi was charged with flying an unmanned aircraft in a restricted space. He pleaded guilty and was given an eight-month suspended sentence.

The FIFA document also quotes an email sent by a Canada Soccer performance analyst to Priestman on March 20 in which the analyst recapped their meetings with Priestman over the previous week.

“As discussed yesterday, in terms of the ‘spying’ conversation, I came off the meeting with the clarity you understood my reasons for me being unwilling to do this moving forward,” the analyst wrote. “Morally, my own reputation within the analysis field, potentially being unable to fulfil my role on a matchday. Moving forward I will have a discussion with Joey [Lombardi] and reach out to the wider tech team with regards to how we could potentially look for other solutions. But just wanted to confirm that you will not be asking me to fulfil the role of ‘spying’ in the upcoming and future camps.”

Priestman sent an email to an external human resources consultant who works with Canada Soccer on the same day.

“Seeking your advice and input here regarding this formal email on spying,” Priestman wrote. “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 that a different Canada Soccer employee had worked recently with her staff “and he was outstanding in this area.”

“Yesterday in a meeting when discussing, I asked [the analyst] to propose a alternative [sic] solution as for scouting it can be the difference between winning and losing and all top 10 teams do it,” Priestman wrote to the human resources consultant.

Canada Soccer provided the analyst’s and Priestman’s emails to FIFA.

The federation also wrote in the FIFA document that it believes the spying program began with John Herdman, who coached the women’s national team from 2011 to 2018 and the men’s team from 2018 to 2023 and who now coaches at Toronto FC. Priestman worked as a technical assistant and an assistant coach under Herdman from 2013 to 2018.

Herdman told reporters on July 26 he is confident his teams never spied on competitors at the Olympics or World Cup. Herdman has said he will cooperate with Canada Soccer during its probe.

“… We suspect that the practice of using a drone stems back to John Herdman when he was the head coach of the women’s national team,” Canada Soccer wrote to FIFA on July 27, according to the FIFA document. “In other words, this was a practice started by one person – John Herdman – and continued by Bev Priestman. It was not facilitated by the federation. New Canada Soccer administration is supporting a full independent investigation of this issue and has already taken steps to ensure that this scouting tactic does not happen again.”

The Canadian Olympic Committee wrote in a statement when the appeal was filed that FIFA’s sanction wasn’t fair to the women’s team players. 

"The appeal is based on the disproportionality of the sanction, which we believe unfairly punishes the athletes for actions they had no part in and goes far beyond restoring fairness to the match against New Zealand," the COC said in a statement.

Canada won by the same 2-1 score over both New Zealand and France in its first two matches at the Paris Games. Canada closes out group play Wednesday afternoon against Colombia in Nice. Canada will advance to the quarter-finals with a win.

The federal government said it plans to withhold some funding from Canada Soccer and the federation has said it will commission an independent third-party investigation. The results of that investigation will be public, Canada Soccer said.

Priestman, in a statement through her lawyer, apologized on Sunday “from the bottom of my heart” and has said she will cooperate with the federation’s investigation.