Canada's men's and women's soccer teams have relied on drones and spying for years, sources say

Coaching staff and contractors working with Canada’s men’s and women’s national soccer teams have been engaged for years in efforts to film the closed-door training sessions of their opponents, including during the women’s gold-medal winning Olympic tournament in 2021, two sources with first-hand knowledge of the activity told TSN.

The filming also included at least one training session before a women’s national team game against Panama in July 2022, when Canada was attempting to qualify for the Women’s World Cup in Australia, one of the sources said. In that case, the source said, a Canadian contractor was caught attempting to film a private Panama training and a complaint was made by the Panamanian Football Federation to Canada Soccer and to Concacaf, the soccer confederation that governs the sport in North and Central America and the Caribbean.

The historical spying allegations come with the Canada’s women’s soccer team program under intense scrutiny at the Olympics in Paris. 

The Canadian Olympic Committee said on Wednesday that assistant coach Jasmine Mander and analyst Joseph Lombardi had left the team and returned to Canada after Lombardi was caught using a drone to spy on two of New Zealand’s closed training sessions. On Thursday, Canada beat New Zealand 2-1 in their Olympic tournament opener.

Lombardi was caught by French police on Monday, after they saw him retrieve a drone that had been flying over the New Zealand team’s training, The Globe and Mail reported. The Globe reported that police retrieved footage of a second New Zealand training session from the drone and also obtained text messages between Lombardi and Mander. The text messages reportedly showed that Mander was aware of Lombardi’s activities.

After TSN published an initial version of this story, Canada Soccer chief executive Kevin Blue wrote in a statement that head coach Bev Priestman had been removed from her position for the balance of the Olympic tournament. Blue wrote that the federation had obtained new information regarding previous drone use against opponents that predates the 2024 Olympics. The Canadian Olympic Committee said that Priestman had been removed from the Olympic team.

“This is awful, the worst-case scenario,” said Amy Walsh, a former women’s national team player who now co-hosts a podcast about soccer called Footy Prime. “I feel sick to my stomach, genuinely nauseated. I understand when you get to a high level, people will be ruthless and do whatever they can to gain a competitive advantage but this is so far over the line.

“The players are benefitting from the coaches cheating. There's a certain amount of blind trust players have that coaches are doing things the right way and this is the ultimate betrayal."

Staff and contractors connected to the men’s national team have also filmed the closed training sessions of competitors, one of the sources told TSN, adding that Canada used a drone to record a U.S. training session before a Nov. 15, 2019, game in Florida. The U.S. won that game 4-1.

Two years later, Honduras stopped a training session in Toronto during World Cup qualifiers after someone spotted a drone overhead.

“I’d imagine there’s probably a lot of people in Canada that fly drones, I’m sure,” then-Canada coach John Herdman said at the time. “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.”

Some staff and contractors were told the filming was part of their jobs and that they could lose their positions with the federation if they did not go along with the demands, one of the sources said in a series of interviews with TSN on Wednesday and Thursday.

“In a couple of scenarios, people have been pushed and have been told, ‘You have to give 110 percent and this is part of the job so if you don’t feel comfortable with doing this, you do not have a place on the team’,” the source said. “It’s not something that’s talked about and it’s not something there are a lot of text messages about because of how sensitive this is. Some of the people who have had to do the filming or review the filming have said to a few staff members how uncomfortable it was for them.”

Both sources asked for anonymity because they said they were afraid the federation would retaliate against them. It’s unclear whether any players were aware of the strategy to record practices.

One of the sources said the spying included a Team Canada coach filming two of Japan’s closed-door training sessions during the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Canada tied Japan 1-1 in its first game during those Olympics.

“It was a little bit tricky during that time, given the fact that we were under a lot more restrictions, but there were ways to kind of sneak out of the hotel without people knowing,” the source told TSN. “In Tokyo, a lot of the facilities were a little bit more open so in some cases, you could see from behind bushes or behind fences or behind trees. It wasn't that complicated, because they didn't have the big mesh walls. So as long as you were close enough to the facility, you're able to see if you're in a hidden location.”

The source said they weren’t aware if spying occurred in other games during those Olympics.

Two years after the Tokyo Olympics, a Canada Soccer contractor who was scheduled to travel to Australia for the 2023 World Cup was told their responsibilities would include trying to record training sessions of opposing teams. When the contractor said they wouldn’t agree to do that, their trip was canceled and a Canada Soccer staff member flew there in their place to do the recording, the source said.

TSN has reviewed text message correspondence of a women’s national team coach discussing secret filming of their opponents’ training sessions ahead of games in 2022 against Costa Rica, South Korea and Trinidad.

One of the sources said the strategy for filming opposing teams’ practices in Canada was relatively easy because Canada Soccer staff knew where they were practicing and what hotels they were staying in. 

“When you're abroad, it requires a little bit more research. When you are in Concacaf events, you do have the ability of finding out where the rest of the teams are training because Concacaf, FIFA, and the Olympics, they all publish where the teams are training in one way or another,” the source said. “You also know just by looking at the social medias from the other teams and seeing what pictures they are posting.”

Both sources said there is a lot to be learned from filming an opponent’s practice.

“You get to know their formations, their starting lineup,” one of the sources said. “You also look at who is taking a penalty kick and their set pieces.”

“Most people see this as cheating, which it is,” one of the sources said. “Some of our coaches just see it as a competitive advantage and justify it by saying everyone does it, which is also not true. Not everyone cheats and neither should we.”

In an interview on Wednesday with a CBC reporter, Priestman did not answer directly when she was asked if she was aware of the drone filming.

"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. This does not represent the values that our team stands for," Priestman said in a statement on Wednesday. "I am ultimately responsible for conduct in our program. Accordingly, to emphasize our team's commitment to integrity, I have decided to voluntarily withdraw from coaching the match on Thursday. 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."

Both FIFA and Canada Soccer announced investigations into the allegations of spying on Wednesday. Canada Soccer said its investigation would be conducted by an independent third party and would focus on the drone incident in France and more broadly, the historical ethical practices of both the men’s and women’s national team programs. The investigation findings will be made public, Canada Soccer said.