FIFA suspends Canada’s women’s soccer coach after Olympic spying : NPR

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PARIS — The coach of the Canadian ladies’s nationwide soccer staff has been suspended from the game for a yr after a spying scandal at this summer season’s Olympic Video games, a FIFA disciplinary panel introduced Saturday.

As well as, Canada’s Olympic staff — which is defending the gold medal gained within the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 — will likely be penalized with a deduction of six factors from its group stage whole, FIFA stated, a transfer that basically ensures the staff will likely be eradicated from competition.

The choice

On Friday, when the small print started to return to mild concerning the spying, the top of the Canadian Olympic Committee, David Shoemaker, stated, “We proceed to be shocked and disillusioned.” He went on to inform reporters, “We really feel very a lot pissed off as I am positive all Canadians do at this level.”

The scandal started with the arrest of a person in Saint-Etienne, France. The native prosecutor stated on two separate events, a person linked to the Canadian staff “had successfully filmed the closed-door coaching of the New Zealand ladies’s staff, with the assistance of a drone,” the assertion learn.

The footage taken on July 22 present the New Zealand gamers making use of directions given to them by their coach, in addition to pictures taken on July 20 — a beforehand unknown occasion that he admitted throughout questioning — once they had been coaching within the Michon stadium in Saint-Etienne.

Canada’s ladies’s coach, Beverly Priestman, initially stated she would voluntarily sit out of Canada’s Thursday match towards New Zealand. (Canada gained 2-1.)

Then, on Thursday, Canada’s nationwide soccer federation introduced that it had suspended Priestman for the rest of the Olympic Video games.

“Over the previous 24 hours, further data has come to our consideration relating to earlier drone use towards opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games,” Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue stated in a press release. “In mild of those new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the choice to droop Girls’s Nationwide Soccer Group Head Coach, Bev Priestman for the rest of the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games, and till the completion of our not too long ago introduced unbiased exterior evaluation.”

“We’re considering attending to the underside of this circumstance in an expert and thorough means. After which we are going to make selections on what to do about it as soon as we now have data that is been substantiated,” Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue stated in a press convention Friday.

Canada’s staff will proceed to be led by assistant coach Andy Spence for the remainder of the Olympics.