The latest news from the world of soccer reveals a scandal that has embarrassed Canada’s National Women’s Soccer Team on a global stage; flying drones over opponents’ games to gather game footage, a no-go in professional sports
Alex Rickman (He/Him) // Contributor
Andy Poystila (He/Him) // Illustrator
At this summer’s Olympics in Paris, it was reported by TSN’s Rick Westhead that Canada Soccer had been caught using drones to spy on opponents’ practices. As the Canadian women’s national team was beginning to kick off their campaign, hoping to win gold at the Paris Olympics, another point was added to their growing list of issues that have plagued the organization in recent years.
As if it could not get any worse, it was then discovered that Canada Soccer has been doing this for years—under now-suspended women’s coach Beverly Priestman—as well as potentially during the tenure of former Canadian national men’s soccer coach John Herdman. While it’s still too early to know the full ramifications of this scandal, or to what extent drone spying has played a role in Canada’s recent rise as a soccer nation, a few things can be understood about this scandal as of now.
Firstly, should Priestman and others be proven to have known about or—even worse—encouraged the use of spy drones to watch opposing practices, Priestman could lose her job, despite her successes in leading the team to Olympic gold in 2021. Additionally, while Herdman may be difficult to punish since he is no longer Team Canada’s manager, it should be discussed whether he should face similar consequences if he too was involved in the use of spy drones. While reports have come out following this scandal that other nations may have employed similar tactics, they have yet to be caught in the act. What was happening under Herdman and Priestman’s watch can simply be deemed unacceptable for a high-level sporting organization.
Questions must also be asked about the motivation behind the drone spying, as game footage is readily available for all opponents Canada could find themselves up against. With open access to these videos, it brings to question what advantage practice footage has over gameplay records (which would not require any rules to be broken to acquire it).
As for the public, one can sympathize with the players, who claim they were unaware their coaches were breaking the rules in order to gain a competitive advantage. Soon after the scandal broke, Canada’s women’s team was hit with a point deduction that nearly ended their Olympic campaign early. While they did manage to advance out of the group stage before being eliminated by Germany in the quarterfinal, these players were put in an incredibly difficult situation.
While much of the coverage around this scandal has, understandably, been focused on bringing negative attention to those responsible, the players who didn’t let the organization’s failures hold them back deserve to be given a lot of credit for their work.
Now, where does Canada Soccer go next? It’ll be hard to know until we have a clearer picture of the scale to which Priestman and Herdman used drone spying. For now, Canada Soccer will have a lot of work to do to repair their reputation and regain trust from their fans in Canada and the global soccer community.
Canada might not be the only country that has used drones to illegally watch opponents’ practices but until others are getting caught as well, Canada stands alone with having to work hard to prove in the court of public opinion that going forward, mistakes of the previous administration won’t be repeated. How exactly this can be done may not be clear right now, but by whatever means necessary, Canada Soccer needs to prove to Canada and the world that they have learned from their mistakes.