Why Bev Priestman is no longer a coach

The Canadian Olympic Committee on Thursday removed women’s national soccer team coach Bev Priestman from the Paris Olympics following shocking allegations that she was using drones to spy on the opposing team.

Two staff members – assistant Jasmine Mander and analyst Joseph Lombardi – were also sent home before Priestman was suspended for the tournament by Canada Soccer, a major incident that came after Canadian website TSN reported that Canada’s men’s and women’s teams had used drones to spy on their opponents for years.

Canada, the defending gold medalists, beat New Zealand 2-1 in its Olympic opening match on Thursday. Priestman, Mander and Lombardi were not coaching the game.

“The Canadian Olympic Committee has removed Canada women’s national soccer team head coach Bev Priestman from the Canadian Olympic team due to her suspension by Canada Soccer,” the COC statement said. “Assistant coach Andy Spence will lead the women’s national soccer team for the remainder of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.”

Here’s what you should know about the drone allegations:

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Canadian drone surveillance in action at the Olympics

According to TSN, Lombardi was caught by French police collecting a drone flying over the New Zealand national team’s training ground. French police investigated and found additional videos of New Zealand’s training sessions, as well as text messages between Lombardi and Mander that suggested Mander knew about Lombardi’s actions.

Schedule and investigations for drone operations at the Olympic Games in Canada

It is unclear when the surveillance began, but TSN reported that it could be traced back to a game against the United States on November 15, 2019. The United States won the game 4-1.

The spying has been going on nonstop since then, the report released Thursday said, with cases in 2021, 2022 and 2023. That includes preparation for the 2021 CONCACAF game between the men’s team and Honduras, which abandoned training in Toronto after seeing a drone flying overhead, the report said.

“I would imagine there are probably a lot of people in Canada who fly drones,” said John Herdman, then coach of the Canadian men’s national team.

“When a big team like the one from Honduras shows up, I’m sure people are interested in what they’re doing when they come to our country,” Herdman continued. “So I’m sure we won’t go into people’s countries too early, because of course with drones these days you can get footage. You have to be really careful.”

Jesse Marsch, the current coach of the men’s national team, was not involved in the reporting.

What Bev Priestman said about the drone scandal in Canada

It was not immediately clear how much Priestman knew about the scandal.

FIFA and Canada Soccer launched an investigation into the espionage allegations on Wednesday. Canada Soccer intends to make its findings public.

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