A scandal, a slap and a win: Canada soccer’s week at the Olympics

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Canada needed a win. Any win.

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The women’s national soccer team had the drone spying scandal hanging over their heads — not unlike what Joseph Lombardi’s actual drone did at New Zealand’s practice earlier this week before it was confiscated by French police — and had their most iconic player confoundingly disrespected in an ESPN poll. Apparently Christine Sinclair’s record number of goals, more than any man or woman has ever scored in international play, wasn’t good enough to crack ESPN’s Top 10 of their list of greatest female soccer players of the 20th century.

The gloom surrounded the Canadians as they took the field Thursday against New Zealand in their opening game of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in Saint-Étienne. There was no head coach as Bev Priestman sat out the game after the drone scandal broke. Lombardi — a performance analyst for Canada — and Surrey’s Jasmine Mander, an assistant coach, also weren’t present, having been sent home for their roles in the disgrace.

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Canada had won gold at the 2021 (née: 2020) Games, the pinnacle of the team’s success, and 72 hours ago were poised, confident and righteous. But it was a subdued, disjointed side that faced the Kiwis Thursday — the same team which had “a fire lit in their bellies” by Canada’s spying — and New Zealand got their licks in early, with Mackenzie Barrie putting them up in the 13th minute.

Maybe that moment explains why Canada, No. 8 in the world, felt the need to spy on a team 20 places below them in the rankings. Or maybe not.

But Cloe Lacasse and Evelyne Viens scored for Canada to give them the win. The group was flustered, but they finished when it mattered.

As a victory, however, it rings hollow; the reverberations and fallout from the scandal will linger. And the taint is far deeper than we initially knew.

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On Thursday afternoon, Priestman was suspended by Canada Soccer for the rest of the Games after the association discovered that the drone use wasn’t a one-off.

“Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend Women’s National Soccer Team head coach, Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review,” Canada Soccer CEO and general secretary Kevin Blue said in a statement.

To make the stinky affair even more fetid, TSN’s Rick Westhead reported drone spying was something both the Canadian and men’s teams had used for years, even to the point of hiring outside contractors to conduct the clandestine surveillance.

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Mander’s ship was sunk when text message correspondence between her and Lombardi proved she knew he was watching the Kiwis — though didn’t prove that he was using a drone — something he’d also done in the days previous. Westhead said TSN has seen text messages of a women’s national team coach discussing even more drone footage of their adversaries practices before games against Trinidad, Costa Rica and South Korea in 2022.

FIFA’s disciplinary committee has opened an inquiry, which surely will go into a turbocharged mode with the raft of damning reports coming out this week. Even the defence of “everyone else is doing it” hold no water.

Did Lombardi’s illicit footage affected the game plan for either team? It’s hard to say. And we’ll never have an answer.

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“It’s been tough on the group,” New Zealand interim head coach Michael Mayne said after the game.

He said it’s hard to not look at the result and wonder “what may have been.”

Canada has enjoyed a white-cloaked reputation on the world stage for decades. We’re the good guys. The winter country that punches above its weight in the summer games.

Now the lustre is gone, shed quicker than a 9.79-second 100m dash. One person — or maybe more; we’ll wait on those inquiries — has done irreparable damage to our national image.

This is worse than Ben Johnson’s run in Seoul. He was the best sprinter, but the worst doper at those 1988 Games.

The Canadian women weren’t fighting against those on an even playing field, they were cheating versus a team that shouldn’t be able to compete with them on a normal day. Nobody loves Goliath, especially when he’s flying his DJI Mini Pro to see what kind of sling David might have.

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Canada has two more games in the group stage; France on Sunday, and Colombia the following Wednesday. By then, our country’s fate has already been sealed: we’re cheaters.

The victims here — at least the ones who weren’t spied upon — are the players of the women’s team. This was supposed to be another moment of glory for the team and country, another trip to the podium after making it there the last three Olympic Games.

It took more than three decades before Johnson’s name could be spoken by a Canadian without having to expectorate on the ground. It feels like it will be just as long for the women’s team, no matter their result in Paris this summer.

jadams@postmedia.com

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