The departure of the Canada ladies’s nationwide staff head coach, Bev Priestman, has been confirmed by Canada Soccer, following an unbiased evaluate into the drone spying scandal that rocked the staff’s Olympics marketing campaign.
The Englishwoman Priestman was faraway from the Olympic Video games in Paris and obtained a one-year ban from soccer by the world’s governing physique Fifa in July, after a drone was allegedly used to spy on a coaching session of certainly one of their opponents, New Zealand. The analyst Joseph Lombardi and the Canada assistant coach Jasmine Mander had been additionally banned after the allegations, and on Tuesday an announcement from Canada Soccer stated: “The three people presently suspended by Fifa won’t be returning. The seek for a brand new head coach for the ladies’s nationwide staff will start shortly.”
On 8 November, when giving their preliminary response to an unbiased evaluate into the scandal, Canada Soccer stated the matter was symptomatic of a “previous sample of an unacceptable tradition” and on Tuesday, the organisation supplied its full response, with damning element.
Among the many abstract findings, it was discovered that two of the coaches had “directed acts of improper surveillance predating the 2024 Paris Olympics”, however the evaluate discovered “no proof” of spying by Canada employees on the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the place they gained a historic gold medal. Though the evaluate felt that the absence of such from Tokyo was merely “probably because of the extremely restrictive nature of the lockdowns associated to Covid-19”.
Nonetheless, the report makes clear that no Canada gamers watched any drone footage. Moreover, the reviewers discovered that “some assistant coaches and employees members felt uncomfortable with the spying” however that they “didn’t really feel they may problem the authority of the top coach”.
It was additionally discovered that neither the chief government of Canada Soccer, Kevin Blue, nor the president and board chair, Peter Augruso, had been conscious of using drones for surveillance of opponents. Blue and Augruso wrote in a joint assertion: “Fairly merely, whereas gamers on the nationwide groups carried out admirably, cultural requirements and administration of the applications courting again a number of years fell wanting expectations.
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“With this investigation now concluded, we’re within the strategy of taking disciplinary steps. These actions will likely be personal. Shifting ahead, we are going to proceed to look at the organisation for the cultural and moral patterns that gave rise to this incident. We are going to take extra measures ought to we discover extra proof of them.”
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